Taking a Break

Summer! It’s travel season, especially for those of us who make Phoenix, Arizona our permanent home. Summer here is a lot like winter is everywhere else. In summertime, we gain weight, we hibernate in our homes and we relish in the AC. We feel sluggish and we just want to veg out in front of the t.v. So, in some ways, summer travel is a great way to beat that period - the lull in seasons, if you will.

Photo by Sebastian Palomino from Pexels

With that in mind, it is very fortunate that I appear to have gotten in the habit of going home to Wisconsin about 3 times per Arizona summer. I typically go in May, July and October which is actually Spring, Summer and Fall in Wisconsin but is all pure summer down here in the Valley of the Sun.

The topic of this blog series this month is supposed to be about maintaining routine and wellness practices while traveling. I have to be honest and report that I don’t really have any great tips for doing that. Upon consideration, I realized that I am one of those who takes a break from routine, structure, and many of the daily practices I try to maintain when I am living day to day life in my other home, Arizona. What I do notice though, is that I tend to utilize the time I am traveling to re-engage some habits that maybe got lost in the responsibilities of daily life. I find I make sure to make time for pleasure reading, I go for walks, I eat foods that are more natural and come from my family’s garden or surrounding farms, and most importantly to what I value for my personal wellness, I reconnect with nature. I try to maintain these when I am back in the daily grind as much as I can. But I actually really look forward to my summer trips more knowing I will be visiting a place where I can relax into routines that include good food, daily walks, nature and reading!

So what about the wellness practices that are already part of my daily grind that get left behind when I am on vacation? Well, I throw caution to the wind and try not to beat myself up too badly about it. I give myself permission to live, take a break from the mundane schedule of life, go with the flow, and hopefully, just maybe when it is over, I can go back to my day to day life and add a couple practices I had been missing also.

What are some of your travel challenges and how do you work through them?

Love,

Melissa