Further Travel Adjustments
Jan. 16th, 2022 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutOver the years, I’ve made a variety of adjustments to how I travel. I _like_ traveling with other people. I _like_ visiting other people as part of travels. Obviously, the more people that are involved in a (often stressful) activity, the more drama there often is. I get that. Honestly, I’m mostly okay with that. (If I were not mostly okay with that, I would have stopped with all of this a decade ago.)
On the other hand, I do try to pay attention to negative patterns. It became pretty clear to me several years back that I was traveling with someone who was at increasing risk of needing to be in a hospital while we were traveling. I figured I didn’t want to wind up stuck in … Wyoming or something, while that person got better in that distant-from-everyone’s-home hospital. So. No more traveling with that person to places that I don’t live, they don’t live, and none of their other close family live. Simple change.
Over the last couple years, however, a lot of people have canceled a lot of travel, and a lot of those cancelations happened pretty late. I want to be clear: absolutely zero of the cancelations have involved anyone actually being sick. That would be different. All of the cancelations involved concerns about maybe getting sick, or not wanting to have to quarantine after travel, etc. I have found this very frustrating. In one case, I had _expected_ the cancelation, and delayed the plane ticket purchase for a really, really long time because of that expectation. I carefully talked through the quarantine post travel issues with a view to where the other person lived and worked and they were very committed verbally to traveling anyway. Shortly after I bought the plane tickets — days, not weeks — they canceled, and the reason given was the expected job requirement to quarantine post travel. Which we _had already talked through_. I had _expected_ them to cancel. They went out of their way to reassure me and say, yes, please buy planet tickets. Like a fool, I did.
I’m quite pleased the the big blowout trip in December finally used up the American Airlines credit from that.
I’m _also_ pleased that the same trip also used up the non-refundable deposit (yes, even covid rules don’t get you your concierge stateroom deposit back on Disney, and I rescheduled rather than pay the rest of the fare and then get it all back when the original December 2020 trip got canceled — I was scared it wouldn’t get canceled, and I knew I didn’t want to go in December 2020).
But I am now in a position where I have two remaining trips planned (February and April), and once those are done, I have Zero Commitments. And I have to say, I am sort of _liking_ the Zero Commitments, and I am seriously thinking about what kind of trips I do and do not want to do in the future.
One of the factors involved is the New Variant of Concern problem. For example, the person at high risk of landing in a hospital while traveling with me was happy to travel north to NJ _while someone in the house she’d be staying at isolated in the basement_, and yet she was unwilling to go through with her plan to join us at UO. Which is fine, and I got the deposit back, but recently she, like, basically, everyone else, has come down with Something (It Is, After All, Winter), and is trying to justify continuing to go about her business as planned (various appointments and then later in the week a birthday party). And I’m sitting here going, you have got to be fucking kidding me. I _get_ that this is just denial and magical thinking and whatever, but at the same time, I do not need _that_ level of unpredictability in my travel plans. So, I will no longer be including her in our travel plans, altho of course should she appear on our doorstop she will be welcome (assuming we are at home) and in the event that we have time to show up on her doorstep (which we would never do without telling her ahead of time), that would also be delightful as always. But there will be no more hotel rooms planned for her that are canceled if she cancels. If she fits into a family suite, great. I think it’s fair to say that this level of erratic can be laid directly at the feet of New Variant of Concern: early on, everyone is all freaked out; a few weeks later, when it is No Big Thing, everyone is as careless and slobby in terms of passing germs along as always.
Another factor, however, comes under the heading of Random Drama. Random Drama can be really great — lots of great stories, for sure, but also Random Drama is how we learn about ourselves and each other, and can ultimately really improve the resilience of a relationship. But you know, I am Tired, and I’m not sure I have it in me to do this anymore while touring theme parks. So I am thinking that may be a factor going forward. I’ll be looking closely at whether theme parks are an appropriate shared vacation, or maybe it would be better to just go someplace quiet together in a nice house and enjoy the view or whatever. I’m old. We’re all getting old. It’s time to prioritize rest over excitement.
Finally, I hate to say it, but I’m really starting to respect the potential for border closure, and the potential for a return home to be delayed by the difficulties of accessing testing and/or waiting long enough to recover so that one can return home. Omicron has turned out to be really not too concerning, however, anyone who was struggling to get home from a much-anticipated trip to South Africa probably has some Feelings about that. And certainly, as Omicron proved to be intensely transmissible, accessing testing in a timely fashion WRT one’s flight turned out to be a chore. On the one hand, we don’t have to worry about losing our jobs; on the other hand, the kids are in jr hi and hi school, and we are expected to at least pretend that we take this part of their education seriously.
