January 30, 2024 by Cassandra Johnson
My thoughts in mid-December: “This feels really good”.
Christmas had proven easy. I had the best taste of family time ever when my brother and friend came to visit in December. They arrived right before the holiday and there was a true sense of mainland USA arriving from back home during my time in Puerto Rico. Life with them was fun, nice and complete, so much so that I knew I was also mentally ready to move on to Mexico.
I had been excited about going but was feeling really sentimental and accustomed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and not so resource ready for my next move. With them there and more resources, I felt a little more settled.
I was finally getting back into traveling. I didn’t think it would be so long following 2019 and it just seemed even more right to start back up in the same place again. I had revisited Pisco, Peru not too long before that and Guayaquil, Ecuador leading up to that. Still, this was a bit too long for my taste. A lot was also based on the need to request vacation time from my former employers.
Now that I tend to majorly get contract work through an agency, I realized that come Christmas, I was pleased not to have assignments given to me on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and in turn realized I enjoyed the prospect more than working through the holidays as I had done previously. It was just okay for those times I was not on the road and in the air visiting family and traveling. Sometimes I easily convince myself something which is not so bad is welcome or a minor inconvenience, but these days I am learning to be even more real with myself.
Following my everyday decisions and deciding regularly how to spend my my travel days encourages me to choose what really fits me and let go of what I actually no longer want to deal with or at least how I can work on changing things like working through weekends or holidays. Those breaks are a nice reset.
Showing them how some of the different neighborhoods connected and my favorite spots and spending time chatting and hanging out in the main excursion areas, attraction areas and restaurants/bars put the period I felt I needed to the end of my stay in San Juan. As much as I enjoyed the connections I made, there was an added comfort to having family and long-time friends around that I had been missing since I left for the island. Mexico would prove the be the next place. I assumed there I could get about to making more permanent plans (continues tomorrow)