I was traveling to see my 94-year-old grandmother for a fairly impromptu family reunion in the middle of a farm land in Central Illinois, when the flight attendant for my regional flight to Chicago got on the PA and welcomed us aboard.

I leaned forward to the row in front of me and whispered to my brother, “Is Casey Kasem our flight attendant or what?”

Last summer my husband and I went to St. Maarten, started new jobs, moved apartments with approximately 10 days lead time, packed up our old place and schlepped it all over to the new place in about 22 hours in a uhaul van, unpacked, bought new furniture, and started an intense onslaught of meetings and ‘big picture initiatives’ at our new jobs.

It was a little daunting, if not completely overwhelming. If not outright exhausting to the core. All wonderful things, but a lot happened in about a 2.5 month period. The ebbs and flow of life felt more like a damn bursting.

I had elaborate intentions of updating my blog with long, intimate posts about Iceland and Norway — the food, the culture, how we felt about driving around the volcano Eyjafjallajokull, the guy we met who wanted to talk hotdog condiments with us, the ash from the volcano the souvenir stands were selling, seeing how the locals lived their day to day lives and how it’s changed me.

Instead I got seduced by the ‘far away’ mentality where being severed from your core surroundings and having nothing to listen to but you inner thoughts and perspective took all precedence. And I acquiesced to it willingly.