Travel Support Thursday

Welcome back to travel support Thursday the show where we answer all of your travel questions to help you travel more better

Every single Thursday. Yes, please help us with this tagline someone out there who's good at taglines for things

Just give us a one-liner to describe this show. What do you know?

Just like the best one you can think of because we can't think

I know I know well. Yeah, that's it. But like, you know, how do we?

How do we tell a new person?

What's all in the show because so far we've talked about like life choices we talked about our personal finances

We talked about travel hacks. We talked about points. We it's just kind of all maybe maybe the title is

travel adjacent

Travel approximate

Things all right today on travel support Thursday

We're answering all of your questions about returning to a place

We've been already been before like that idea of chasing nostalgia for us how we spend

24-7 together and talk about what it feels like to come home from around the world trip

Yeah, and I just want to say right away

That all of the comments that we got from last week's episode which was kind of talking about like this idea of like

Seizing the day is too cheesy of a way to say it

But like making sure that you get out of life what you want and not really taking the time that we have here for granted

We talked about that for like way too long last week. I got way too emotional

Just I don't know the Midwestern dude in me is like any emotion is too much emotion

So there I must have none, but we appreciate the overwhelming

Like response and sentiment that came in response to that

Yeah, it just makes me so like happy and maybe proud is the right word just to see

How thoughtful and just how kind and just how smart everybody out there is you know

Like there's so many like deep thoughts and it started all these awesome conversations between us as well as in the comments

It says so much about the type of people you all are and just the type of things you care about and just how like deep thinkers and

Just it makes me so happy to see this type of discussion

There's more to life than just like the highlight reel of travel

There's so many aspects of travel that obviously we appreciate and we love and

We love all the beauty and the like newness that comes with travel

But obviously there's so many layers that we love to unpack with you

Yeah, and then also the like incredible stories of like this like

71 year old lady out there with like two knee replacements who is about to go on a solo trip to Europe

And I like hear that I'm like, yes

And then we heard from some of you who talked about the struggles of traveling when you are

differently abled and and that we need to hear these voices and so we really really appreciate you amplifying them and sharing them

Yeah, speaking of that after talking about that in the last episode

I mean obviously all the great comments around that topic were just incredible

But we just kept digging into it because we had our experience of what places we thought were really like

Accessible in the most tangible way it turns out there was this whole survey done. Yep to find out the most

Accessible places in the world. Yeah for people who are differently abled and it just makes me so happy to see this in the first place

The survey surveyed lots and lots of people from several big countries

So mostly from the US the UK, Australia, I think Japan and China

So definitely not like all-encompassing but from a lot of really big countries and they surveyed respondents to ask

About what they felt like were the most accessible countries or cities to visit and and why so let's just get to the list and they're not like

Listed in particular order, but for example in Asia

Singapore was listed as a city. Oh, I didn't even think of that, but yes Shanghai

Tokyo Japan, which we talked about as well in the US

This was I don't know why I take this for granted, but in the US there are several

There are a few cities that came up, Las Vegas. What yeah, they talked a lot about how I don't even think of that as like a travel

destination

I mean, I know it is of course, but like but they talked about how all the hotel rooms almost all the hotels on the strip are

Accessible and and the streets are accessible the pave they go into detail to they talk about how the pavement

Effects the way people can travel New York came up on there as well and and Orlando

Almost always like yeah, a lot of these cities had Disney parks, which is kind of cool

I'm New York was an interesting one for me because in my head. I think of like a lot of

Walking, you know, and you have to be fast-paced, but actually one of the big things that this the survey

Talked about was how many people

Appreciated how many people with disabilities appreciated the level of resources and information that the city's provided about their accessibility

Oh, yeah, so even though places like even though New York's Metro isn't always accessible like their entrance and their exits are always

Accessible they talked about how New York

New York did a really good job about providing resources on the places that were accessible to people

Yeah, because I suppose that if I were disabled, I wouldn't just want to like

Pick a destination and book flights without even knowing if I could do anything once I got there

I could even get around right like I'd want to know in advance in the same way that like we want to know if there's

Available hotels before we go and fly to a place like I'd want to know if I could even get around to the things that I wanted to do

Yeah, I would say overwhelmingly after last week's conversation the thing that we heard from a lot of you, too

is just there's a lot of

Maybe for some of you there's some anxiety, but overwhelming it felt like there was a lot of

Need for you know, just advanced planning or navigation. It takes a little bit extra time

It takes a little bit extra work, but

Travel can be done when you when you prepare a little bit more and we did go back and watch

Cory Lee's travels and wow like I think one of his most popular videos, which I was super invested in and really interested in was just

literally his experience

Boarding a plane right just how complicated the whole thing is and how many people are involved

How many times how many and I could see and this is like a really nerdy random thing

But you know YouTube when a videos watched a lot

You can see where it like peaks many where people replay things and watch things and the peak moments where I think in my head

