I was sitting on the right side of the bus when I caught the first glimpse of the ocean, and my first thought was that I’d made a mistake choosing my seat, because the ocean was on the other side.
Someone a few rows ahead of me had their phone pressed to the glass, taking photos as the water came into view. Then a second thought came, which was that I should be taking a photo too, and that because I was on the wrong side, I’d missed the moment.
A third thought followed, and this one was softer but much more useful: you don’t need to take a photo for this moment to count. The ocean was still right there, and I could see the light shifting on the water. I could enjoy it without turning it into evidence.
I keep coming back to that bus ride because leaving a place isn’t always about knowing you’re done. Sometimes you know you’re done, and some part of you still wants one more sign, one more photo, one more reason to believe the time counted.
In this episode:
- The wrong side of the bus
- The photo I did not need
- Koyasan and the satisfied curiosity
- Knowing when a moment has given enough
“You don’t need to take a photo for this moment to count.” (Damianne)
What if the moment already counted?
I can feel a particular kind of panic show up when a trip is ending. It doesn’t always feel like panic; sometimes it feels like productivity, or appreciation, or the desire to make sure I haven’t missed anything.
On that bus, it showed up as a tiny argument about a photo. The ocean appeared, someone else started documenting it, and my body did that familiar thing of telling me I should be doing that too, that I should capture this and make sure I had proof.
It sounds small, but it’s the same pattern that makes it hard to leave a place even when I know I’m ready. I tell myself that one more photo, one more walk, one more conversation or one more stop might make the ending feel complete, and the danger is that I stop listening to the part of me that already knows what it wants, what I want.
I talked about this from another angle in the episode on being present when you travel solo, because presence includes letting a moment finish when it has finished, as well as paying attention while you’re in a place.
What happens when curiosity is already satisfied?
Koyasan gave me another version of this. I was there for a wood burning ceremony, and there was a point when my curiosity had been satisfied, because I’d seen what I came to see and received what I needed from the experience.
Then I heard another voice asking questions. What if something better happens after you leave? Would it be rude to leave? Does it make you a better person if you see the whole thing through?
This is the voice I’m learning to notice. It can sound responsible or respectful, and sometimes it might even be right. Other times it’s just the old habit of staying past the point where something is nourishing you, because leaving would require you to trust your own read of the moment.
The practice is to notice the moment when you start negotiating with yourself. What do YOU want to do in that moment.
What makes leaving feel so charged?
Leaving can feel charged because we often confuse enough with failure. If I leave now, did I waste the ticket, or miss the best part? And if I don’t get the photo, will I remember it?
Enough is a real piece of information. A conversation can give you everything it has to give, a place can meet you, and the thing you came for can already have happened. Staying longer after that doesn’t make you more grateful, and it can make you less available to what you already received.
I think this is one of the reasons I keep coming back to solo travel as a self-trust practice. When you’re alone, you have to notice your own signals and decide whether you want to stay, leave, pause, turn around, sit down or go back to the hotel, and nobody else can vote for you.
It connects to the same small decision muscle I wrote about in The Decisions That Build a Solo Traveler Aren’t the Big Ones. The big trip is built out of tiny moments where you notice what’s true and let it matter.
Your invitation for this week
At some point in the next few days, notice a moment when your curiosity is already satisfied. It might be a conversation, an event, a museum room, a walk, a meal, or a plan you agreed to before you knew how much energy you’d have.
Notice the point where you’ve received enough, and then notice what happens next. Do you start building a case for staying anyway, or worry about how leaving will look? Do you tell yourself something better might happen if you just keep going?
You don’t have to leave, and you don’t have to stay. The practice is to notice that you have a choice.
Join community
If you want a place to practice this with other women who are also learning to choose themselves, come into the community. You don’t need to have a trip planned, and you only need to be willing to notice where you’ve been overriding yourself.
The community on Skool is a supportive space where you can build momentum, get clarity and start choosing yourself again.