A Reflection on Vacation
Tags: Lessons Learned, Vacation, Leadership, Reflections, Partying

Photo by Tatiana Rodriguez on Unsplash

I’m back from my trip from Puerto Rico and Miami and man was it a wild one. Puerto Rico was exceptional. I loved the people, the places, the culture and the food. Miami is a bigger city of vices than Vegas is and it was nice as well but I don’t think I would want to go back there anytime soon. I want to stick to countries outside of America to travel to from now on or go without friends. Although I deeply enjoyed visiting these places with my friends, the drinking, the vices, the lack of certain sober sightseeing was not working out well for me. I wanted to go to these places to see the people, the culture, taste the food and such. If I wanted to drink and go to a bar, I could do that at home. With that exception, my trip was awesome.

I also felt burdened by certain expectations that people had of me for organizing this trip. But I now take that lightly as I can unequivocally say I did the best with the information I had, feedback I received, and my personal tastes and interests. For this reason, a trip size with people more than 4 is too much. There is too much coordination required, not everyone gets what they want and are unhappy because of it, and the organizer is left being the one to blame. And honestly, at this point, I would rather solo the trip to accomplish everything I would like to instead of waiting on others and relinquishing some of my interests to satisfy the herd. Thats one thing I learned on this trip, make it smaller groups and make it with people that have similar mindsets and interests going into it. But when you have to be a leader, be a leader. If you make mistakes, man up. But you can’t always make everyone happy.

Another thing I learned was you can save a lot of money by not partaking in Vices, Renting rather than Uber’ing, and Hosteling rather than Airbnb’ing or booking hotel rooms. In the last variant, you can also meet new and interesting people which is great when you are looking for things to do and people to tour this new area with.

I also want to say how lucky I am that I got the opportunity to visit these places. I am truly grateful for the numerous gifts and blessings I have in my life that sometimes I take too lightly. I have an able body, I have money in my account, I have wonderful friends, and I have a wonderful and supportive family. All these blessings allow me to do all these wonderful things that I would like to do and now it’s time to give back to those that give so much to me.

But most of all, I want to say that this long trip will be the bang that I finish my vices with. I’m done with this party all the time, childish, mentality. I’m a grown man now. I need to act like one. I need to be more responsible and get ready for the next stages of career, life, love, and family. This is the end but also a very good beginning to what will blossom to be an amazing life. I can truly tell it will be a wonderful life I will live. I feel it in my head. It will be hard. I will have to make a lot of sacrifices. But I will live it like a man. I will do the things I already know I must do. It’s time to get real.