So big surprise, I haven’t been able to write a blog post every day. Maybe you’ve noticed, maybe you haven’t. It doesn’t really matter.

It’s been a big lesson for me this year that some things are just out of my control. That as long as I keep making an effort to simply do my best with what I’ve got and the time I have, then I feel just as fulfilled with what I’ve already done and less inclined to give up on the things I want to do.

On Thursday, we leave for Iceland.

This trip is big on many levels, but I would say the number one thing that makes this an important trip is that I’ve never left the country before. I’ve never even been on a plane.

It’s kind of embarrassing for me to admit, as this lack of experience makes me feel less like an adult the older I get. I’ve had a hard time watching my friends travel the world while I worked on my career.

I very enviously watched as one friend taught English in Japan, another in Korea, and a handful of others going abroad for post-secondary or just satiating their need for wanderlust on what seemed like a whim.

I have a good friend who lived and taught in the Yukon and has basically traveled the world and now she lives with her husband and new baby in frickin’ Norway. Upon her return home last month with both, we were all joking about how large her sweet baby boy is in comparison to her own teeny frame. Her husband looked at me with a huge smile, pointed enthusiastically to the baby and offered me one word: “Viking!”

Both of my closest friends got to rip their way through South-East Asia hand-in-hand. I’ll never get the experience of being in my early 20s with them, binge drinking on beaches, partaking in general tomfoolery, meeting cool people and barely surviving the balmy heat by napping all day or enjoying a $10 massage.

I’ve been very, very jealous of all of this, feeling less worldly and immature because my decisions in my adult life up until now haven’t led me to all corners of the planet.

But here’s the thing I kept having to remind myself. I worked on my career. Some of the people my age haven’t acquired skills I have because they chose to spend their time on other things. I know what I’m capable of, and I know I can teach myself to do pretty much anything if I need to.

This thinking never used to help me when I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere because I wasn’t physically doing so.

Here’s where it came full circle for me – I’ll re-state:

Some things are just out of my control. As long as I keep making an effort to simply do my best with what I’ve got and the time I have, then I feel just as fulfilled and less inclined to give up on things I want to do. 

And now, on Thursday, I get to start doing the stuff I want to do. Working through the jealousy and the wanderlust got me here with a plane ticket and a trip I’ve already fully paid for without going into debt.

I’ll be blogging it, but probably not every day.

And I’m so grateful and excited.