Where did my apples go?

I will be learning from my time in Chile over the next number of years, but one of my more immediate takeaways is that there's a reason why people do these trips in their twenties or their sixties, and not in their thirties or forties.

Going in my mid-thirties made sense to me, especially when I compared my current self to my early-twenties self.  I am more resourceful, resilient, better off financially now compared to then. I had an employer who was willing to hold my job for me while I took a sabbatical (even though I don't work in a sabbatical-taking field), and a friend who wanted to go with me (it wasn't something my husband wanted to do, although he was very supportive of my going).

Also, in my mid-thirties, I had great clarity on the direction I wanted to take in my life and in my career, and felt reasonably optimistic about my options. When I was planning this trip a year ago, I also knew/gambled that it would be awhile before I could do the things I wanted to explore doing, so...why not take the time to cross this thing off my bucket list while waiting for other things to happen or not happen?

There is a metaphor
coming your way

Here's the thing, though. This kind of travel, while amazing, is distracting. And I wasn't in the market for that kind of distraction. The trip took a lot out of me, and upset my apple cart more than a little bit. I stepped away (not completely, but enough) from my relationships, from my household, from my job, from the life that I am in an active stage of growing and maintaining. I lost my roles and jobs in some cases, and parts of them in other cases. It was about three weeks after I got home that I looked at my life through my exhaustion-colored glasses, and saw that not only were all the apples on the ground (some bruised, some rolling away, some carried off by giant squirrels), but that I also had a runaway cart situation. (Dramatic, I know. But that's what I saw).

Although my personal and professional goals didn't change while I was away (in fact, they felt more solid than ever), I was knocked off my game in a way that I didn't anticipate. Have I mentioned that I was worn out when I got home? That meant that I didn't quite have the reserve left to do the exhausting work of tracking down my apples. I don't want to write about specifics, but to further the metaphor a bit more, there were some apples that I was not willing to take back (situations where returning to the status quo was either not doable or not desirable) and other apples that fell into my cart that I didn't want to take back (situations where I returned to the status quo despite not wanting to).  I also felt like I got my favorite/important apples back into the cart right away, but didn't tend to them the way that I needed to because I was distracted by sorting through the rotten apples.

I think I tortured that
metaphor well enough

At any rate, it was a long time before I could sleep regularly, eat regularly, or hold a thought in my head long enough to even start to get back to my self. I will never know if re-entry would have been harder or easier or simply different to in my twenties or not, but I really didn't expect it to be challenging in my thirties.