Fun, Free and Fabulous

I won a trip through work to Cabo.  I get to take a guest so I invited my son, Jesse.  I asked him if we should take his sister along.

“No, she’s already gotten to go on a couple of trips with you.”

He’s right.  So we are going alone.  Right now we are on the first leg of the trip from Newark to Houston, Texas.

The night before last I woke up at 2:00 AM.  I could not sleep.

“What if Jesse gets drunk and gets lost?  What if I don’t know where he is?  How are we going to wake up at 1:00 AM to get to the airport for a 5:00 AM flight?   What am I going to wear?  What shoes? What will I eat?  What if I gain weight?………”

The questions did not stop and I never went back to sleep.

Yesterday I was on a noon call.  The name of it is Living the Created Life. It’s an hour call and I hadn’t been able to be on it for a while.  I got on and just started talking.  I told them what was happening with this blog, and that I was going on vacation and instead of being excited, I was worrying.

I compared it to my blog.  If I am just writing for the sheer joy of it, I am in the zone, present and alive.  When I worry about what people will think, how many freaking comments I’m getting, or whether this has value, I am over on the left side of life, upset and miserable.

It’s the same with my vacation.  I haven’t even allowed myself to enjoy the anticipation of the vacation.  I’ve even complained that we have to travel for two days and only have two days to be there.  Ugh.  I would say.  I’m worried about my son. I don’t know what to pack.

Worrying has stolen my joy.  This is a free paid for trip by work.  I earned it.  I worked my ass off to get this trip the first quarter.   So, as I’ve been saying a lot lately, WTF?

Right after my noon call, I got a call from Jesse.

“Let’s create a possibility for this trip,”  he said.

“What a great idea, “  I told him.  “Perfect timing.”

We tossed around a few words for the next couple of hours.  Fun was definitely part of it.

“Ok, I need to be free from worry,”  I said.  So we added free.

“I don’t want to be sitting by myself being unsociable like I have been the last few years,”  I said.  “I want to be part of the community, make friends, and possibly meet a great guy.”

We sorted through a bunch more words and ended up with Fabulous.   What could be better?  It seemed to encompass everything.

So our possibility is Fun, Free and Fabulous.

Normally when traveling, I get into bossy mother mode and I’m not a lot of fun to be around when I’m that way.  I started getting stressed out:

• We weren’t leaving the house on time. I was getting anxious because they told us we had to get to the airport three hours early for our international flight
• We kept making wrong turns and weren’t getting to the airport. My friend us while we were still lost to tell me they were already walking to the gate
• My bag was overweight and we had to open it in the middle of the check-in area and take stuff out.

And I handled it all surprisingly well.  For me, that’s really great.  I wasn’t a bitch the whole time when my ex-husband was driving us there.  My daughter came with us, so the four of us drove to Newark, NJ at 1:30 AM.  And we laughed the whole time.  (That’s why we missed the turns).

I laughed in the airport while waiting for us to board.

I laughed with the guy next to me so far.  He is very funny.  I can’t remember when I last talked freely to the person next to me.

So, Fun, Free and Fabulous.  I am now looking forward to having fun this weekend instead of worrying.  What an amazing concept!!!!!!