Maybe people are watching this to see

Specifically when he gets out of the wheelchair and when he gets transferred to the to the actual seat

All right, and I I can imagine like that part those parts made sense to me because I think we

Watch YouTube videos

To try and understand for our own selves like prepare for certain experiences like I used to watch hiking videos just people

hiking walking on a hike

Because I used to solo hike a lot and I wanted to know where there any places that I would feel uncomfortable

Were there any places that I need to be cautious of and that to me

I think we took for granted the whole boarding process

Yeah, it was uplifting to find this survey because we did see that a lot of cities and countries are of course passing laws to make places more

Accessible but there's a lot to be done in Europe the few cities that came up or Amsterdam Paris came up and as well as London

Finally that made the list Sydney, Australia. We were just there. Yeah, I mean, this was a cool

We'll share this survey. I thought it was super fascinating to read through

Thank you so much for asking that question last week

It let us down this huge rabbit hole of thinking about it and of thinking about travel from an entirely different perspective

Yeah, so for this week's episode we have a lot of great questions as well

So we're gonna get to the first one which comes from outdoor Matt 2177 who asks few very thoughtful questions

But one of them that like really really hit home for us

So Matt says I've traveled to 11 countries

But find myself drawn back to some of the special places I've been like Angkor Wat Cambodia for instance

Do I keep going to new places or do I return and in relation to that question?

If I return to a place I've been will it be as good or maybe better being I have some familiarity

Basically, the question is does traveling back to a place have benefits?

Yeah

Yes, I mean if you watch our channel

Yeah, you know that we have we love going back to places we've been before and I think for you specifically you've

Done this kind of style of travel four different times

Yeah, like I think the like the meat of this question is about

Nostalgia in a lot of ways for me in that like when when you travel to a place for me. This is Langkawi, Malaysia

It's such like a specific destination. It's not easy to get to but I had such

Just an incredible time

Well, I was there that I always look back at Langkawi as this this like magical unicorn of a destination

I mean the place is incredible. Don't get me wrong

But most of that like feeling that want to go back is trying to recreate

Those feelings that I had the first time that I went there

Which was just like going on his motorbike for the first time and having that level of freedom and meeting all these awesome people and like

exploring this

Incredibly beautiful island via motorbike and just everything felt like this is exactly why I started traveling

It almost feels like it was like the right time the right place the right everything

This is like that was your moment where everything kind of melded together and said yeah

I'm I'm here for a reason. Yeah, and I felt like a real traveler for the first time

This was the first like place that I felt like good at traveling where I'd figured out a lot of the small

Systems that you just become used to over time that are involved in travel

And now it's just all fun. It was all fun. So last year we went right you me your parents

We all went to Langkawi with you. How did that?

experience feel

yeah, I think a lot of

What I'm trying to do whenever I go back there is a recreate that first feeling that I had and

It never works

Never I will never be able to be

20 young 20 something again

I'll never be able to recreate that feeling but still there's like this part of my head that just wants to keep trying

You know that just wants to like get just a little moment feel that way again feel that just like a static

Total weightlessness and I think this like going back to a place a second third a fifth the tenth time for me

for a long time was just about

Chasing that nostalgia chasing that dragon over and over again of that first hit of this amazing like dopamine awesome feeling of like

Everything is life is good and trying to like turn back the clock a little bit. So how did it feel this last time?

Yeah, it felt different

Because it was different because I was different because the place was different because the people that I was doing it with different

And because like ten years past

In a good way in a bad way

Just in a different way. It wasn't necessarily good or bad

I think the only bad that can come out of this is

Focusing so hard on trying to recreate the thing or the feeling that I had on the first one and then being disappointed when I came

That's interesting because when I think about the times that like I

Remember specifically when we were planning our one-year trip feeling worried that

You were going to have to go back to all of these places that I had never been and I

Think what I felt

Overwhelmingly from that trip was that you were excited to like

Show me the magic of these places. Oh, definitely. Definitely. I wanted to like

Wrap up in gift box to you this like nostalgic feeling that I had had from ten years ago

Yeah, I will say like even though I and even though I hadn't traveled as extensively

As you but one of I remember specifically on that trip

We went to Singapore you and I and then I went and then we went back and then we went back again when your parents joined us on

the trip

And I remember feeling a little bit worried like oh is this gonna be because I struggle with the foam of wanting to see

Everything and see new things

And so that was the first time that I was worried is going back going to feel

Not worth it sure

but

I had a great time and I think specifically having your parents join us on that leg of the trip was awesome because

it

It allowed me to see it through their lens like they were so enthralled by

The public transportation the walkways the accessibility of the place the buildings the cleanliness the infrastructure

They get so pumped up about infrastructure. I love it and that like immediately put me in a happy place

And so there is some joy. I think of even though it may never feel the way that you felt the first time

