A couple weeks ago, I traveled to San José, Costa Rica for a meetup with my work team. It was full-on work mode, so we didn’t get a lot of time to explore, until right at the very end when we spent a day trekking around a nature park (more on that below). 

At work meetups, I’m usually the one to go to bed first. But one evening, I was in the mood to stay out and chat, and my friend Sam was also game, so off we went for a drink just the two of us. 

We ended up having an epic conversation about life and relationships. It was the first time in a long time that I had the opportunity to brain dump and vocalize a lot of the thoughts that plague me, and I was extremely lucky to have such a loving and thoughtful ear to receive it. An excellent reminder of how important it is to make space for unencumbered quality one-on-one time with people you trust and can open up to. 

I’m sure I’ll have more to share in the coming weeks of what came of that conversation, but for now I’ll say it helped me see clearly areas where I’ve been denying what’s true for me in order to make others feel more comfortable. It’s a bad habit of mine, and one I’ve been working on for a decent chunk of my adult life. Somewhere along the road, I got off track, and now I feel realigned and back on the path. It feels great, and the future is bright!

I’m curious, what’s that lesson for you? The one that you need to keep learning repeatedly, and that when you’re on track with it, your life feels much better? Let me know in the comments below. 

My journey to reconnect to my inner artist continues, and I found small ways to squeeze that into the Costa Rica trip, both during and after. 

You can see snippets of the trip and my artwork in the video below. Enjoy!