Two Weeks Are Enough

I recently came across a creator with genuinely engaging content. I followed her immediately. But I am not her, and neither are most of us.

She retired in her 50s and has since taken a month-long solo vacation, plus several week-long trips, to find herself again.

As an empty nester, she is rediscovering what it feels like to fully choose her own schedule, eat what she wants when and where she wants, and answer to no one but herself.

It is the dream. And for most of us, exactly that.

I cannot disappear for months and live out the Eat Pray Love or Under the Tuscan Sun fantasy. I am not blowing up my life, and I do not want to.

I have years left in my career. I am not cashing out my 401k because it is the only security we have.

I am not leaving my husband, my kids, or my mom. They are my reason.

Running away for months looks amazing on a screen. It is not what I actually want.

What I have done is two-week trips to Europe. And I think most people wildly underestimate what you can absorb in ten to sixteen days in a completely different world.

What it does to your perspective. How you will never feel truly refreshed coming back to work after seeing the other side, but you will have more motivation to keep working toward getting out.

Two weeks is enough. The way I travel sits somewhere between slow travel and the mad dash of a tour group. Two to three nights in one location. Five different places across sixteen days.

Enough to see a region without turning it into a blur. Enough to want to come back.

When you only have two or three weeks, that does not mean you are stuck with domestic travel. You do not have to go to a theme park, a cruise, or the same lake resort.

Two weeks is enough to become immersed in a different culture. To start absorbing a different pace of life. To go to a laundromat, a grocery store, a local park, and realize that other people live in a way you had only read about.

Whether you go alone, with a partner, with one of your now-adult kids, or with a friend does not matter.

Just go.

You will be fine. And you will find a piece of yourself you forgot about somewhere around 1995.