I think for me it felt

It felt rewarding and exciting to relive

Some of that

Excitement through other people. Yeah, and a lot of that is exactly why we make this

YouTube videos right as we want to like we had this amazing feeling this thing that changed our life of quitting our job

Traveling the world going to all these cool places and we just want to share that with all of you because oh man

I'd love to but like and like but just the right amount right because the goal and without being prescriptive

Yeah, the hope is that like

You and everybody that that goes out into the world

Then experiences it the way that you want to not through us, you know

Like you get a taste of it and and I think that's what made that trip so special

Or traveling with other people who have never been to that place before so special

Is you get to see it through a different lens like I had never appreciated

Parks or infrastructure as much until I met your dad, you know like the the first thing I think of

When I hear this question is like

If I go back to a place is my second time my third time my fourth time going to be as good as the first

Yeah, like is it worth it? And that's should I be and I think that's kind of the wrong question to ask because it's just comparing

One time which is so many variables. It's who you are

It's how you're feeling at that moment who you're with etc

And then you're just trying to recreate that thing like I did

And I wasted so many trips so many days

Just trying to recreate that initial feeling that I had instead of

Accepting that I had changed and the place had changed

I mean, obviously I I hold on to the past and I hold on to nostalgia, but I think

To answer this question simply I would just say yes, it's worth it to return to places

And you know with any place whether you've been or not to maybe like

Try to remove those expectations of the place and appreciate it for what it is

I mean when we go back to places like Seoul or Busan or

You know Tokyo Kyoto all of these places that we've been before

I am I am almost always

surprised and

pleasantly surprised at how different and

How different the experiences are but also how familiarity

Makes it feel like makes it feel special too. Yeah

Um, there's I I know there there are a lot of people especially for a lot of people that watch our videos

They say like

Do something different do something different than all the other youtubers that are going to the same places

And I get that sentiment. There's so many places in this world to explore and we

And so many youtubers exploring them and making videos for sure

But we and we do we we want we love going back to we love going to new places too

But there's I I just think there's something special about returning to a place that you

You've been before and to think that every time you return is going to be the exact same

I don't think I don't think that's true. I mean we I think that going back to a place two times three times four times

Still doesn't mean that you have explored everything. No not at all. You can't really do a place

You know like people go on vacation and be like, oh, yeah, we did Tokyo. We did Kyoto. We did Osaka and like

It's just impossible

There's infinite depth time will change a place and time will change you

But I think to answer the question

Are there benefits to returning back to a place you've been before? I think totally

I mean outside of the fact that you're more comfortable traveling in a place because you maybe know how the public

Transportation works or you speak a little bit of the language or you know what you're going to order

I think

I think those are part of the benefits your your second trip

Will be different than the first

But have a little bit of that first, you know, so what would you say are your tips?

What would you say are your tips then?

to like

Let some of that

expectation go

How would I let that

I think it was the realization over time that I was ruining my own trips

And that I was starting to become stuck in my old ways

I think over time I had realized that

I was going back to all these places and I was learning absolutely nothing new

In the process because I was just trying to like force this old feeling to happen

It feels like almost a lesson in just being present, right?

Like and I think this is something that we struggle with I think even your next question

Matt is how do we truly embrace and appreciate the place we are in when traveling?

I find myself rushing from one attraction to the next and pushing my wife. Look, there's another temple

How do I slow things down and not try to cram so much into each day when I may never be back?

which I think

That is like the lesson that we struggle with on a daily is

Just being where we are like one of our favorite motto is be where your feet are

You know not have one foot in and one foot out the other

It feels so big to say that like what does that actually mean?

But I think oftentimes and I I think especially

When we're filming and making youtube videos sometimes I just have to like turn the camera off or stop what we're doing

and just

Stand still, you know, just look at the thing that we're looking at or be where we are notice the details

And it's challenging though when we don't have

enough time on a trip

In life when we might not ever be back like you said

right and I think

I think if there's one thing that I've learned about travel over the years is that it's much more about depth than it is about width

and by that I mean

Width is like let's see everything in three days and let's just spend all this time running from place to place and you get kind of

this like surface level

Experience everywhere that we go

Which is what we do and our videos do show that because we like to show all of the options the realistic parts of travel

Yes, but the stuff that really sticks with me over time is the depth

It's the things that I didn't really expect to be spending as much time as I did it

But then for example first time in Tokyo first time that I went to an arcade there

It just blew my mind that there were still arcades and that they were as gigantic as they were and there were so many games

That I'd never heard of I spent two full days

Just in arcades and I will never forget those two days in my entire life

That is just a memory that's going to stick with me forever because of just how into it. I was how present I was how like

