month three in numbers

This month, I mostly stayed in the UK, exploring some of the lesser traveled nooks and crannies. I do recognize that Wales, Scotland, and England are technically individual countries. However, I decided to count them collectively as one under the United Kingdom. I don’t know if that’s controversial or a hot take; opinions seemed to differ on it even within the UK. None issue their own passports, maintain their own embassies, or have their own militaries - so I had trouble deeming them functionally any different than a state. If one secedes, I’ll update my counts at that point. That said, here’s my month in numbers:

Cities This Month: 14; Total So Far: 39

Countries This Month: 2; Total So Far: 10

Countries I Ate Avocado Toast In This Month: 1; Total So Far: 6

Miles Walked This Month: 377.3; Total So Far: 1,124.5

A MONTH OF TOUGH INTROSPECTION

Like the first two months, I’m going to begin with my emotional journey and then talk about the trip itself. Exhausted Millennial started as a self-care brand after all, and I plan to stay true to those roots.

While month two was my period of external events starting to go wrong, month three was my month of internal chaos. I got sick early in the month with what, in hindsight, I feel confident was monkeypox. That hit a couple of other circumstances and spun me into a period of angst: buckets of hopelessness, shame, anxiety, and loneliness that stood alongside my physical symptoms. At some point I added to it by rolling my ankle pretty hard.

The whole month, I was still having the experience of a lifetime. I was still bumping into amazing people and places. I was still in a blessed circumstance in which I didn’t have to work. Yet, I could sense myself hardening to the experience. I could sense myself losing mindful presence, of holding physically my emotional discomfort, of hyper-focusing on my physical symptoms, and of attaching to longstanding self-destructive habits: drinking, overeating, sulking in melodrama, playing out “woe is me” victim narratives, coping by being helpful to others, and erratically reaching out to loved ones for some kind of anchoring. I was caught off guard because most of my skills to deal with these kinds of self-harming behaviors were failing me, and the sulk went on for weeks.

Perhaps hardest, I couldn’t fall back on my standard comforts: lying in a consistent bed, turning on the AC, taking a long hot shower, cuddling with my dogs, cooking in my own kitchen, seeing old friends . . . I had to learn how to deal with this with it without any support crutches. This is, of course, the downside of an untethered life on the road.

Eventually, after many meditations trying to soften into it, I came to realize my tools weren’t helping because I was treating it as something shame-based - as a set of issues stemming from feeling unworthy. With some tender introspection and inner parts work, I realized this particular battery of immature behaviors actually stem from despair: a piece of me that believes I won’t be taken seriously when sick or upset unless I spin out and make it into something bigger. A desperate child in me craving acknowledgment and compassion when I don’t feel good. It was a set of behaviors that were adaptive in childhood for me. I sometimes joke I was less raised than forgotten; my childhood home was not a place I could be taken seriously or attended to when suffering - so wild, desperate plays to receive compassion were at many times my only option.

(That isn’t a rant about my parents; I firmly believe all parents are attending to their own traumas and doing the best that they can. But no one can heal if they can’t sit with a fair assessment of what caused their wounds and what kinds of behaviors grew out of that to adapt. I can acknowledge my parents’ shortcomings without holding them with resentment and anger. Kindness, after all, requires we hold people to account - to be honest and earnest in not colluding in, enabling, or allowing harmful behavior - without making them into one-dimensional villains.)

Once I figured this out, I realized all I needed was to give that inner child a soft acknowledgement that the things going wrong did in fact suck, note honestly the extent of my suffering without diminishing or catastrophizing it, reflect on how I’m in no way alone in going through similar struggles, offer myself some warm kindness, and a give a soft reminder that things that suck can coexist with the amazing. In short, I needed to treat my suffering in the way I yearned for when growing up.

