Sometimes it’s hard to focus on the future and stay positive when the present is so scary. I am choosing to focus on the past and the future. It helps me get through the day as the present is not looking so good. Today I am reflecting on a trip I took with my husband to Panama in late February 2020. I am looking through all the photos I took and tweaking them in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Some of them are simply getting deleted. Looking at all my attempts at that perfect shot and realizing most of them bombed makes me have more appreciation for photographers ‘back in the day’ that had to shoot with film.
One way you can get into a happy place is by creating a photo book from a past trip. I’ve done several in Shutterfly and they’ve turned out well. It is very easy to navigate and for a small fee they will even create one for you! I share them with my family, friends and coworkers.
I hear about people cancelling upcoming vacations and hesitating to plan new ones. The worst thing we can do is to not look ahead. While the immediate future is not rainbows and butterflies, in a couple of months, the future will look much more positive. My advice is: don’t cancel vacations, postpone them. This provides you something to look forward to and also helps out the tourism industry which is greatly suffering right now. Not only are the airlines, hotels, and excursion companies losing money, but many countries such as Costa Rica rely on a large majority of their income from tourism.
And if you don’t have any trips planned, start planning one! I wouldn’t suggest you book it right now, but you can start all the legwork, from researching where you want to go, what to see, looking at hotels, flight prices and options, etc. If you’ve never been out of the United States before, I highly recommend Costa Rica as a first international experience. It’s very tourist friendly and easy to navigate. I have found that Costa Ricans are one of the friendliest people in the world.
I currently have a family trip to Namibia and Botswana planned for this summer. Needless to say, we are getting a little nervous. We have a wait-and-see attitude right now. I am hopeful that things will be better by summer, but if we have to, we will postpone it to later in the year. Regardless, I am looking forward to our trip in the future and staying positive.
One tool that always gets my excitement up and helps me learn more about the destination in advance is wildlife guides and books. I always buy wildlife guides and books before a trip. My latest book Mama Namibia is about a young girl trying to escape German soldiers. Namibia just recently gained independence from Germany in 1990. Some Namibian women still dress in Victorian era clothing influenced from the original German colonists.
I also highly recommend watching videos from YouTube bloggers. This is a great way to see if you really want to visit the area and get ideas on what to do. So, while we are riding out this negative chapter in human history, start living for the future and look at happy moments from the past. And if that doesn’t work, grab a drink and watch Netflix’s Tiger King.