Exploratory everything felt how I wasn't really expecting anything to happen

I wasn't upset if a game wasn't good or whatever and I but I just like the nerdy video game side of me was just fully indulged

digging really deep into that and

I don't know. I'd never really put that on like a

Tokyo best thing to do in three days video right because it's so specific to me

But finding that specific thing and then digging as deep into it as I possibly could yeah made one of those memories

That's just gonna stick with me forever

I definitely think too as you're saying those things the memories that stick with us are usually the ones that are unplanned

Or or that we had you know, we had never

Fully fully like expected something out of it right like when when I first went to Japan for the first time

I remember and this was pre-youtube. I had

Planned my itinerary to the tea. There was a lot of it

That was like that FOMO generation that is my brain that says I have to visit every single temple

I have to visit every single restaurant and all these experiences that I wanted to jam path

but

I will be honest. I don't remember a lot of it. What I remember the most was like

Getting on the bus and the middle of the night when I first landed because I didn't have data

And I didn't know if I was going to have the right amount of cash to get on the bus like all these

Experiences and feelings that I could not have anticipated or like going to Mount Fuji and being bummed that I couldn't see Mount Fuji

Because the clouds were covering it

But then I ended up staying at this awesome hostel and meeting other people which was incredible

Like all these things that I didn't plan for and so now like when I think about our filming trips, right we

we definitely

Plan these and curate these experiences again with the hope that like it gets you just enough

To like get out the door and see these awesome places and know that you can do it too

Especially on a budget

We're trying to show like as many of the good options as possible as many of the fun things as we can

but

What we've started doing and this is a little bit of the like behind the scenes is we we don't film everything in three days

No, yeah, and we can't

For this exact reason and we stay longer than just three days

because

There's a lot to the city than just the things that we're

showing you on video and it also takes a while to find these things and filming a thing takes like three times as long

as doing a thing and then it also leaves room for us to

experience the place

Not just behind the camera, right?

And so I almost feel like that's something like one of the ways when you're asking specifically

How do I slow things down and not try to cram so much?

When I think about our our filming trips, sometimes that's what I feel like we're doing. We're cramming everything everything good in

but

Leave room for the unexpected leave room for the

Like 290 yen ramen place that we didn't plan for our leave room for the bulgogi festival that we didn't know existed

And we didn't know what was going to happen

For me, it's all about expectations like whenever I come in

to a place with like my heart set

On feeling one certain way or going and doing one certain thing or doing

X amount of number of things whenever I get to a place always end up miserable at the end of a trip

And it's good to have this like big list of like here's all the awesome stuff that i'm really into that

I want to see I get that but

To be unwilling to change that list for any reason even if you feel like you've like really connected with one experience

And you want to dive deeper into it. I think it's just setting yourself up for eventual sadness and in our case

arguing

While we're out traveling in our case just relationship strife is what that ends up in because

One of us will feel like yeah, I really need I gotta keep doing I gotta like dig into this experience because this is so fun

And then the other one's like we gotta keep moving normally me and

And then there's nothing that ruins a trip faster than you know, two people

Disagreeing about what you should be spending your time doing

That's a good segue into actually our next question, which we got from where's weddle well weddle weddle

Who um asks a lot of really great questions?

So heathers says hello from grace. I'm a big fan of this style of video and you guys my husband

And I quit our jobs and are on month six of world travel

And her questions are are a few things but like the one that is related to this will will tackle first is

Can you talk more about spending 24 seven together?

Have any different reactions to bumps in the road? How do you support each other in constant change?

Her and her husband have been married 10 years, but we've always had time apart at work or with friends

It's been wild being together 24 seven was this ever difficult for you to and how did you keep your identities separate?

Oh, man. Yeah, so this is this is a big conversation. I think

For two reasons one is that like we haven't been out of eyesight of each other for

months

Especially on the round the world trip, right? Like you are just I never appreciated

hallways

So much until after until after our round the world trip like when we'd go stay with our family or friends

Hallways they're how you don't see another human being sometimes like houses or rooms or like houses big enough

Where we don't have to be in the same room together, right? Yes, there's this is this is all we got here in this beautiful hotel room

But this is all we got like we can't not be within eyesight of each other

And I think especially now that we're working together

24 seven building this thing. I mean that that is another part of our identity that is melding kind of

We're like building another identity with our two identities if that makes sense

Yes, so I guess to answer the the quick question though is

Is this a problem or does this come up for you? Oh, yeah all the time. Yeah

We have challenges all the time. We don't ever argue about like living together

Or being together or spending I think that that has always been easy for us

And I think we're lucky in that way of that like sharing the same space

Has always felt for me at least like home or just knowing to like when one of us

Needs to have space or needs to do something different. Yeah that like that's not personal

It's an okay right like right after we're done recording this podcast

Lisa is going to go out to all the different like op shops or good wills

What's another word thrift stores thrift stores in the area and buy all that stuff

And I'm specifically not going with even though I love going thrift shopping because I know