By doing this every time these issues cropped up for me, I returned to having a more wholehearted, consistently joyful experience - one that ran alongside both being physically ill and experiencing immense grief as I mourned and let go of some old ways of being. After all, most self-destructive habits have an element of addiction - so moving past and releasing them requires letting go of an old partner - of something familiar - of something deeply ingrained that gives us an illusory sense of control. Letting go of something is never easy, even if it was something that wasn’t healthy for you.

By the way, 5/5 do not recommend monkeypox. Not a delightful experience.

A MUCH more solo month - and one i fell in love with the uk

Month one for me was about making friends on the road. Month two (and the first five days of month three) was about seeing old friends. Month three was about being alone. I think it was a combination of things. The hostels I stayed at were less social. I didn’t have friends to meet along the way. I was feeling a bit antisocial. I was suffering with something that is transmissible by skin contact, so I couldn’t touch anyone. But mostly, I was tackling growth work I felt would be best done alone - without having social ties as a crutch or a distraction. I needed the time to work on my relationship with myself, not how I relate to others. I knew I felt lonely - but I also knew that with work that could shift to a peaceful solitude. I leaned into it being a month to be alone and finally reached solitude around the time I found peace with my inner struggle.

I can sense a re-opening to social connection in me now and am much more chatty with my hostel mates here in Ireland. It’s just in time too because I have a few weeks packed with seeing friends coming up.

I spent almost this entire month in the United Kingdom - and I fell thoroughly in love with it. It checked off many of my “I’m American” cultural needs without embracing much of the American toxicity I struggle with. The landscape was beautiful, the mainstream culture is progressive (vegan food absolutely everywhere!), the density allows for a rich combination of rural and urban life, and I just generally enjoyed myself and the people. Like normal, there were several cities I fell particularly in love with.

• Edinburgh stole the crown as my new favorite city. The city holds a level of magic that may only be describable by poets. It is so surreally beautiful that it feels like stepping into a book or a movie - a place that draws out imagination. My honest first thought when I walked towards its Old Town was “maybe I live here now.” Maybe one day I shall.

• I shared last month that London thoroughly charmed me. It’s the only city of its size and scale I’ve been to that I would seriously consider living in. It’s cool, cultured, and never felt overwhelming to me.

• Brighton overtook Provincetown as my new favorite gay beach getaway. The city, like me, is just all in Eat Pray Gay. From a volunteer run anarachist social club (that is also a vegan restaurant), to a feminist bookshop (that is also a vegan cafe), to at least a dozen thrift shops funding non-profits - the city just spoke quickly to my soul.

I know these are cities I’ll be back in - and places I may one day make home.

As I moved through the UK and headed to Ireland, I found things to fall in love with in every city I spent time in. I have longer (linked) recaps of each, but I’ll give my biggest takeaways below. I put asterisks next to the ones I will likely find reason to return to, exclamation marks next to the ones I got my fill of but found thoroughly charming and worth the trip, and left the cities that were a bit less remarkable to me without anything.

• I got a taste of my countryside fantasy British life in Bath!. The houseboats along the canal were so charming I immediately pictured them as the setting for a cheesy rom-com, and the Georgian architecture of its downtown is very captivating.

• Bristol* makes complete sense as the “birthplace” of Banksy. The city is just so cool and counter-culture forward. I struggled with whether to list Bristol as a potential place to move to because it just seemed immensely livable - the kind of place you can blossom with authentic, sincere connections. Eventually, though, I realized that if I moved to the UK it would be to Edinburgh or London.

• Cardiff, the capital of Wales, offers a taste of Welsh culture and bursts in arcades - these cute Victorian indoor shopping strips that cut between streets like alleys. The culture is lively and, to me, exudes an “I don’t really care what you think about me” energy that I found quite charming.

• I spent probably far too much time in this one large meadow full of cows and horses in Oxford. Now, I’m not saying that having more public parks with farm animals would solve our myriad of global crises . . . But it certainly would gift me a crutch for any lingering existential despair. Oh, and I hear there’s a pretty historic university in Oxford too.

