I'm Not Extraordinary. I'm Just Doing What Makes Me Happy.
What the travel photographs don't show: an ordinary person doing the one thing that matters to her, and finding that enough.
When you look at a person who has gone to all of these places, you might imagine something exceptional about them. I would like to set that straight, because I think it matters for anyone reading this and wondering whether they could.
I just did them as a regular person. I'm not exceptional. I'm not a genius. I'm not a millionaire. I'm just a regular person. But I can do things that are very important to me, and that's all that matters.
The thing nobody else cares about
Take Verona. Seeing the opera there has been my idea for a long time. It maybe doesn't matter to anybody else in the world. It does not need to.
Maybe you have something that's your thing. Something you always wanted to do and it just never worked out, because there was always a reason, or a season, or someone else's plan to fit around. But when it's only you, you can make it work. That is the quiet advantage of this time. Not freedom in the grand sense. Just the practical fact that nobody has to agree.
Not Wonder Woman
I want to go to some places that are a little bit challenging, because of the language or the logistics of getting around. I am not going to pretend to be fearless about that. What I do instead is look out for ways that I could be supported. Maybe I'll take the train if I go through Norway.
It doesn't need to be Wonder Woman goes to Norway. It's just somebody who's invisible in the crowd, with a bag and a ticket, looking at things she has wanted to look at for a long time.
But it's my own.
I don't really care that it isn't spectacular, because it's just me being happy. It's enough.