That lisa probably needs some space because we have spent three straight weeks together in a camper van

And I think that it's very reasonable to want some space after that and I probably want some too

So so it's those little things over time and not taking them personally and understanding of like, okay, maybe

Maybe it's best if we like don't do every everything together, but we do almost everything together, but I think in general

I think in general we find it easier

To spend all of our time together right next to each other than I think a lot of people

Yeah, like this is a weird thing and I think especially after the pandemic it became easier for us to

Be in the same space but be working on different things right or like doing different things like to me

That was helpful enough for me to say

This is my new alone time, you know that I I am like I I love one of my favorite things is

Being in the same room as you or like your brothers or other people when you're watching youtube or playing video games

I don't have to play games and oftentimes

I find more joy just being in the same space while you guys are playing video games

Sure, you doing your own thing. You're like scrolling instagram or whatever

Like the rest of us are

Doing something doing something together and it's totally fine because everyone's just like sharing the space and good vibes are still having

We have different reactions different like

Reactions and different ways to do do things like this is true not just about the business

and and making youtube videos, but also

In life right like just we were just talking about traveling and how

In general like there might be a thing that you will want to see or that I won't want to see

Or the pace like that's something that we we definitely struggle with

Oh for sure and and it's compromise like it's it's non-stop compromise. I mean we are spending

Literally all of our time together all of it

Together like right next to each other and that's amazing

And we're so lucky to be able to do that and to be able to spend this like super condensed time together

But there are compromises and I think to

And I think to presume that you'd be able to that anyone would be able to spend this much time together without compromising

In really tangible and sometimes really big sometimes really hard ways

It just can't work without it. It just can this lifestyle that we have of never not seeing each other

Cannot work without significant compromise

And I think that that's a beautiful thing and that it's taught us so much about

Our relationship and I think it's deepened it in a lot of really good ways

And it's taught us just how to live a life

Together instead of how to live separate lives and then have small little connective tissues

That are sometimes together. I mean we're lucky and that a lot of our interests definitely overlap

Obviously this life and our like approach to money also overlaps and our willingness to eat the 10th rotisserie chicken

We have found so many maybe one day we'll share our recipes. I don't know

There's so many rotisserie chicken recipes that we've we've come up with

All right

Just to save money so we can travel more is the end of that story of like we've always been willing to sacrifice

Tasty food or comfort usually both to be able to continue traveling longer

But there but we we definitely have differences right we come from different families different parts of the world

and

That's natural. It's natural to have different approaches to things

I would say that like we talked about this last week

I can be someone who is very content just sitting inside

And being at home, you know for a while you naturally desire and gravitate towards moving

Yeah, newness right novelty. So like that is one of the challenges that sometimes we have to compromise on like

How do we fit in both? How do we make sure that both needs are met? And I think

One of the ways that we do this and we talk about this a lot is

We kind of check in with each other like if someone's having a particularly rough day

or need something and the other person is kind of like

Good feeling okay feeling at ease then that person will like rise up to the challenge

It has been a challenge just in general

For me to like voice my needs or my opinions. I've always been the kind of person that just like

I'm going with the flow. I want to do what everyone else does. But you know, we know that that doesn't always work

Eventually eventually you need to like say eventually I always need to end up saying

What I need otherwise, I'll keep it in keep it in until you know, right, right? So I think one thing that has been

Good and challenging in the last few years of spending all of our time together is being able to specifically say

No, today. I'm not feeling up for this particular activity. Right. It's like communicating that like hey

I'm only feeling like 40% today. Like I'm going to need you to carry 60% today

Or just to like me being like, okay. Yeah, like or me being like, I cannot do that today

I don't have it in me. We're stopping. We're slowing down. Right. Just like and not not

Not taking it personal when the other person feels that and I think that's part of the like

What you said what your question was is like how you keep your identities in that in that process and the process of

communicating and and compromising

Recognizing that like when someone else you're not you're not giving up part of who you are

You are asking the other person to understand where you are and who you are

And and adjusting. You know, it's just being a team. Yeah, it's just being a team. Um, there's we would not have learned this

half as fast

As we did had we not started all this stuff together had we not built this life together

We not spent 24 seven together. These are just lessons that we learned that make our relationship work based on

You know, pretty freaking weird arrangement that we have of just

non-stop traveling always being with an eyesight of each other for months sometimes years on end

Yeah, some practical tips. I would say like

Have hobbies and we talk about have hobbies separate from each other

Which is really really hard to do when you're traveling. I know, you know, and it sounds

What a charm to life. I know traveling into having hobbies outside of traveling

But I mean like I think the things that we've tried to keep doing that keep our identities are like you will

You will schedule time to play video games with your brother

You will fix things that commonly and I will you know, make time to join my halau on hula

And wherever I can whenever I can or we watch different things

We don't watch every single thing that we like movies. You will go out and see a movie sometimes and I'll go

