Dispatch from the road

Today, I'm flying to Bangalore. I'll be away from home for the following two Fridays as well. I thought about getting some blog posts prepared ahead of time, but despite my good intentions I did not do it. So today I'm back to the old school style of blogging, where I just wing it. I've been packing since last weekend. I get really stressed out about forgetting things when I travel, especially for a longer time, and especially to foreign countries. Apparently this kind of travel anxiety runs in my family. But, to be fair, my fear of forgetting things is well-founded. I have forgotten some pretty spectacular things. I don't even want to tell you but just think about what you need to cross borders or attend weddings and it's that kind of stuff. Weirdly, once I'm on the road, literally just through airport security, I get pretty calm. Like a switch goes off in my brain when I have done everything I can and now matters are beyond my control.

While matters are in my control though, I try to deal with my fallibility by overpreparing. I look up the weather where I'm going and write out my outfit for each day. I have a re-usable checklist of electronics and documents. I try to think about all the things I'm going to need to do on the trip and things that I liked or didn't like on previous trips and bring or not bring those things. I've been meaning to do post-trip retros of my packing lists about what I actually used and wore. I kind of did that with my last trip to the East Coast. Trips I take regularly get easier because I have a sense of what to expect and, if it hasn't been too long, some memories and notes about what I did to prepare before.

Bangalore is not on my frequently traveled to list. This is only my second time, and last time was 5 years ago. Since this part of my travels is a work trip, there was a lot of additional stuff to do, like getting a visa, to start with. As I walked around the house picking up and organizing things to take, checking and cross-checking lists, after a while I think I started to even stress out my cat. She kept coming into the room where I was packing to check on me. Sometimes she meowed, in a tone I recognize from when she comes in to my study when I'm working. Eventually she jumped on top of the back of the couch and observed me from a height while crouching awkwardly. Don't worry, I tried to tell her, I'll be back.

I'll try to post interesting things about what I see while I'm traveling. But if I can't do that, I'm just going to keep posting anyway.