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People always seem to want to find themselves and most want
to do that through travel. They think that traveling to new, preferably exotic,
places will be the answer to the dullness that is their everyday lives. And I
have to say, that I agree to an extent. Traveling is great, but it will only illicit
a real change if you travel outside your comfort zone and if you travel alone.
I realized late last year that this was exactly what I needed to do and I
picked Portland, Oregon as my destination.
Now I know that Portland may not seem like much of a
destination but when you factor in the 14.5 hour drive, excluding pit stops,
and doing the entire drive alone – it doesn’t seem so small. This was to be my
first solo road trip and I was equal parts exhilarated and horrified. I was
going to drive through all of California and most of Oregon to reach my haven,
what some have called, “The place where the 90s never left.” And they would be
mostly correct.
In case you didn’t know, Oregon is where the hippies and hipsters migrate to and Portland is the hub of that culture. While I don’t particularly subscribe to
either of these lifestyles, there is something freeing about the pace of life
in Oregon. It is definitely a place to reset your clock and refocus your
priorities, which is exactly what I needed to do. However, I knew that if I didn’t
do this right I would end up talking myself out of this trip.
This.could.not.happen.
In order to motivate myself to go I had to establish a
system, having steps involved is always good and usually works. I decided that I needed to make plans and
promises not only to myself, but to others. The point of this was to make sure
I made enough plans and promises that if I were to break them I would feel
awful. In my mind this would ensure my going. I felt this was a foolproof plan
and this is how my experience went.
Steps To Activating Your Wanderlust
Step 1: Declare it. I told anyone and everyone who would
listen about my plans. As much as I wanted to seem spontaneous I also wanted to
be held accountable by more than just myself. And this worked, many friends
asked about my trip and some were even jealous, wanting to go on this grand
adventure with me. But I was determined to have this be strictly an adventure
for me. Within a few months I had planted the seed and I was feeling great.
Step 2: Lodging. While spending money on a room in some
cutesy hotel is probably a good motivator to not cancel your travel plans I
knew I would need something stronger than that, plus I was on a budget and looking for places to stay in Portland wasn't at all appealing. When I
made the decision to travel to Portland I immediately contacted my awesome
cousin Jason who lives there. I told him that I was coming and he was
completely on board and willing to have me stay at his place. I was eternally grateful
and at the same time bound to my promise of arriving at his place on a
predetermined date. This was a chief motivator for me as he was great at
providing a countdown to my departure.
Step 3: Gas/Transport. More so than having money for fun I
had to be sure I could get from my home in Long Beach to Portland then back
again. I decided that I needed to calculate my mileage against the price of gas
and get an estimate of what I would be spending. There are many websites that
you can do this, I chose GasBuddy
. It has you input where you’re starting, where you’re ending, and the year,
make, and model of your car. Once you put in the information it gives you the
total cost of your trip along with how many times you will need to stop for gas
and where those gas stations are located along your route.
It wasn’t an exact science, but it was what I needed. At the
time of my trip, October 2015, the cost round trip was and estimated $120.00
with two stops on the way there and two on the way back. I found this totally
doable and I would have spare cash for any adventures while in Portland. It was
becoming more real.
Step 4: Purpose. This will be different for each individual,
but it’s good to know your purpose behind your trip, even if your purpose is to
have no purpose. How spontaneous in your travels do you want to be? Is just
getting to your destination enough to motivate you? Do you want/need to plan
activities once you get there? This is the difference of simply visiting Portland, Oregon to looking for things to do in Portland, Oregon.
For me, deciding to make the trip to Portland was
spontaneous, but once that was decided I tried to plan everything else, from
checking on events happening in and around Portland, agreeing to take a tour of
my Cousin’s place of work, Laika Studios , and spending one full day in Powell's Books. Even though I had plans, I feel that just getting to the destination
would have been enough, everything that followed were perks.
Those were basically my steps and you know what, it worked
and I had the best time. If you are thinking of embarking on a soul searching,
life changing travel escape, I say do it. Do it and do it now. Pick a location,
follow the steps, and get in your car or on a plane and just go.
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