I’m a creative and resourceful person, which is beneficial to me most of the time. However, an amusing side to this is my tendency to not be the most practical or straightforward when it comes to problem solving.
A few months ago I was at a church event and I had accidentally shut my keys in the trunk of my car. One of the doors was still open, so I went into the car, pulled down the back of the seats, and crawled into the trunk. Now let me tell you: I am not a skinny woman, but I managed to fit back there, grab my keys, and drive home. Later that day, I recounted my story to my mother and her amused response was “Why didn’t you just pop the trunk?”
“I never thought of that.”
Yeah. Not one did I consider going to the front seat, pulling the lever, and going about my business in a lot less time than what it took to climb through the car. But it makes for a good story to tell, and I do love a good story.
I’ve always been drawn to trial and error rather than strategic planning – I get an idea and I run with it, so I can at least make some progress. It’s made me a good troubleshooter (which is helpful when my family calls on me as their tech support from time to time… sorry for throwing you under the bus, Mom and Grandma…) and the “errors” often lead to some learning that wouldn’t have occurred if I had been a little less impulsive and a little more logical. But when there’s not a lot of risk involved and no extreme consequences, that’s fine. (although if I had gotten stuck in my trunk and rescued by bystanders during the incident I mentioned earlier, I might be singing a different tune).
I often joke that I “like to take the scenic route,” when explaining/justifying/wondering how I get myself into these amusing situations, but as you can see, there are benefits to it. And there’s no longer, more interesting scenic route that I’ve ever taken that compares to the one I’m on now. I’m back to counting down months to the Race while my squadmates are counting down days, and looking ahead into a year of uncertainty, experience, and of course some new adventures.
And now the next steps of the scenic route are slowly beginning to unfold, surprisingly in line with some of my original plans for this fall. I’ve postponed the Race, and my squad’s route was changed, but I’ll still be spending September in Guatemala. After my temp job ends in a few weeks, I’m going to Antigua for a month, living with a host family and studying Spanish.
I first went to Guatemala a year ago on a short-term trip with a group from my college, which I’ve written about a few times on this blog. Ever since I went on that trip, I knew I wanted to come back, learn the language, and experience more of this beautiful country. Before World Race ever came into the picture, I was making plans to return for language school after graduation. I put this dream on hold when I decided to go on the Race, but now the time is right. I’m living at home, I don’t have a job to leave behind, and I have enough time to get another one (or two) before my student loan payments begin. When I left training camp and had to come home, I promised myself I would not stop living. So now I’m going to Central America by myself. For a month. It’s my biggest adventure yet, and I can’t wait. I’ll be back to the World Race eventually (some updates about that coming soon) but for now, it’s time to live.
I will be blogging about Guatemala on my old WordPress site, which you can find here – one month and counting until I’m on that plane!