Shopping, you know, like random things like schedule in the things that you would typically do

phone conversations with friends and family

And and it's okay to do those things on your own. I think also

long showers

When you have access to hot water

I mean

What a blessing I take like

Six-minute showers sometimes and that feels glorious because it is because it is me time

That's actually that's actually a tip that I learned from my best friend who has two kids

Very different experience for sure, but she said I get it that her tip

For getting a long time was taking long showers

I just want to give a quick analogy about what it's like building a youtube channel together

And with the analogy and I think that this will also apply to any like couple or

Spouses or partners or whatever building a thing together. Okay, so have any of you out there ever built an Ikea cabinet

Or wardrobe or any other Ikea thing with another person

These are real relationship testers, you know, there's like doing this together. Oh man

Okay, there's so many reasons one because the instructions are almost always useless

In an Ikea thing. Yeah, they're just like vague drawings of like put the screw into this thing and like

It's just such a breeding ground for disagreements between people when you're building something there's so much room for interpretation. Yes. Yes, and like

Building a youtube channel is a lot like just building Ikea dressers over and over again

The instructions are unclear borderline like damaging to the process of building the thing

There are so many parts and pieces so many little things to do and then

No matter what the two people who are building this Ikea thing together

Have different ways to do it. We'll have different approaches to do it like we should start at the bottom

What if we started at the top? We should start at the instruction manual

Yeah, maybe we should like separate all the pieces into little like sections to make sure they're all nicely organized

And then we'll begin or the other ones like let's just throw it together like I don't need that

right like I don't need these instructions and

Over time at some point throughout the process of building an Ikea cabinet

The entire thing is going to fall apart

And it can be so easy

To take that moment and just be like you didn't put the screws in right or you point to me like oh, yeah

You didn't read the instructions good enough. You didn't separate the parts. We're not even using the right screws for this thing

We don't have the right tools and like these

These moments of like that inevitably happen whenever you're building anything but happen

Every three days when you're making a youtube video they happen all the time of these like

Building an Ikea thing together and then the whole thing falls apart and then you can choose to either

Point the finger at each other

Or just to figure out how to fix it together and we almost invariably have different visions for

A lot of different things and so many points like not just traveling

But also like how a style of a video how what it might feel like music choices

what we've also learned is to like

Say

Is this part how important is this part to you?

How important is it to me?

Like almost assigning a project manager to say no this this part you can lead this part

You can lead right and like we kind of have to like weigh every one of those decisions

And to go back to Ikea analogy like

The feeling when you finish building an Ikea dresser or creating a youtube video

Is one of being proud of it, but also one of uncertainty

That this thing might fall apart at any moment because it was built by you right because it was you know

It's so funny because I love Ikea furniture

Yeah, I mean yeah, everybody loves Ikea furniture, but assembling them. Yeah, there's whole industries out there

There's entire websites and services created just to have people build your Ikea furniture for you because of how freaking awful the process is

And I think the process of making a youtube channel or I think doing any business together with your partner spouse, whatever

Is exactly like building an Ikea dresser

But every couple of days just over and over and over and sometimes you're building like five or six at the same time

and it's about learning

who's good at what

trusting them implicitly

with doing that thing over and over and over again being amazing at it and

Taking moments to celebrate when you've finished ones and absolutely never

Pointing the finger when it falls apart

But instead of that just figuring out how to fix it together and start putting it back together

Well said and also reinforcing you got to keep the little tool

You got to keep the tool to reinforce the furniture sometimes. Oh, yeah

Yeah, and sometimes right sometimes you got to go back and re-fix it even after you think it's already done

um

For more Ikea analogies, please hit subscribe

So for our last question for today, how does it feel to come home from a trip around the world?

That's what this question is asking so aka blaze with two z's pretty sweet

Lots of caps locks love it my partner and I are on a midlife gap year not crisis

They specifically say this is not a midlife crisis as a gap year and on month eight right now

Quit my job and my partner's early retired and both of us individually

We're in the middle of places to live and then we agreed on this like new life of travel

As we are about three to four months from ending and going back to the states

We worry about going back and have a lot of different feels about it

Like how we have changed and what it will feel like going back to normal normality

Something familiar will be adapt. Could you expand on what feeling you had when you both are about to return?