• I briefly stepped into my full countryside fantasy in the Cotswolds* while staying with my friend in Hinton-Waldrist. It was a a deep joy to spend time with her family, her dog, her chickens, her garden, her bees - and to explore the Cotswolds generally. If you have a picture in your head of stone cottages on the British countryside, it’s probably Cotwoldsy - and the entire area is as delightful as you likely envision.

• I found Cambridge! to be the superior of the two university cities. The colleges were similar in architecture, quality, and scale to those of Oxford - but what left Cambridge a bit of more of a delight for me was the way the historic, cobble-stoned lanes between the colleges bustle with boutiques and local businesses.

• I got really lucky in Norwich! because the city was full of painted dinosaurs when I was there. Norwich boasts being England’s most preserved medieval city - and it’s a claim I’d believe. The downtown lanes have a historic flair - and about half of the businesses along them are local. I think it’s a thoroughly charming, underrated UK destination.

• You can feel the industrial rise, decline and rebirth of Manchester* as you walk through it. There are sections of gorgeous, 4 or 5 story red brick buildings that whisper industrial wealth. Then there are revitalizing sections of repurposed warehouses that bristle with artists and craftspeople. Then there are entirely newly constructed modern urban districts. What I think is most cool, though, is that Manchester is the first city I’ve been to where multiple libraries usually make the to-do lists for tourists.

• I think Glasgow! gets an unfair shake because it’s so commonly compared to its neighbor Edinburgh. While Glasgow may not compare to Edinburgh for charm and architecture, or to the highlands for natural beauty, Glasgow wins out on lived energy, authenticity, and culture. The city’s public funding of art and culture has paid off with brilliant, free museums that enjoy international reputations.

• Cork is not a particularly exciting tourist destination, but its colorful houses and charming downtown make for a quiet, relaxed few days. What I’ll remember most is that every other shop seemed to be a local cafe.

One thing I’ve reflected on a lot this month is what a shallow, surface-level understanding American culture generally holds about European countries. We tend to be taught that each country is more homogenous, historically rooted, and culturally stereotypical than is true in reality. I think this is, in part, because colonialism usually exported on version of a country’s culture onto territories - one language, one set of customs, one set of cultural touchstones. I was a bit embarrassed that I didn’t know there were several languages spoken throughout the UK (English, Welsh, Gaelic), that the current borders (the union of the four countries) is fairly modern, and the historical development and culture of the regions are so varied.

In America, we tend to have a way of saying our historical country of origin as an explanation of who we are, of what traits we embody. But the truth is, the borders in Europe have changed dramatically in the course of US history. Even where they haven’t, country of origin is often less important than region - as culture and language are something hyper local throughout Europe. It’s one piece of the American tradition of clinging to an unrealistic historical ideal - of “better times” - instead of sitting in the present moment and recognizing that we’re each a complex creation of hyper-local tribes and communities that preceded us. That no one is simple in origin or reducible to trite, stereotype-dependent quip explanation. That life is complex, impermanent, and uncontrollable.

For example, I know that my ancestors of the Scott name immigrated to the US in the early 1600s. However, I don’t know in which country within the UK they were in at that time, under what government, using what language, and with what local customs. I had a belief I had an understanding of my lineage - but I now realize I know very little.

My style of travel changes quite a bit next month because I’ll be going on a cruise. I was meant to take this relaxing, lay-back Caribbean vacation with my best friend from law school in February but we canceled when omicron was getting bad; so, we had a cruise credit we had to use this year - and we planned one that fit nicely along my journey.

But first, I’ll be in Galway, Dublin, and Copenhagen. Then, on the cruise, we sail to Berlin, Riga, Helsinki, Visby, Talinn, and Stockholm. After that, I need to make my way toward the Balkans before my visa runs out, so I’ll just pass through some of the major stops: back to Berlin, then Prague, Krakow, Vienna, and Budapest. (If you’re counting, it’s a pretty rapid-fire journey through 11 countries.)

