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As always, as soon as I return from a trip, I try to transition as much that I learned from the most recent trip to future trips. I don’t know how well I succeed.
This time, I am trying a new strategy that I tried almost by accident on the last trip: writing a detailed, step by step narrative for other people traveling with us. This helps me identify areas that I would normally expect myself or a fellow traveler to figure things out while there, but which other fellow travelers will be anxious about unless it is nailed down ahead of time.
To be completely clear, they won’t actually engage in the planning necessary to nail down these details. But if I don’t they will ask me questions usually starting the night before, but definitely while in process, and that will interfere with my ability to deal with the same issue in the moment (or whatever it is that I am doing). Even less productively, they will often repetitively ask me about things I have already planned and told them about, rather than asking about the things that are actually weighing on them. I’m not sure exactly what is going on here, but R. and I have been noticing more and more that the kids tend to start sprouting all kinds of random demands and questions at crucial moments in navigation / transition, that as soon as you get through the crucial moment, they literally don’t remember and/or don’t give a fuck about. We suspect these are related phenomenon, and driven by anxiety. I think the process is sort of like this: “How am I going to get from my hotel room to the resort bus stop? When will I need to leave the hotel room to get to the restaurant at the same resort on time? What is the route from the hotel room to the hotel restaurant?” “Oh, you know, that’s a super trivial question, I am embarrassed to ask that question once I see it in writing in email. I should replace it with a Non Trivial Question, and maybe they will give me magically the trivial information I want along with it. When is the flight again?” “Oh, there is the flight information. How am I going top get...” etc. Lather, rinse, repeat. From my perspective, it is super easy while in the hotel room to look at the little map _they always give you_ to figure out the route to the restaurant or bus stop or whatever. If you have already left the hotel room, you can find an employee to answer that question, or wander around until you see a helpful sign or whatever. Sure, it is possible to find a version of that map online and nail it down ahead of time, but why? But if it is going to be a point of anxiety that leads to pointless unrelated questions, I should probably just explain it all.
Obviously, preplanning has costs for me, but it moves those costs up earlier in when I have more time to deal with them. I was going to be dealing with it eventually for me, and, more often than not, for the others as well.
It turns out it is also helpful to tell other people ahead of time when one group will be doing one thing and another group will be doing something else. In the moment, sometimes one group will decide, hey, I want to be in the other group, and in the moment, that is difficult or impossible to make happen, or it is zero sum and moving people around screws someone out of something that they were looking forward to doing. By telling people about this up front and making sure there is buy-in, I hope to avoid some of this.
But at the moment, right now I’m just doing things like reservation modification (moving trip dates slightly to reflect actual rather than expected flight dates / times) and creation (arranging ground transportation).
I also had a nice walk with M., altho it is still cold and windy.
ETA: And, date night! R. and I went to the bar at Woods Hill Table. I was relatively circumspect and got the salmon poke and some bread and olive oil, along with my drinks (I had the Tigerlily, and, inevitably, a Maple Manhattan). Entertaining convos: I talked to R. about some future trip planning. A young woman was speaking to a mentor about her experiences working overseas. And someone came in and chatted with us — his power was out in Carlisle.
This time, I am trying a new strategy that I tried almost by accident on the last trip: writing a detailed, step by step narrative for other people traveling with us. This helps me identify areas that I would normally expect myself or a fellow traveler to figure things out while there, but which other fellow travelers will be anxious about unless it is nailed down ahead of time.
To be completely clear, they won’t actually engage in the planning necessary to nail down these details. But if I don’t they will ask me questions usually starting the night before, but definitely while in process, and that will interfere with my ability to deal with the same issue in the moment (or whatever it is that I am doing). Even less productively, they will often repetitively ask me about things I have already planned and told them about, rather than asking about the things that are actually weighing on them. I’m not sure exactly what is going on here, but R. and I have been noticing more and more that the kids tend to start sprouting all kinds of random demands and questions at crucial moments in navigation / transition, that as soon as you get through the crucial moment, they literally don’t remember and/or don’t give a fuck about. We suspect these are related phenomenon, and driven by anxiety. I think the process is sort of like this: “How am I going to get from my hotel room to the resort bus stop? When will I need to leave the hotel room to get to the restaurant at the same resort on time? What is the route from the hotel room to the hotel restaurant?” “Oh, you know, that’s a super trivial question, I am embarrassed to ask that question once I see it in writing in email. I should replace it with a Non Trivial Question, and maybe they will give me magically the trivial information I want along with it. When is the flight again?” “Oh, there is the flight information. How am I going top get...” etc. Lather, rinse, repeat. From my perspective, it is super easy while in the hotel room to look at the little map _they always give you_ to figure out the route to the restaurant or bus stop or whatever. If you have already left the hotel room, you can find an employee to answer that question, or wander around until you see a helpful sign or whatever. Sure, it is possible to find a version of that map online and nail it down ahead of time, but why? But if it is going to be a point of anxiety that leads to pointless unrelated questions, I should probably just explain it all.
Obviously, preplanning has costs for me, but it moves those costs up earlier in when I have more time to deal with them. I was going to be dealing with it eventually for me, and, more often than not, for the others as well.
It turns out it is also helpful to tell other people ahead of time when one group will be doing one thing and another group will be doing something else. In the moment, sometimes one group will decide, hey, I want to be in the other group, and in the moment, that is difficult or impossible to make happen, or it is zero sum and moving people around screws someone out of something that they were looking forward to doing. By telling people about this up front and making sure there is buy-in, I hope to avoid some of this.
But at the moment, right now I’m just doing things like reservation modification (moving trip dates slightly to reflect actual rather than expected flight dates / times) and creation (arranging ground transportation).
I also had a nice walk with M., altho it is still cold and windy.
ETA: And, date night! R. and I went to the bar at Woods Hill Table. I was relatively circumspect and got the salmon poke and some bread and olive oil, along with my drinks (I had the Tigerlily, and, inevitably, a Maple Manhattan). Entertaining convos: I talked to R. about some future trip planning. A young woman was speaking to a mentor about her experiences working overseas. And someone came in and chatted with us — his power was out in Carlisle.
