I rang in the New Year 100% confident that 2020 was going to be my Best. Year. Ever. Seriously. I was so confident; I MADE A VISION BOARD! Swear. I really did! For the first time in my 54 years, I laid out all of my goals and my hopes and my dreams and I planned to manifest them into my reality. Oh, silly naïve Ellen.
By the end of January, I had planned, booked and paid for an amazing array of travel adventures, including
- Sailing from San Diego to Vancouver on Holland America’s Konigsdam ship, including a stop in Seattle which was a new destination on a new cruise line for me
- Celebrating my daughters 21st birthday with a weekend train trip to Toronto to see Hamilton (well, the girls were planning to see Hamilton while my husband and her boyfriend checked out the NHL Hall of Fame Museum), followed by dinner at the top of the CN tower
- An Alaskan adventure with a group of 100 friends and family in July, including a day trip to Katmai National Park to watch the bears feeding and salmon spawning and then sailing from Seward to Vancouver on Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas for 7 nights, with stops in Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, and Icy Straight Point
- A romantic adventure with my hubby to Hotel Xcaret in Riviera Maya where we planned to ride ATV’s, go ziplining and swim in the cenotes
- And, to finish out the year, a New Years cruise on Royal Caribbean’s newest ship, Odyssey of the Seas, sailing to their private islands of CocoCay and Labadee
By the end of February…Covid was starting to spread around the world and the entire travel industry was beginning to crumble.
By the end of March, everything was shut down, all travel was cancelled and my full time career became signing and mailing refund checks to hundreds of disappointed clients.
And here we still sit, 10 months later. In this crazy limbo land between what was and what will be. Between staying home to stay healthy and getting immunized, so free, and able to travel again. Life of a vagabond is not cancelled…just postponed.
The vision board still hangs in my bedroom on my side of the bed, so it is the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I see before I go to bed each night.
I’ve changed the 2020 at the top to 2021. My momma didn’t raise no quitter. Laissez le bon temps rouler!
