Grounded
Summer should smell like jet fuel by now.
By June, I am usually checking weather forecasts for a city that isn’t mine. Packing a suitcase. Wondering whether I’ll have time between conference sessions to wander a waterfront, visit a museum, or find a gift store full of local chachkies. Professional development was the official reason. Wanderlust was the real one.
For years, summer carried me elsewhere. Seattle. San Francisco. Burbank. Miami. New streets. New conversations. New reminders that the world is larger than my daily routines. The conferences filled my notebook with ideas, but it was often the time between sessions that stuck with me. A walk through an unfamiliar neighborhood. A meal at a local restaurant. The small discoveries that happen when you step outside your familiar life.
A few summers ago, the CrowdStrike outage stranded me in Miami for several extra days. At the time, I was frustrated. Flights were canceled. Plans were uncertain. I wanted to get home. Funny how memory works. Now I find myself missing even the inconvenience of being stuck somewhere else.
This year, the suitcase stays in the closet.
The grapes climb their trellis. The weeds demand attention. The same roads lead to the same stores. Nothing is wrong, exactly. There is satisfaction in home projects, quiet mornings, and familiar places. Yet something feels absent. Travel was never just about conferences. It was an annual reminder that there were still corners of the map I had not seen, stories I had not heard, and possibilities I had not considered.
Now, when a plane passes overhead, I catch myself looking up.
Habit, perhaps.
Or maybe some part of me still expects to be on it.
Fifty by Sixty
Maybe you have seen it: the interactive map friends post on social media, coloring in the states they have visited. Every so often, one drifts across my feed, and I find myself counting along. Have I been there? Does that one count? What about that road trip twenty years ago?
Years ago, I set a goal of visiting all 50 states by age 50. That milestone came and went, so the goal quietly evolved into 50 by 60. I still have quite a few states left to visit, but the challenge remains. I do have one rule: airports don’t count. If all I have seen is a terminal, a gate number, and the view from a connecting flight, the state remains unclaimed. To earn a spot on my map, I need to spend time there, wander a little, and leave with at least one story worth bringing home.
As I find myself grounded this summer, that old goal is starting to tug at me again. Perhaps fall break is the perfect excuse to color in another state.
