This is a healing travel blog about leaving before you disappear. After burnout, long weeks, and darker thoughts than I knew how to name, I took a sabbatical and went travelling not to chase destinations, but to sit with the in-between moments. The long drives. The quiet nights. The conversations, songs, and breakdowns that don’t make postcards but change you anyway. I’m not here to tell you where to go. I’m here to tell you what it feels like to keep going when you’re tired, numb, healing, and slowly unexpectedly finding joy again. How I will try to heal being burnt out.
Tonight I’m in London with my youngest daughter, about to watch The Phantom of the Opera.
It has been over thirty years since I first saw this musical. The first time was just after I graduated from university. I remember the hype. It had debuted in Toronto the year before and tickets were impossible to get. Always sold out. Everyone was talking about it.
I remember Bruce Lee once saying that positive words make a difference. Not in a loud, motivational-poster way —but in a disciplined, intentional way. The kind where what you repeat becomes what you practice.
It’s cheaper to dye my hair here in Vietnam than it is back in Canada. That alone makes it tempting. The opportunity is here, now —a chair, a mirror, a quick transformation.
So I ask myself the real question: Do I want dyed hair for the play? Or do I show up as I am gray included?
I am not a musician or musically talented, however songs have been the best trigger for reminiscing my history. When I hear a song, I can flashback to a period of my life not thought of for a very long time.
We were in China when my daughters started humming a tune, trying to Shazam it and come up empty. The melody felt familiar to me, but the words wouldn’t surface right away. Then it came to me, quietly and clearly: “There are places I remember…”
These two songs remind me of my support group on a cruise a group of strangers who, for a brief time, became something more. We arrived from different places, carrying different stories, yet somehow found common ground through shared moments on a ship.
I grew up hearing this song in the 80s, but this week it stopped me in a way it never had before. As a kid, the melody was catchy, almost light something that played in the background of a life still mostly intact. Back then, I hadn’t lost anyone worth being reminded of.
Why does so much music from the 80s keep rising to the surface of my memory? I suppose those were my formative years –the time when songs didn’t just play, they imprinted.
To hint, or not to hint: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the blanks and blunders of outrageous guesses, Or to take clues against a sea of letters, and by solving, end them.
Alright, alright — enough Shakespeare. But if you’ve ever played Wordkle, you know the drama is real. Four words. Nine guesses. No mercy. And in the middle of it all stands a tiny button, glowing with quiet promise: Hint.
