Getting Ready to Get Ready

What it’s like to get stuck on the decision highway

I have the same green cargo pants in three different versions.

James Perse. Velvet. Frame.

All green. All cargo. All the same. And yet, I’ve convinced myself, different enough.

I’m headed to Rwanda. Gorilla trekking. And to meet Aline.

I met Aline through the Africa Yoga Project. AYP empowers marginalized youth in Africa through yoga, leadership training, and employment.

I mentored her remotely for years, once a week on a screen. That was years ago. It changed her life. It changed mine. This is the trip where I finally meet her in person.

Even writing that makes me cry.

I’m anxious. Nervous. Excited. All of it rolled into one.

So yes, I have been preparing.

Not by packing. I haven’t done that.

By shopping.

I keep looking. Keep ordering. Keep deciphering.

The gorillas will not notice the difference between the subtle variations of my green cargo pants. I am fairly certain of this. And my travel companions? They came for the gorillas. Not my fashion show.

I know this.

And yet.

I keep curating. A capsule wardrobe for what I’ve decided will be a perfect trip. Every piece considered. Every shade of green accounted for. As if the right pants could guarantee the right experience.

It’s the perfectionist in me. The part that believes if I get the preparation exactly right, the thing itself will follow.

So I prepare. I order. I prepare to prepare.

And then, because apparently I wasn’t done, I bought a camera.

A real one. The kind that takes a beautiful photo, in the right hands.

Mine are not yet the right hands. I don’t know how to use it. Which means I now have a new project… learning the camera. And that’s layered on top of a trip I haven’t packed for, in service of capturing a trip I haven’t taken.

The suitcase is still open on the floor.

The piles are still piles.

But the Amazon cart is full. Still waiting for more. Still waiting for me to push Place Your Order.

Here’s the part that gives it away.

This week I’m leaving for Washington, D.C. I’ll pack for that the night before. Somehow that one seems easier. A trip that’s days away gets the night-before treatment. A trip that’s weeks away gets a capsule wardrobe and a camera I can’t operate.

The closer it is, the less I fuss. The farther it is, the more I prepare for it.

I’ll let you sit with what that says about me. I’m still sitting with it myself.

This isn’t just about packing.

This is Getting Ready to Get Ready. The hamster wheel. I’ve been on it a while now. It’s exhausting.

We all get caught up in it at some point. Starting to write and over-editing. Planning that turns into weeks of indecision. The minute you open Instagram, it hands you another idea. Another place to go. Something else to try instead.

We are flooded with information all the time. Too much information becomes the decision highway stuck in traffic. Like being on the 405 in LA for hours.

The cart fills. The wheel spins. The trip doesn’t get packed.

If I’m honest, the wheel isn’t just exhaustion.

It’s fear.

The part of me always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The part that thinks if I prepare enough, maybe nothing drastic happens to take this moment off the map.

As if planning could keep the worst from arriving.

I know what it looks like when something gets taken off the map. I’d rather not see it again.

The fourth pair of green cargo pants isn’t going to make the trip happen. Packing will.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. If you’d like to see what survived the wheel — the things I now take on every trip without thinking — vote below. I’m honestly curious whether it’d be useful to anyone but me.

P.P.S. I write about the patterns we don’t see until we name them.
Motherhood. Marriage. Grief. The roles we keep playing. Tuesdays and Sundays.
Follow along. I am always editing… something.