“Who Cares?! I’m on a cruise!””

In our beloved Cartagena… glistening in the 2000% humidity.

I told myself I wouldn't check social media. Not once. Two weeks, completely off the grid, just me and my newly retired husband on a cruise we'd been dreaming about for months.

That lasted approximately one port day.

But here's what I didn't expect: even my failed version of unplugging changed me.

We boarded in New Orleans in 26-degree weather. TWENTY-SIX DEGREES! The ship was supposed to depart at 4pm, which would have given us this gorgeous 8-hour journey down the Mississippi River delta at golden hour. Instead we sat indoors all day and didn't leave until 6:30 — in the dark — and I woke up twice in the night to look out the window and see absolutely nothing.

And somewhere in that moment of minor disappointment, something shifted. Because my next thought wasn't this is ruined. It was: WHO CARES. I AM ON A CRUISE.

That might sound small. It wasn't. I am a person who runs her own business, leads a community, manages more projects than I probably should, and has approximately 47 things on her mental to-do list at any given moment. "WHO CARES" is not typically in my vocabulary.

But we were on Day 1, and I was already starting to let go.

By Day 2, Dave and I had claimed a quiet corner of the Manhattan Room — an unused dining area at the very back of the ship. We could feel the engines humming under our feet. We watched the wake churn out behind us and disappear into the ocean. We played games. We talked about nothing. We sat in silence.

It was a small piece of heaven, and I think my nervous system didn't quite know what to do with it.

That's the thing nobody talks about when it comes to rest: it's actually hard to do. Real rest — not scrolling-on-the-couch rest, not I'll-just-check-one-email rest — requires you to tolerate the unfamiliar feeling of not being needed. Of not producing anything. Of just being somewhere with the people you love.

We did stairs every morning. We called it "earning the calories." Even on vacation, we had to make it into a metric. I laughed at myself about that more than once.

We upgraded to the Thermal Spa — saunas, hot tubs, a big warm jet pool — and used it nearly every day. We upgraded to the Vibe Beach Club and fought exactly zero people for chairs. Both were worth every penny, and not just because of the amenities. They were worth it because they were decisions we made for ourselves — not for productivity, not for output, not for anyone else. Just because we wanted to feel good.

That's rarer than it sounds.

We swam with stingrays in Grand Cayman. We hiked up a waterfall in Jamaica — literally climbed it, slipping & sliding, and laughing the whole way up. We sweated glamorously through our clothes in Cartagena and had a long, beautiful lunch with dear friends we hadn't seen in years. We white-water rafted in Costa Rica — and I use "white-water" very generously; it was more of a scenic float — and noticed that every tour guide mentioned the same thing: the banana farms you pass are growing "perfect" export bananas that Costa Ricans themselves never eat. No flavor. Just appearance.

I thought about that a lot.

———

The thoughts crept in, of course. What do we need to do when we get home? What's waiting? What did we forget? Wait!? Aren’t the Olympics going on? Both of us caught ourselves going there. But here's what we kept choosing to do: let them go.

Not push them away, not make a mental note, not spiral into planning. Just... let them go. Because thinking about them in that moment wouldn't have changed anything. Nothing back home was going to resolve itself differently because I'd given it mental real estate on a beach in Grand Cayman.

And recognizing that was, honestly, a little startling.

We give so much importance — so much precious brain power — to things that may matter eventually, but are not critical or urgent right now. We let the weight of other people's expectations and external pressures quietly become our priority list, without ever really deciding that's what we want.

Two weeks of deliberately choosing otherwise felt nothing short of liberating.

I came home with a question I intend to keep asking: What if I got to decide what actually matters? What if my priorities were mine — rooted in what I deeply want and need, not in what's loudest or most demanding?

I don't have it fully figured out. But I got a taste of it. And I'm not letting that go.