Creator journal / 1 day until the next adventure
One day until
we leave.
Laundry, carry-on math and a very real pre-trip spiral before Finland, Tallinn, Stockholm, Donegal and Dublin.
The honest update: we leave tomorrow, and I am in a full panic. I have laundry to do, bags to pack and an alarming amount of faith that nearly two weeks of life can fit in one carry-on and one backpack.
Tomorrow, Mikey and I leave for Finland, Sweden, Ireland—and a ferry detour to Tallinn that somehow became part of the plan when I was already struggling to emotionally manage the original plan.
Right now, though, I am not thinking about Helsinki or Stockholm or the cliffs in Donegal. I am thinking about laundry.
I am thinking about whether I can fit clothes, camera gear, charging cables, medication, toiletries, weather layers and the vague possibility of looking good in photos into one carry-on and one backpack.
The carry-on tribunal
This is the part of travel where I stop feeling like a person with a cinematic itinerary and become a man standing in front of an open suitcase asking, “Do I really need four black shirts?” The answer is obviously yes. They each have a different job.
I want to travel light. I want to be the kind of person who calmly zips a backpack, grabs a passport and walks out the door like he has never once panic-bought travel-size toothpaste at midnight. Instead, I am making piles around the house: things to wash, things to pack, things to charge, things I am afraid to forget and things that may not make it through the final carry-on tribunal.
What I actually want
Underneath all of that is the real feeling: I just want everything to go smoothly.
I want the flights to cooperate. I want the bags to fit. I want the weather to give us at least a few good moments. I want the cameras to work, the ferry to be fun, the food to surprise me in a good way and the whole thing to feel as beautiful in real life as it has in my head for months.
Travel is exciting right up until it becomes logistics. Then it is a tiny bit of magic held together by laundry, battery packs, boarding passes and pure delusion.
Tomorrow, we go.
And once we do, I am making you a promise: I will show you more than the postcard version. The good shots, obviously. But also the airport stress, the weird snacks, the moments that go sideways, the things we almost missed, the bad coffee, the tiny details and whatever happens when two grown men try to live out of a backpack without starting a fight over who packed too many shoes.
Finland first. Then Tallinn by ferry. Then Stockholm, Donegal and Dublin.
Today: laundry.
Tomorrow: the story starts.