When I was younger my family moved a lot (about 11 times in 18 years, about a year in each house until my parents bought the last house and I lived there for 7 years). I’m going to college now, so I’m able to quench my wanderlust more easily, since I live in apartments with my boyfriend. We moved from our first apartment to our current apartment in January, and now my wanderlust is definitely setting in. I have to wait until my boyfriend graduates in May before we can move, though, so my dreams of moving are just distracting me now.

Half the enjoyment of a trip for me is the anticipation. So, when it occurs to me to day dream about how awesome Puerto Rico will be, I let the dream flow. It makes me happy and keeps me positive. Which, when you think about it, helps my productivity. I am a pretty unscheduled person, so I would never schedule wanderlust, but I can see someone making time for it if that is how they roll. But, not me- bring on the wanderlust, I’ll make sure everything else is done too.

I live in Vancouver, otherwise known as the wet coast. We had six weeks of snow last year, over Christmas. But many years we don’t get ANY. Think of Gray’s Anatomy, set in Seattle. That’s us, too. Constant rain.

Canada is a big, diverse country. Not all of it’s cold. Not all of it’s snowy.

Sorry to sound so grumpy because I otherwise ADORE your blog. It’s supposed to rain here from tonight to Monday. Ugh!!

I’m only semi-retired, so I do have to stay in places for long periods of time (no more than four to six months) to refill the coffers, but in between ‘staying put’ stints I get a lot of miles under me. Anything is more bearable now that I know nothing is permanent and that I’ll soon be on my way to new sights.

I also find it helps me live in the moment more. Since I know that I’ll be leaving a place rather quickly, I don’t get complacent about getting to know it as thoroughly as possible.

Within my traveling lifestyle, I also aim for one really special trip that gets me out of the daily grind. For the summer of ’09, the trip was a hike across the Chilkoot Pass and for that of ’10 it’ll be a drive up the Dempster Highway to Inuvik. This winter, I’m combining pleasure and business by housesitting for friends, which has enabled me to come to Vancouver Island, a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Getting the RV here is expensive, but six months of free rent are really going to offset that cost.

Right now, I work about nine months of the year and I want to whittle that down to six months so that I can spend the other six exploring the warm winter climates of the southern US and Mexico.

Looking really far ahead, I would like to one day replace my 31′ RV with something much smaller that I could ship to Europe!

So, how do I keep my mind from wandering? I find that living the life of my dreams really helps keep me in the present.

–Well, if I stop to plan anything about them, I’m really letting me distract me. At that point I have a choice to either jot it down and follow up later, stop what I should be doing and focus attention on this bright shiny object, or simply discipline my mind to stop the monkey-chatter and focus.

Do you plan all of your vacations, regardless of if you take them?
–No, I don’t spend time planning things like vacations until I’m committed to doing them. It’s a waste of time and energy.

If I have a thought (“gee, it would be nice to spend Christmas in Maui”), the most I do until I commit to the trip is to add it to my “list of cool things I’d like to do someday.”

Do you plan for other things you dream about and want to do?
There are different stages of planning. I might loosely plan for something by adding it to my vision board or as a line item on my “list of things I’d like to do”.

But as I said above — I do not spend ANY time planning anything concrete until I’m committed to making it happen in a specific time frame. (or actively working on committing to it at a specific time, like say looking up plane tickets to see what the going rate is to Maui at Christmas to see if it’s feasible.)

Do you do the same things with worries?
No. I spend as little time as possible giving worries free rent in my head.

How do you keep your mind from wandering when it should be focused?
–Discipline. Setting a time limit to be done with X and then I can go focus on the bright shiny thing.

So this year we’re doing a week in Sedona for DH’s birthday; next year it’ll be a week in Vegas for my birthday; and the year after it’ll be a week either in Mazatlan or in Hawaii, for our 10th anniversary. Lucky us! I loooooooove planning vacations.

I’m of the opinion that if it’s going to be cold and blistery, I should at least have snow and skiing to enjoy.

Me too, and I live up north! For those of you who lust for sunny, snow-covered mountains in the winter, I’ll offer this: up here in Vermont it doesn’t precipitate all winter long, sometimes it’s just bitterly cold (15F) and dark (the sun goes down at 3pm) and sometimes you get hail instead (ow!). Moreover, there’s different varieties of snow–the kind that’s good for skiing is pretty rare.