09/05/2022
I’ve been delaying posting this one for a while. Some honest insight for a not-so perfect Instagram world. Sometimes I can get pretty anxious when adventuring solo, I love travelling but at the beginning of this particular journey in Norway, I found out that everything was really not as I’d hope it to be… especially from the Instagram pictures I kept seeing of how great Norway is… instead, I found out the day I arrived, after having booked this a while ago, there would be no sunshine, it was going to be grey clouds and raining pretty much at every single location I was going to…. I let it bother me a lot, tbh more than it should. I thought I might not see any of the breathtaking views Norway had to offer. Over and over I kept thinking I had wasted my money on a place I wasn’t going to even experience, I was worried I made a bad choice…. This thinking was what got me pretty damn anxious in the first bunch of days, and it really affected how I was thinking generally, it was stressful, especially as I had left a job recently at the time and was continuing to bleed into my savings for this trip … I actually hardly ended up even seeing any of the sunshine views anyway, maybe brief glimpses. For the first bunch of days there I was really uncomfortable because of all this. It might sound ridiculous, but I felt let down by Norway and that I was going to be stuck here having wasted my time…
A few days of trying to fight through and break out of this anxious repetitive mindset, I remembered something.
Sometimes ‘adventures are a little uncomfortable’ - something Bilbo Baggins once said from LOTR…
Then, slowly, I began to appreciate the crappy weather, the peace of it, to also laugh at it, and enjoy what I can get… seeing that Norway is kinda great, rain or shine. I’m glad I got to see the ‘ugly side’ and not the picture perfect version because by appreciating its not so perfect side, I got to appreciate even more the short moments where the grey clouds parted and the sun shined through to reveal the country’s beauty. I am grateful for this.
Thank you Norway, I think writing this bloody long caption about you officially means we’re in a toxic relationship now 👀🥵🇳🇴