If you think anyone else would enjoy these summaries, have them sign up for the mailing list here. I’m not going to include pictures in this summary. If you want to see pictures, click through to any of the city summaries, and follow our Instagram.

LIFE ON the ROAD continues to be A LEARNING PROCESS

Increasingly, I’m coming to see that at no point will I get used to or adjust to life on the road in a full sense. I’m continuing to heal, grow, and learn about myself as I go; lessons I learn one month may just be stepping stones to life’s next lesson, or become irrelevant as I grow and change. Life is impermanent, and I need to be constantly willing to stay present and adapt - not overly attached to anything that I think I know about travel or life. Nonetheless, here are some thoughts and lessons I’ve been having throughout month three:

• For budget purposes, I pre-planned my first four months through Europe. Hostels were selling out and getting pricey if booked just in time - so I just went ahead and planned everything. I made a few mistakes in doing that - primarily in overbooking 2 night stays. Of my last 18 cities, 14 have been 2 night stays. Especially when sick, that’s extremely aggressive. I’ve learned on this trip that 2 days is enough to see a smaller city in full - but that too many back-to-back 2 day stays is tiring. I barely settle in before I pack and move again - and it leaves very little wiggle room for rest. Plus, it makes laundry difficult because hang drying isn’t consistently complete within 24 hours.

• I’ve come to see how I spend my money as my most revealing element of character. For many of us, what businesses and people we decide to support is our greatest form of exercising power; it shows what really matters to us, and how protective or attached we are to our illusion of power and security (money). Perhaps it’s because I only give myself about $25 a day to spend, but it’s made me so much more conscious of who I choose to invest in - whether it’s a big business or a small business, whether the business shares my values, whether I’m investing in someone who already has power or someone marginalized, or whether I’m investing in myself in the form of convenience or luxury. I’ve believed for a long time now that actions are what defines a person - not intention, essence, or stated values - but my day-to-day spending was not something I consistently held myself to account for. I hope that personal accountability on values-driven spending is a muscle I continue to grow during this trip.

• Along the same vein, I’m increasingly seeing the power of consumer demand. I’m a card-toting liberal, bordering on socialist, or occasionally anarchist. But I’ve had a longstanding frustration with American liberals refusing to engage in direct activism - to make hard day-to-day choices that make incremental progress toward their goals. While an American liberal will tell you every vote counts, when asked why they eat meat or don’t compost, they’ll deflect and say that climate change is the responsibility of corporations. When choices get hard, American liberals tend to opt for performative virtual signaling, not true values coherence. But more and more, I see the wild power of shifting consumer demand. I saw it during the pandemic, when plummeting and skyrocketing demand forced rapid changes from corporations. I saw it throughout the UK in the vegan options - where big businesses, including American businesses like McDonalds, KFC, and even Krispy Kreme’s, had begun offering vegan options to meet consumer demand. It’s nihilistic and defeatist to not accept that the way we spend our money has power; often, it’s the most potent form of power we can wield. Honestly, fuck voting. It’s far more important to spend your money in a values-aligned way.

• I’ve been amazed how the things I came to expect and took for granted in the US life have begun to fade - like a private room, air conditioning, consistently having a place to rest, a locked place for my valuables, a pantry with cooking supplies, a place to sit in quiet . . . As I’ve stripped back these comforts, I’ve come to see how none of them were essentials, and how I lived without genuine gratitude for any of them. Nowadays, when something kind of sucks about a hostel - an uncomfortable bed, not having a locker, having too few bathrooms - I tend to just sigh and think “that seems to be the case.” My level of attachment to the comforts that were has dropped dramatically.

• At the same time, stripping back my life has made much clearer what matters and gives my life meaning. I keep a running list of things I want to invest in when I get home, things like: spirituality, generosity in my community and volunteering, spending time in nature and feeling attached to my sources of nourishment, and fostering creative energy. I have found most of what gives me a sense of joy, purpose, and meaning in life is free or low cost - and that I’ve greatly underinvested in them in my day to day life.

