Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa and Josh!

Soundtrack for this newsletter - Ramblin’ Man - Allman Brothers Band

Just a few months ago, I was terrified of flying.

With the release of our 2nd Camino de Santiago documentary about our experience walking the Camino Portuguese early last year, we’ve had a lot of thoughts and insights about why we keep walking it, and why it’s so important to us.

I don’t want to overstate it, but every single time that we walk that thing, we end up with at least one massive life-and-perspective-shifting epiphany. I know that might sound lofty-AF, but it’s true.

I started off this last one fighting a totally out-of-the-blue and crippling fear of flying. Can you imagine that? A travel youtuber afraid of flying? Right? It just doesn’t make sense.

Nothing significant had really changed in my life - I had just been slowly acquiring more and more stress as the year went on from everything going on in my life, and right before the Camino it apparently hit a boiling point. I couldn’t even get on a plane without having a series of mini panic attacks, and then during the entire flight I’d just be sitting there simultaneously cursing every tiny bump and incorrectly thinking that somehow I could fly this thing better than the actual professional pilots with decades of experience.

Yes, we’re talking about control issues coupled with a sudden deluge of anxiety in a fear-filled situation. Talk about an explosive concoction.

I had to turn down the volume of the anxiety in my life, or else I was gonna blow.

I came to the Camino, like so many do, hoping for answers. Solutions. Space and time from the problems in my life. An opportunity to just… walk it all off.

And it worked. I’m still not entirely sure how. I’m convinced the Camino is magic.

As we were planning this Camino, we decided to do the whole thing in an entirely different way. This time, we’d do it for fun, for tourism, to experience other cultures, their food and wine, and we might look inward, or connect deeper spiritually - or we might not, we’ll see.

It was an act of removing expectations in the hope of reducing the stakes. We had such a rough time on our first Camino because we had such an overwhelming amount of expectations about it. It had to be tough. It had to be punishing. It could never be fun. It was going to be all about grinding through some gigantic personal life problem from start to finish. It HAD to be transformative.

Setting up anything like that is bound to fail - the Camino doubly so.

People do this thing for all sorts of reasons now - they come here to connect with their faith, but they also come to lose 20 pounds, or have the most amazing 2 week bar crawl across Spain, or give themselves space from their current lives and problems to work through some stuff, or meet incredible people from all over the world, or just straight up take a nice hiking vacation, or because they have a few days off of work and want to hike and drink wine and eat delicious food, or literally anything else.

So, we came in wanting it to be fun, and we dropped any expectations of transformation.

But still, I was hoping, really hoping, that it would help.

So we headed out on our Camino, and it DID feel entirely different.

Objectively, the Camino SHOULD be fun. It’s a beautiful walk through some of the coolest and most unique parts of Europe, with incredible food and wine and people, all done in just about the most sustainable and local way imaginable. In many ways, it’s the perfect vacation, and we’re probably going to do this thing every year from here on out.

The miles and days just flew by - we walked and walked and walked, and it was easy.

There were moments of difficulty, and boredom, and sadness along the way - but, for the most part, it was an incredibly beautiful, simple, straightforward 2 weeks walking across Portugal.

And still, somehow, without applying all that pressure like we did on the first one, without feeling like we needed to fight tooth and nail against ourselves and our inner demons, without striving for change every step of the way to Santiago, I got the thing I wanted.

There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, I’m sure of it.

Did it come in the form I was expecting it to? Absolutely not. Did it feel like some major shift? Nope. It was a gradual, glacier-pace process of slow disconnection from all the things that were causing the anxiety and, in turn, the fear of flying.

I didn’t know how much I needed what the Camino had to offer. Disconnection, simplicity, a tangible feeling of accomplishment. A reduction of daily worries down from literally anything I can think about to just 3 things - walking, eating, sleeping. A release of my incessant need to control things that just don’t need to be.

So as we made our way to the finish line of the Camino, and saw the Cathedral - the mood was celebratory instead of tinged with disappointment.

And then, when I stepped back on a plane, it felt like getting on a plane should feel - exciting.

The fear was just… gone. Good riddance.

We had to let our expectations go to let the Camino in.

That’s the Other Side of the Camino.

Scholarship Update

So much to say here! We’ve gotten 22 applicants so far, and more are rolling in every day! We’ve got some really amazing people who just need a bit more cash to make their dreams come true, and it makes us so excited to be able to help out.

We’re just under 1/5th of the way to being able to give away another scholarship to another amazing college student.

If you’re feeling generous you can donate here, or just sign up for our Patreon and 10% of all revenue we get from there goes directly into the scholarship fund, and we match that 10% out of our own pockets.

This whole thing is just incredible, and we’re just so damn proud of this community for stepping up and helping college students make their study abroad dreams come true.

What else are we up to?

Editing and writing more videos! That’s literally it!

Today

Right now I’m writing this as Lisa is editing the first pass of our 2 Weeks in the Philippines on a Budget documentary. It was so fun, we can’t wait to show it to you 🙂 

The (Near) Future

Philippines. Dubai. Probably a bunch of podcasts.

Our Latest Videos

This is a documentary about our Camino that we walked last year. It’s an entirely different story from the individual videos we put out about it last year, made from a lot of the same footage. You’ll see 🙂 

All the best Tokyo stuff, most of it off the typical tourist path. Give this one a look :)

Vietnam left a big mark on us, and we can’t wait to go back.

See you next week…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs 4 years ago, you’ll likely be interested in our Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles course on our Patreon. It’s included with any level. Check it out here.

https://patreon.com/lisaandjosh

Also, here’s a cute cat :)