LIttle Challenges

It took me 2.5 hours instead of 1.5 hours to get to my hotel last night. This was partly because I got hit with the stupid stick again, and forgot to buy a map at the airport or get one from the hire car desk, partly because I have a fundamental objection to Sat Nav (it seems to make people switch off their brains), and partly because the Tolls here are evil and if you don't go in on the right side, you come out onto the wrong road, which I figured out a little too late.

As I was driving along having rectified my mistake, I was reminded of a comment an aquaittance once made to me. She said "Oh, you're so brave to travel alone, I could never do that." I explained that I had had to travel abroad, on my own, for my job, since I first started working when I was 23, and I didn't see anything "brave" in it at all. Brave is putting your life on the line, or facing up to your greatest fears, not travelling to a foreign country on your own.

I will admit though that it sometimes gives one little challenges. I could have had a cab for the 130km journey each way, but to me that seemed a waste of money, so I hired a car. Yes, I got lost, but I stopped at a petrol station, asked someone and figured it out. It's about setting myself a little challenge and not taking the easy way out. I'm glad I do that, because if I hadn't spent the last however many years setting myself these little challenges and meeting them, I wouldn't have believed I had the strength to face the bigger challenges that came my way, and I also don't think I would have been able to take that final step and challenge myself to make my spanking dreams become a reality. So every time I do get a bit lost in a foreign country, or worry about attending an event I don't want to attend, I don't panic, I'm just thankful for another little challenge... because who knows where it might lead? (In this case it was leading to the east coast of Spain when it should have been leading to the west, but hey...!)