And what it actually was when you returned. Oh, man. Okay, so

So coming home from a trip like that where you've been gone for so long

Is I think without a doubt the hardest part of this entire process. Yeah, and I don't want to like set your expectations

To just be like, ah, it's gonna be miserable. It's gonna be miserable. It's gonna be awful. It's hard though

Your experience may be very different than mine, but I've had the same experience all four times

I've come home from a one year round the trip including our last one that we came home from together

And there's so many different aspects and so many different like avenues of this feeling but

I think in general

What's the right analogy to explain this I think you had a good one yesterday. I think returning

Back from a round the world trip or an extended period of time

To me feels like when you come back to your home that you you know, you were born in for example

Or the place that you were the place that you were born

returning after

Going away for a significant amount of time. So this could be like

When you move away from home for the first time when you go to college if you go to college or

any anything like that and coming back and realizing oh

Things haven't changed here, but I've changed so much

That's what it feels like. Yeah, where you kind of feel like

You're back at home. You're back at a place you're comfortable in

But it doesn't really feel like home anymore

And that is a very weird very new feeling because like you've gone through

All of these significant changes you've like crammed years and years of like life experiences into like eight plus months

and

you come back and

reconnecting with people

Is difficult in a really tangible way and reconnecting with that old life that you had is really difficult because

You've changed and probably everybody else that you've talked to has also changed

And it's it you know, how do you explain and encapsulate all of those memories and those experiences

To the people that weren't with you on that trip

In just a short conversation

It is hard. I I think we struggled with this a lot when we came back

We struggled with like how do we connect again with our family and our friends who we haven't seen in a year and a half

How do we?

How do we talk about how do we actually catch up?

You know on everything that's happened because they've also changed. They've maybe had kids

Maybe got married, you know, and it's an adjustment period and I would say we

When we came back from this last trip, we were bummed. We were sad for like it felt so different

Like we were surrounded by friends and family, but it it was hard to know how to

Be and it almost felt like we were also lacking purpose. Yeah, so like post-trip depression

Totally real thing. I can say this with a hundred percent certainty

It's a very real thing even for people that just take two to three week vacations or 10 day vacations

The travel blues when you come back, they're very real the sunday blues

Yeah, and I think the longer that you're away the harder that it gets

I think that there's a ton of different reasons for this. I think one

The biggest reason is that you have had

Unlimited Saturdays you've had like 300 plus Saturdays in a row where you just get to do whatever you want

All day every day and fully like the choice in the direction of your life

When you're out traveling for like what you're doing on this round the world trip

Is fully up to you. It's fully up to you

And this might be the first time in your life that you'll ever be able to experience that and

If you don't go on another one of these trips again, it might be the last time you also get to experience this level of like

Grip on your time and freedom this level of that and then all of a sudden you come back to this world

That you used to live in where there's only one Saturday a week

And there's also like one one or a couple of ways to do things like I remember specifically having a really hard time coming back

And not knowing how to get around places like we didn't have a car at the time

We we were reliant on our family and our friends, which is awesome that they were so willing

But I felt like an inconvenience. I felt like a burden. I felt like oh, I have to like

Ask my mom again for a ride to the airport, you know, like you got yeah

We've gotten so good at this one specific style of living

And all of a sudden we were back to this like other style living and we just weren't that good at it

Yeah

If number one is that like you had full control over your time

You had unlimited Saturdays in a row and then all of a sudden you only have one Saturday a week

And then you're starting like the rest of your time is now back to this normal nine to five schedule

I think the second thing

is

walking and sunshine

And this for me is one of my biggest coping mechanisms of coming home after this like

round the world trip blues is that

More than likely every single day on this trip at some point you got out and you walked sometimes for like 10 miles in a day

We would walk

And then we would like see the sun and we would experience new things and we would go out into the world

And then all of a sudden for some reason when we got back home

We just wanted to do nothing all of it

And we just sat inside all day because that's the life that we used to live

And that's the like the pace that we used to live at is where most of our time was just kind of like

Sitting around not really doing a lot of outdoorsy things

Definitely not going on like 10 miles of walking every single day

And I think that this like big shift in like physical output as well as walking as well as like the amount of sunshine

We were getting and just how well we were kind of like treating our bodies and how much exercise we were getting

And then coming home and then doing nothing. I think that that

That one thing really

Messed me up and I think they say this you know

We keep pushing our return date back further and have thought of stateside road trips when we return physically but not mentally

and I I think that resonates with us too and

I think it's important

to schedule in those like

things those trips whether it be

whether it be road road trips in the states or

Scheduling time to see family or friends like scheduling something

To have something to kind of look forward to is really was really helpful for us

There was a period of time where we just like blobbed for months because we didn't know what to do

And it almost felt like we were looking forward to our next big thing our next project

So having a plan I think is actually a really good idea obviously save space for that like

That sadness like I remember I think the night before we left

soul

to come back

I

I carved out like two hours to just write in my notes like a journal entry about

what this felt like to

To like wrap up this trip

To come back home

I mean it doesn't take away the sting of it and the like grieving that you'll have of this

Incredible year or eight months that you would have spent on the road

but

It commemorates it right and it gives you the time to say like this happened

This is incredible. This is what's about to happen and then plan plan things like we had

Luckily we had you know the 4th of july with your family

We had friends come out and meet us

We had plans to go back and see all of our friends in different places

But but then we almost like after a month or two of just like blobbing. We were like

What's our next this sucks? Let's do something else right like we had just we had changed

We had changed over time about the type of life that we wanted to live and I think that's totally normal related to that

It's

You know the third point is that it's

It's a challenge because you want to share you want to share

Yes, all the experiences all the incredible cool places that you've been to and all the cool foods that you've tried

But it's really really hard to connect with people who weren't there to me. It maybe feels like

They don't

They don't care. They don't but it might just be that they don't know how to ask about your eight months of travel

So how do you summarize that?

