I recently went on the Eurostar tomorrow to Belgium with two of my womb-fruits, Jay and Paris.
It was Jay’s idea - he asked if I fancied going somewhere for a little break because he was itching to sit somewhere and have a coffee that wasn’t the UK, and we decided Bruges would be good - one of the selling points being that it’s apparently one of the most beautiful cities in the world - it’s a photographer’s heaven.
Jay’s big into his photography - an award winner, don’t you know! He sells his stunning framed prints of the landscapes he walks in on his Ninebarrow website (shameless plug).
Anyway, the second selling point of Belgium (and the most obvious one for me) is the chocolate.
I’ll be hunting down delicious treats like a sniffer dog in a return flight queue from Colombia.
I’m planning on doing enough walking whilst we’re there to avoid needing to book an extra seat for myself on the way home, but also hoping to rabidly face-plant as many heaps of truffles as I can without being arrested.
Unusually for me, I’ll be travelling with just one rucksack for the two day trip.
Many people reading this might not think that’s such a great achievement, but it’s a big step forward for me.
In the past, if there had been Overpackers Anonymous, I’d have signed up immediately:
“My name’s Vicki, and I’m an Overpacker. I get so overwhelmed trying to decide what I should wear, and so anxious about leaving crucial things behind, that I pack my entire winter and summer wardrobes (including my own hoardryer coz hotel hairdryers are shite) in an inappropriately enormous case.”
I’d rather have had the pain of paying for more luggage and towing it around in a sweaty mess than sit with myself long enough to make a plan to pack like a normal human.
A little weekend bag was, for me, a 20kg security blanket.
Maybe it’s another way ADHD manifests in me, but whether that’s the cause or not, I’ve been looking for solutions.
One of the strategies I find has helped my need to overpack is to make a checklist of all the things I really do need to pack whenever I go away (washkit, chargers, vitamins etc) .
I keep that list on Google Keep, but any list app with tick boxes, including one you can print off if you don’t like using digital versions is good.
Also, the biggest gift I can give myself is a decent amount of time to pack.
I need lots of time to think and process weather forecasts, itinerary etc, so leaving things to the last minute will almost guarantee I’ll go back into 20kg security blanket mode again and still forget something important.
I’ve been working on this packing thing for some time now.
It’s a relatively slow thing to fix because the requirement to pack a bag doesn’t happen every day, but I feel as if I’m making progress.
I may never be perfect, but at least I feel as if I’m tackling the weakness head on and doing something about it.
It’s one of the reasons we made sections in a journal for “Was there something you could have handled better today?” and “How are you going to handle this better next time it happens?”.
We’ve all got little things in our lives that trip us up…
…things that many other people find easy but just seem to be our Achilles Heel.
What could you work on this week?