• I read this month from Pema Chodron that over-excitement is a near enemy of joy. This has been transformative to me. It’s easy to get attached to the high of a good meal, a wild night out, the energetic rush of a party, of sex, or of dessert. Those are all over excitement - a flood of good chemicals that leaves us feeling great. But we feel great for only a short period - they are ephemeral pleasures - and the net result is often for us to cling to them, yearn for more, and fall into addictive patterns. This lesson has allowed me to be more mindful of when I’m entering overexcitement, and to try to savor the experience without attaching to it. At the same time, it’s helped to me to better delineate experiences of joy - things like late night authentic conversations, watching leaves blow in the wind, or savoring a view at the top of a hike. I can see more clearly that American culture greatly overvalues overexcitement, and invests very little in joy.

• I also learned that I’m particularly susceptible to overexcitement when I’m feeling Ill or uneasy. A burst in the good chemicals does a really good job of distracting from dis-ease, and I found in moments of high excitement I was mistaking them with a form of enlightenment or presence. But when I paused and looked at what I was really doing, I’d find myself disassociated. I’d be riding the wave of good chemicals to ignore the distress playing out in my body. I’d find myself 40 minutes into a walk with pop music on and realize I’d hardly been paying attention. Near enemy states can be hard to spot, especially when they feel rewarding.

• It’s been helpful to have done so much somatic work with myself, because this month I needed to keep returning to the feeling of anxiety in my chest, or hopelessness in my stomach, or shame in my neck. I needed to keep checking in to see if I was being attentive to my needs, because when I am those sensations soften. It was a helpful guidepost to check if I was numbing, avoiding, or disassociating - because that physical discomfort would be strong no matter how well I was distracting myself.

• This month, I’ve had to play with grace and equanimity quite a bit with what’s going on in my body. I’ve found the process of radical acceptance and accountability feels different for me when it’s about what’s going on in me than with the outside world - because it naturally draws in heavy emotions. I have greater reluctance to fully embrace myself, stronger attachments to my familiar ways of being than to the external world, and more forceful attempts to diminish or blow out of proportion things about myself. In the moments I’ve successfully found equanimity with my internal discomfort, I’ve found myself embracing non-self and inner parts work. I’ve found myself an observer to all the pieces going on in me, thinking of my inner workings as just another object to creatively explore. I find myself remembering that I’m impermanent.

• I learned the hard way to not take too much cash out because you get a better exchange rate by credit card. I took our way too many pounds, and it ended up contributing to me going over budget in the UK.

• My friends know that one of my pet peeves is paper receipts. I’ve been so happy that the standard procedure throughout Europe seems to be to ask if you want one, so I’ve very rarely found myself receiving a paper receipt on my trip. I hope that the US one day picks up this habit.

• I‘ve become more conscious of my liquid and caffeine intake to make it less likely I get caught needing to go to the bathroom somewhere. In the States, I tend to over-hydrate; I’m always drinking water or coffee. What I’ve found is that I like past me more if I try to hydrate just enough.

• Increasingly, I’ve found myself executing Tara Brach’s radical acceptance pause into my life. It’s a practice to notice dis-ease as it arises, then to stop, greet it, and ask what’s going on in your body and what you need. I’ve found that even as I’ve gained a toolkit to tackle hard sensations, I can be avoidant. I’ll note that something is happening and hope it’ll fade on its own. It usually doesn’t, and I often lose hours of mindful presence in putting off the work. I’ve really come to start embracing the pause, to deal with my discomfort as it arises, because I’ve come to feel like I waste too many precious moments avoiding doing it and becoming non-present.