And you probably don't know nobody knows how to summarize like a year of straight travel

Right like how to talk it's not like how do you ask people about it, right?

You want to say so much, but there's just there's almost never room in the conversation to be able to really

I mean

We've been doing eight hours of this podcast for sure along this one

And I don't think that in eight hours. I could fully explain

What it would feel like to like go on a round the world trip and how it changed me as a person

I think it would take forever to be able to get there the like closest analogy that I imagine

Is like from our point of view when we ask our friends who are new parents

Is just what you were expecting or like how is having a kid how are you doing?

You know or like what is it like and you know, of course, there's so many things that we're not seeing right like

The good the bad the like the love that they feel for the all these things is is what I

Envision for like I mean, it's not the same but that like closest thing is when we look at our friends who are new parents and we're like

We have no idea what that's like

How do we ask them about that travel and kids very different?

I know but like there are all these little micro things that happen that you just don't see and you don't know how to

to fully

express

But like the thing that I will say

In this in this third category specifically is rather than

try to

Express that to my friends and my families

Just for us to come back with an open mind and be curious about what their lives have been like absolutely because it sometimes

these experiences

Can be just for us and that's okay. You know it can feel easy to want to run away

From everything because you just feel like everything is so much worse

Than when you left everything so much worse than the thing you were doing the week before you came home on the trip

And everything's so much less interesting

Because in a lot of ways so not true. Well because in a lot of ways

For for us too, you know being traveling traveling for as long as we did was kind of running away from

The life that we had before and I think the thing

Luckily now we can say this on the other side running towards a new life

That's but people don't know that that's an option or that's a way or that's even a thing that they want

When they return we didn't know that I honestly thought when we came back from our trip. We were just going to

Go back to our jobs and do the normal thing which I think a lot of people do

But I that's what I mean when I say like find your next project is figure out

What you want your life to look like now that you've gone through this life changing trip

And that's totally normal. I think that's normal for finishing anything

For finishing any big goal that you have once you make it there

And you realize that from the top of that mountain all you see is just more tops of other mountains that you could climb

And just realizing that okay now the only thing to do is come back down

I think we also have to recognize too that

you know

Part of the sadness of coming back from a trip is realizing that when you get back

Things will have changed without you, right?

like

I think it was really really hard to come back and see that like

a lot of our friends

Had children and we weren't there for them for sure. We had missed weddings. We had missed. Yeah

Births we had missed deaths. We had missed

A lot of life a lot of life had happened while we were gone and you know, you're kind of insulated from it until you come back home

coming back from a trip also

Forces you

To realize like the things that we had been running away from or the things that have changed without us as well

And and forces you to kind of confront them and deal with them again

Yeah, but I think that on the other side of this

I think combating this problem this depression was mostly an act of finding gratitude

Instead of looking at all the downsides

Yeah, that we could go back and there was still all this stuff all these people all this amazing like

This entire life that we had that we could put on pause

And come back and have it still be there and still exist and all these like foundational people and things and places

We're still there and that's

I can't even express how important that is to coming back home after something like this

Rather than look for ways to be upset that we can't connect with people anymore or that our cat has gotten older

Just like appreciating the fact that

We even have

People that we can connect with still that they were supportive enough to still be in our lives

Even though we were gone for a year. Yeah, and that you get to reconnect and learn again

All this year of stuff that had happened in their lives and how much of a blessing that is of that

Like that had been turned off for a little while

But now you get to turn on that faucet again and be like, whoa all this cool things happened over the past year

And that's like amazing and now like we get to talk about all of it and it's just

Uh, I think seeing that gratitude can be really really hard. There's good parts to it too. Yeah

That's a really great question

And we would love to hear from all of you that have done something similar or have any advice or suggestions

Um, this is just, you know, definitely our experience and our thoughts and and we hope to fully encapsulate it more in a in a project and a

documentary later, but

We would love all of your practical and and non practical advice and suggestions. Yes. Yes, and uh, don't be afraid to

Reach out and tell us how things are going once you do decide to

End the trip and go home

We've been through it. You don't have to do it alone. You don't have to do it alone

Yeah, there's a whole community of people too that I think

Um, as we're learning are very thoughtful and have likely gone through something similar

Thanks so much for watching. Don't forget to leave questions for next week's episode. Uh,

Yeah, we'll see you then. We'll see you then. Bye