Leaving On A Jet Plane Alone

Love this quote, love this book.
I'm hoping this is how I feel next week.

I'm a ball of nerves.
I'm all over the place. 
I'm vulnerable.
You might be saying what's new?  But it's different.  It's more intense.  Because I'm leaving.

In a few days, I will get on a plane heading to the blogging conference, BlissDom, in Dallas.  It will be the first time I've flown alone since 1999.**  Yeah, so when I say it was a century ago that I went anywhere on a plane alone I'm totally not kidding. 
**I've been on a plane since 1999, but with either with my friends or family, never alone.**

Back then I wasn't even married, I wasn't even living with Tim yet but we were dating, I took a jet plane to a conference about software marketing in Palm Springs. Because I was a software marketer and back then software companies had tons of cash and flew their employees to conferences anywhere. While I was there I skipped the group dinners and dined alone reading my book.  I hiked up to the art museum and rented a bike and rode around town, alone.

Back then I knew how to be alone.  I loved being alone.  

When I was a kid I enjoyed being alone.  I would spend entire afternoons riding my bike alone making up stories about the people that lived in the houses and apartments nearby.  I would spend hours swinging alone and sing every single song from the Annie soundtrack.

I was always needed space.  I loved people and always had at least a couple close friends, but I was never a roommate kind of girl.  

When I graduated from college, I got my own apartments and traveled alone to places like Washington, D.C. and New York City.  I loved people watching and museum hopping alone, finding my way around a strange city alone, and then going back to my hotel and ordering take out and watching movies alone.

But now, I don't know how to be alone.  Because I am never alone.
I went from a pretty solitary young adulthood to a household with five other people and now a puppy.  Even though it is overwhelming at times and crazy and loud and nuts and all kinds of sensory overload and exhausting, I love it.  I have adapted, some might say I am thriving, okay nobody would say that.  But I do love it.

This was the chaos that was my weekend:
a lot of puppy time, a school carnival, church, a birthday celebration and more puppy time.

Now when I find myself with an hour alone while the big kids are at school and Wade is in preschool, I rush around trying to figure out what to do.  I usually lose my keys or go the library and forget the book that I was going to return.  I'm unorganized and frazzled and then time is up.


Here's a short vlog I made about my time alone while Wade is at pre school.  (Now of course, the quiet time is filled with puppy time.)


It's been so long that I have had a child on my hip or holding my hand or two or three or four kids in the van with me, it is my normal.  It is my comfort zone.


Of course, I won't be alone at the conference, there will be hundreds of people.  There will be several people that I know and can't wait to visit.  But I will be alone on a plane, in an airport, in a hotel room, maybe in a restaurant, back on a plane and in an airport and then in a car ride home. Sorry to get all Dr. Seuss-I'll-eat-green-eggs-and-ham-in-a-box-on-a-train-in-the-rain-on you, but you know what I mean.  I won't be in charge of anyone else, but me.  I honestly can't even imagine what it will feel like.

There are so many little moments over the course of the last, oh I don't know, 12 years, where I've dreamed of jumping an a plane and getting the f@&* out of my chaotic house full of children and demands.  But now that's it's three days away...
I'm a ball of nerves.

I'm all over the place. 

I'm vulnerable.

I think this is a beautiful poem/video about being alone:

And of course, since I said "leaving on a jet plane" in this post, I had to put up the song.  I LOVE Mama Cass John Denver, I'm totally serious.  I also totally want John Denver's shirt in this video.