I obviously haven’t figured out what I really want to do (if I had, I’d probably already have put in my to-do list the date when I can start booking it, if I hadn’t booked it already). But maybe identifying the things that I Don’t Want will help bring some clarity.
On the other hand, I do try to pay attention to negative patterns. It became pretty clear to me several years back that I was traveling with someone who was at increasing risk of needing to be in a hospital while we were traveling. I figured I didn’t want to wind up stuck in … Wyoming or something, while that person got better in that distant-from-everyone’s-home hospital. So. No more traveling with that person to places that I don’t live, they don’t live, and none of their other close family live. Simple change.
Over the last couple years, however, a lot of people have canceled a lot of travel, and a lot of those cancelations happened pretty late. I want to be clear: absolutely zero of the cancelations have involved anyone actually being sick. That would be different. All of the cancelations involved concerns about maybe getting sick, or not wanting to have to quarantine after travel, etc. I have found this very frustrating. In one case, I had _expected_ the cancelation, and delayed the plane ticket purchase for a really, really long time because of that expectation. I carefully talked through the quarantine post travel issues with a view to where the other person lived and worked and they were very committed verbally to traveling anyway. Shortly after I bought the plane tickets — days, not weeks — they canceled, and the reason given was the expected job requirement to quarantine post travel. Which we _had already talked through_. I had _expected_ them to cancel. They went out of their way to reassure me and say, yes, please buy planet tickets. Like a fool, I did.
I’m quite pleased the the big blowout trip in December finally used up the American Airlines credit from that.
I’m _also_ pleased that the same trip also used up the non-refundable deposit (yes, even covid rules don’t get you your concierge stateroom deposit back on Disney, and I rescheduled rather than pay the rest of the fare and then get it all back when the original December 2020 trip got canceled — I was scared it wouldn’t get canceled, and I knew I didn’t want to go in December 2020).
But I am now in a position where I have two remaining trips planned (February and April), and once those are done, I have Zero Commitments. And I have to say, I am sort of _liking_ the Zero Commitments, and I am seriously thinking about what kind of trips I do and do not want to do in the future.
One of the factors involved is the New Variant of Concern problem. For example, the person at high risk of landing in a hospital while traveling with me was happy to travel north to NJ _while someone in the house she’d be staying at isolated in the basement_, and yet she was unwilling to go through with her plan to join us at UO. Which is fine, and I got the deposit back, but recently she, like, basically, everyone else, has come down with Something (It Is, After All, Winter), and is trying to justify continuing to go about her business as planned (various appointments and then later in the week a birthday party). And I’m sitting here going, you have got to be fucking kidding me. I _get_ that this is just denial and magical thinking and whatever, but at the same time, I do not need _that_ level of unpredictability in my travel plans. So, I will no longer be including her in our travel plans, altho of course should she appear on our doorstop she will be welcome (assuming we are at home) and in the event that we have time to show up on her doorstep (which we would never do without telling her ahead of time), that would also be delightful as always. But there will be no more hotel rooms planned for her that are canceled if she cancels. If she fits into a family suite, great. I think it’s fair to say that this level of erratic can be laid directly at the feet of New Variant of Concern: early on, everyone is all freaked out; a few weeks later, when it is No Big Thing, everyone is as careless and slobby in terms of passing germs along as always.
Another factor, however, comes under the heading of Random Drama. Random Drama can be really great — lots of great stories, for sure, but also Random Drama is how we learn about ourselves and each other, and can ultimately really improve the resilience of a relationship. But you know, I am Tired, and I’m not sure I have it in me to do this anymore while touring theme parks. So I am thinking that may be a factor going forward. I’ll be looking closely at whether theme parks are an appropriate shared vacation, or maybe it would be better to just go someplace quiet together in a nice house and enjoy the view or whatever. I’m old. We’re all getting old. It’s time to prioritize rest over excitement.
Finally, I hate to say it, but I’m really starting to respect the potential for border closure, and the potential for a return home to be delayed by the difficulties of accessing testing and/or waiting long enough to recover so that one can return home. Omicron has turned out to be really not too concerning, however, anyone who was struggling to get home from a much-anticipated trip to South Africa probably has some Feelings about that. And certainly, as Omicron proved to be intensely transmissible, accessing testing in a timely fashion WRT one’s flight turned out to be a chore. On the one hand, we don’t have to worry about losing our jobs; on the other hand, the kids are in jr hi and hi school, and we are expected to at least pretend that we take this part of their education seriously.
I obviously haven’t figured out what I really want to do (if I had, I’d probably already have put in my to-do list the date when I can start booking it, if I hadn’t booked it already). But maybe identifying the things that I Don’t Want will help bring some clarity.