Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

Realizing that you’re not all that into lying on the beach all day feels a lot like getting older. It might just be the exact same thing.

It’s hot, you worry about things like getting skin cancer and sunburning, sand getting everywhere feels quite abrasive, there’s really nothing to do besides drink which will inevitably make you feel terrible tomorrow - the amount of worry and discomfort outweighs the benefit of spending time out there.

It used to feel so easy, so luxurious - there were no worries. Skin cancer was a thing that happened to older people. I could regulate my temperature better, and didn’t overheat so fast. Or, more likely, I was just better at being uncomfortable. Drinking didn’t cause 2 day hangovers.

I miss not worrying about everything. (As I share a picture of this beautiful beach…)

I think that the pandemic has really brought all of this to the surface - we’re all constant worriers now. When this thing first started, we were worried about getting COVID from everything - the grocery bag that the cashier touched, the UPS box that the mailman just brought, even LOOKING at a shopping mall felt like it would give you COVID in 2020.

This inevitably lead to people becoming more afraid of each other, which led to people not connecting as much (if at all) as they did before, and all our lives got more distant, more lonely, more filled with worry and anxiety than it did before. Even if you, personally, weren’t afraid, chances are most of the people around you and the news you watched and the websites you visited were trying to make you feel that way. It’s like all of us, at the same time, aged 10 years and got anxiety about things that never even occurred to us before.

Sun burn? No big deal when I was 20. Sun burn now? I’m for sure going to have to amputate my entire because of this mistake. And now we’re all arguing from our homes about the efficacy of sunscreen, all day, every day.

I think that what the pandemic did was remind us all of our mortality. That we are not invincible. That how long we live is not entirely in our hands - an invisible virus could take it all away in just a matter of hours, and we didn’t, and still don’t really, have a good way to eliminate it. We’re still fighting this thing, over 2 years later.

I think all of that combined - the general anxiety that came-outta-nowhere slowly over time until it just became me - made the area that we were staying in Bali very unattractive to us. We were in Seminyak, in an absolutely breathtaking villa right next to the ocean, and all we could think about was how bored we were.

There just wasn’t much for us to do that wasn’t lying on the beach. The anxiety of getting a sunburn, of being too hot, led to us reverting to the unhappy hermits that we had been before.

When did we become so overly cautious?

After intending to surf every day the entire week we were there, Lisa got out there once. Shortly after, we bounced out of our villa early, and headed to Ubud. It turned out to be the perfect thing for us - exactly what we needed. No beaches, lots of amazing restaurants, still humid as heck, great places to explore via motorbike, and incredibly friendly people everywhere. A fully different experience, very far from the beachy-relaxing-boring paradise we were at just a day before. Even navigating the chaotic, busy, no-rules-apply roads here felt exciting again, after having not ridden a bike since our time in Chiang Mai.

I guess travel just changes over time, as you grow older. And that’s ok.

But man, I miss feeling invincible.

Videos This Week

In this video, we spill ALL the tea about why we’re traveling with our parents, and what it’s like.

In this one we try to not ruin our parents vacation.

See you next Sunday…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

P.S. - We gave our website quite a facelift, and added some new, very interesting stuff. If you made it this far into the email, you’re the first to know about it :)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs last year, you’ll likely be interested in our Skillshare course on Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles. It’s been really taking off lately, but we still have a few uses of this link left for those of you who want to see the class for free. It comes with a free month of Skillshare, which is more than enough to watch our class and any of the other great courses on there!

Check it out here: https://skl.sh/lisaandjosh02221

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