• Especially when sick, I was forced to confront my tendency to force myself to do things. I would find myself compelled to overcompensate for my fatigue - insist I hit a step goal, or that I see one more site. Inevitably this would backfire, and I’d spend hours grumpily doing something for little satisfaction. I know this old pattern well - it’s shame driven; it comes from feeling worthless if I’m not of service, not working, not producing. Even with my work on shame and toolkits for it, I still struggle to embrace rest, to feel that rest is something I deserve and need, and to allow myself it. I find, especially when fatigued, I need to offer myself a lot of compassion to take a break; if I don’t, it’ll end up backfiring in overexerting myself followed by some kind of binge - be it too much laziness, too much food, or too much alcohol. I know I’m in no way alone on that struggle.

• As I began to non-attach to old patterns of melodrama, I found myself going through waves of immense grief. I’ve come to believe that letting grief course through you is transformative, that if you don’t let it fully envelop you, you can’t really reach non-attachment to the things you cling to, be they people, fantasies, habits, or plans. I think it’s why I cry almost every time I meditate or pray - I’m in a years long journey of letting go of things. I think too often people push themselves to move on without letting their grief course through them - and I wonder what effects that has. My friend I stayed with in the Cotswolds had a moving on closure ceremony with her husband for their first marriages before their own wedding. She said it was healing, and it seemed like such a beautiful thing to gift herself. I had something similar in my not-a-wedding this February; in large part, I was letting go of the dreams and ideas that I’d be happily married at this stage of my life.

• Most of my greatest moments of joy have been moments of mindful admiration. I’ll just be looking at something - maybe ducks, or a castle floor, or a tree - and reflecting on all the things that had to happen for it to exist, how it’s a function of everything that has come before it and contributes to everything that comes after, and find myself truly awed by the beauty of it all. It’s these moments I find myself able to tap into a deep, sincere well of gratitude for existence.

• I was excited this month because my most viral post is now me raving about Edinburgh. I had a sadness at the beginning of the month about the viral nature of negative content. I found myself soothed to see that there’s still room for positive content to do so well.

• I mentioned in the last month update I was trending toward returning to sobriety but waiting for it to come from a part of inner wisdom. I think the moment came early this month when, for a few reasons, I woke up just utterly repulsed by my attachment to alcohol. I have drank some since, a few times to excess, but I’ve tried to do it mindfully to really come to an understanding of how it affects me, why I’m doing it, and why I have a clinging attachment. It’s been a form of a mindful, conscious goodbye. My current plan is to let my cruise next month be my last hoorah with alcohol, and to then wish it farewell - as long as it still comes from a sincere place of wisdom within me.

• I find myself regularly reflecting on the nature and consequences of colonialism - not just of the present era but of empires past. It’s a remarkable execution of hubris that rulers come to find themselves entitled to take over existing societies, to destroy them, to loot them, to appropriate them, to force them to forget their own ways and their own histories. It’s a horribly callous way of being - a great form of dehumanization - yet one that crops up over and over again throughout history. It pops up from time to time in my mind, especially in museums, what it says about humans as a species. What is the seed within us that leads to this kind of cruelty, and why and how is it so consistently nourished. I don’t know if I have reached any clear thinking, but I’ve found myself doing a lot of tonglen for the suffering this aspect of human society seems to predictably create.

• I do think this reflecting on the great capacity for harm among humans has come to be reflected in my budding spirituality - some kind of nascent, developing belief that part of our purpose in life is to foster the inherent good in ourselves, and to come to see ourselves as a small part of the bigger picture. I pray quite often now, and it’s usually a form of me surrendering control - of accepting whatever hand is being dealt to me, and asking for the grace, patience, and compassion to learn whatever lesson I’m meant to from it. To some extent, I’m starting to believe that all things have a purpose - including harm - and that the best path to reducing suffering is to lean fully into it and learn whatever wisdom is held there.

Each day is a learning process, and this kind of travel would be impossible without an open, inquisitive mind. I’m so deeply grateful that I’ve given myself this experience. It’s cracking open pieces of me I had no idea were there - and greatly sped up my personal growth work. I know traveling like this for the rest of my life would be an avoidant lifestyle for me because I do feel called to a larger purpose - to some career of service - and retiring young and traveling forever would avoid that. But - I needed this journey to get there. I’m so glad I listened to my intuition and just did this.

