Wembling
I don't know if anyone was on the edge of their seat waiting to hear if we decided to go to Paris or not, but the answer is...probably not, but we haven't fully ruled it out. In other words, we are still wembling. As a matter of fact, we happened to watch an episode of Fraggle Rock yesterday that pretty much nailed what it feels like.
See, the thing is, there's actually very little stopping us from deciding to pick up and fly to Europe. We can currently afford it, our work schedule is pretty light (we think; we're working on a project right now that has us questioning that, but so far it's still okay)...and those are really the main things that would prevent it.
...Oh, except that apparently the US government may or may not be shutting down very soon, and until we saw a news article about it this morning, it never even occurred to us that that would affect air travel. Now we know that if the government shuts down, technically so does TSA. They'll ask people to go in to work anyway, but for no pay, so most of those people will decide to be "sick," and who can blame them? So that's a new wrinkle that we're choosing not to stress out about, because we've decided not to stress out about travel either way.
But back to Fraggle Rock. There is one other thing making us hesitate to travel, and it's good old-fashioned fear. We sat down to think about it last night, and our conclusion is that it's probably our social anxiety ramped up to max levels. We've been to Paris now, so the "unknown" factor is significantly diminished, and we even really liked it there! So we have nothing to be afraid of really, except for people. People are a constant. And they are scary. And fear is irrational.
I'm pretty sure there's more than one episode of Fraggle Rock that addresses fear, but this specific one was the Beast of Blue Rock. Gobo was going to go fight the Beast of Blue Rock, and he asked Wembley if he wanted to go with him. Wembley did sincerely want to go, but he was also terrified of the idea, which made him not want to go. So Gobo was waiting for him to decide, and he was like, "Well, what do you want to do?" And Wembley replies, "Could you give me a little hint?"
And that's pretty much exactly how we feel about our most recent Paris plan. We don't know what we want, because we're scared. Then add to that the normal stress that goes with traveling--booking flights, booking hotels, packing, plus the added hecticness of it being the holidays... It was getting to be too much.
Ultimately, we decided not to stress out about it. If we suddenly find ourselves thinking, "Actually, yes! We definitely want to go to Paris!" then maybe we'll go ahead and see if we can still get a flight and hotel, but for now we're just going to focus on going up to visit our family for Christmas...and ill-advised pre-Christmas traditions.
Today I'm thankful for season two of Fraggle Rock starting off with lots of Wembley songs, making pretty okay progress at work, shiny Rayquaza, our fancy new wristwatches, and getting to sleep in tomorrow.
See, the thing is, there's actually very little stopping us from deciding to pick up and fly to Europe. We can currently afford it, our work schedule is pretty light (we think; we're working on a project right now that has us questioning that, but so far it's still okay)...and those are really the main things that would prevent it.
...Oh, except that apparently the US government may or may not be shutting down very soon, and until we saw a news article about it this morning, it never even occurred to us that that would affect air travel. Now we know that if the government shuts down, technically so does TSA. They'll ask people to go in to work anyway, but for no pay, so most of those people will decide to be "sick," and who can blame them? So that's a new wrinkle that we're choosing not to stress out about, because we've decided not to stress out about travel either way.
But back to Fraggle Rock. There is one other thing making us hesitate to travel, and it's good old-fashioned fear. We sat down to think about it last night, and our conclusion is that it's probably our social anxiety ramped up to max levels. We've been to Paris now, so the "unknown" factor is significantly diminished, and we even really liked it there! So we have nothing to be afraid of really, except for people. People are a constant. And they are scary. And fear is irrational.
I'm pretty sure there's more than one episode of Fraggle Rock that addresses fear, but this specific one was the Beast of Blue Rock. Gobo was going to go fight the Beast of Blue Rock, and he asked Wembley if he wanted to go with him. Wembley did sincerely want to go, but he was also terrified of the idea, which made him not want to go. So Gobo was waiting for him to decide, and he was like, "Well, what do you want to do?" And Wembley replies, "Could you give me a little hint?"
And that's pretty much exactly how we feel about our most recent Paris plan. We don't know what we want, because we're scared. Then add to that the normal stress that goes with traveling--booking flights, booking hotels, packing, plus the added hecticness of it being the holidays... It was getting to be too much.
Ultimately, we decided not to stress out about it. If we suddenly find ourselves thinking, "Actually, yes! We definitely want to go to Paris!" then maybe we'll go ahead and see if we can still get a flight and hotel, but for now we're just going to focus on going up to visit our family for Christmas...and ill-advised pre-Christmas traditions.
Today I'm thankful for season two of Fraggle Rock starting off with lots of Wembley songs, making pretty okay progress at work, shiny Rayquaza, our fancy new wristwatches, and getting to sleep in tomorrow.