MY BUDGET IS HOLDING UP

If you’re wondering how much this is costing me - so far, for 93 days in Europe, I’ve spent $7,416. I wrote about my budget here and this spend is tracking fairly close to what I budgeted - though I’m officially about 5% ($320) over budget. The UK and Ireland were generally expensive countries, and while I was sick I struggled to not let myself splurge from time to time on material comforts. To be fair, my overspend is not far outside my margin for error because I did set aside about 4% more money than required for my budget.

I haven’t decided how to handle the upcoming cruise yet because it’s already been paid for - and I also have money set aside for those days within my budget; I will likely treat those days as if they have the budget of a cheaper country - which allows for some money to explore the cities while also partially reigning back in my overspend because I’m saving of transit and lodging. Beyond that, I’ll either try to bring myself back to budget in the cheaper countries, or I always have the option of shifting my balance of expensive countries to cheap countries (currently planned at 6 months expensive, 10 months cheap) to balance the budget over the long run. I may also choose to shift some of my more expensive transit costs (like shorter but out of budget flights) into the fixed expense pool, which was designed to absorb the pricier pieces of transportation.

At the moment, I’m not too worried as it’s just a few hundred dollars (and just $80 outside of my margin for error), and I have plenty of time to deal with it. Also, my literal worst case for this level of overspend is that I cut my trip two days short.

If this is your first update, my day-to-day budget in the Europe Schengen Region (plus the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Japan) is $65, approximately $15 for transit, $25 for a hostel, and $25 (or the balance of the $65) for everything else. In the UK, it was often a challenge to keep my transit and lodging expenses below $40 - though usually I could keep it below $50; when that budget gets tight, an overnight bus greatly relieves it by combining the two. This month, I benefited greatly from staying with my friend - who refused to let me pay for anything, and whose husband cooked amazing meals each night.

I also have another $10 a day budgeted toward fixed costs - like big flights, SIM cards, insurance, and other supplies. I haven’t been here enough days yet for my flight to Lisbon to get within that cost-per-day, but it should get there next month. Right now, my fixed costs per day are about $11.40 (largely my $600 flight only spread across 92 days so far).

I continue to get better about prioritizing my discretionary spend budget. Especially this month, as I’ve been sick and moody, I’ve been trying to pay attention to what my emotional drivers are for careless spending - and to really try to lean in and feel the disconnect when I’ve spent my money in a way that isn’t value-aligned. It’s helped me to begin to really integrate how I spend my money with who I am and what I value. I continue find living to this budget to be one of the best exercises I’ve ever done in what truly matters to me - and it continues to help my gratitude practice flourish.

MY PACKING LIST IS ALSO HOLDING UP . . . ISH

At the beginning of this trip, I published my packing list and wrote about why I included everything; in my month one summary, I gave a pretty detailed breakdown about what I missed, what seems like it was unnecessary, and what has been surprisingly helpful. I continue to track what I use every day so I know what has been used most and what hasn’t been used at all. The trends I noticed after month one haven’t changed at all - and the items I was thinking of mailing home, I’m still thinking of mailing home. I think it’s too early to deem if anything was a true mistake to bring because I haven’t been to enough parts of the world or enough climates yet to let some things get use. I probably will do my big mail back around month 9.

One thing that has changed, though, is that I’m no longer frustrated with feeling slightly overpacked. I’ve gotten so used to packing my suitcase and dragging it at its current weight that I don’t think about it much anymore.

KNOW ANYONE ELSE WHO WOULD LIKE THIS?

I’m going to try to write up one of these summaries every month - though I’ll definitely keep working on my format as I go (so please give me feedback if there’re things you want to hear more or less about). If you think anyone else would enjoy these summaries, have them sign up for the mailing list with the submission box below.