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I flew back home to Chicago last weekend for my grandma’s 88th birthday. This quick 4-day trip included an over-the-top Paris-themed birthday party, deep dish pizza with friends, a concert at a Beer festival featuring my cousin’s band Sidewalk Chalk as the headliners, and a bit of nostalgia.

It was full of laughs, quality time with loved ones, and a few self-realizations. Even something as small as going back home for a few days can give you a fresh perspective that you can use to continue pursuing your dreams.

hometown

Lesson #1: Appreciate where you come from, but don’t get stuck in the past.

I am and always will be a proud Chicagoan. But when people ask me if I’d ever move back, I quickly reply “no”.

Don’t get me wrong; I do love and miss my family and friends (and I really miss the food), but my career path is more sustainable in Los Angeles, Nashville or New York. It just so happens that life brought me to the West Coast.

I would be setting myself up for failure if I traded in my aspirations for familiarity. A little nostalgia is cool, but life is all about change and growth. Why spend so much time looking back when there’s so much to look forward to?

Lesson #2: True friendships can survive long spurts of non-communication

I have a few friends that I hang out with whenever I visit. It usually involves food that I can’t get in LA: sometimes pizza, sometimes BBQ, sometimes Chicken & Waffles. This time I was only able to link up with a few of them, but we were able to hit up Gino’s East for some deep dish pizza.

Like clockwork, once salutations have been expressed (yes I used the word “salutations”), we jump right into conversations as if no time had ever passed. These are the people that will be around for a lifetime: if I get married, they will be there. If I have kids (and that’s a big if), they will have a league of aunts and uncles.

Even though our lives have changed in various ways over the years, and even though we don’t talk as much as we used to, the camaraderie is still there. That’s the test of true friendship: going months without talking, then jumping right back in as if you spoke hours before.

Lesson #3: The older you get, the less sleep-deprived you can be and still function

I’m still pretty young, but I’m slowly realizing that I can’t do certain things that I used to be able to and remain functional. I had the bright idea that I would catch the first flight back to LA on Tuesday morning and go straight to work.

It was roughly a 9 hour trip between waking up in Chicago and landing in Burbank. While it’s accurate to say I made it into work okay, I was barely functional after 12:30… 3 hours into an 8 hour shift.

At 22 I could work a full day, take a red-eye back to the east coast with minimal sleep and remain functional the next day. Right now? With my schedule, I’m just now recovering from last weekend’s trip. Granted, it could be because I ate fried chicken and pizza almost every day I was there. Still, I don’t like it.

Lesson #4: There’s no better life teacher than travel.

There will always be excuses not to travel. Work has been increasingly crazy, the cost of living is going up, so on and so forth. Yet, this brief trip made me realize something: traveling allows me to recalibrate and refocus while experiencing life outside my bubble.

From the road trips around the US to the triathlon trips to Jamaica, cruises around the Caribbean to the high school trip to Spain, I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t experienced different cities, countries and cultures throughout my life. At the same time, there are so many other places that I want to experience in this lifetime. Focusing solely on my career and bills caused me to lose sight of that.

It is wise to save for a rainy day (so don’t go cleaning out your accounts and booking tickets to Fiji), but there has to be a balance. We should work to live, not the other way around. Even if it’s a quick 2-day trip to the next closest major city to you (for me, that’s San Diego), you have to regularly venture out of your routine.

From my friends making fun of my curmudgeon ways to my cousin using a kiddie swing set as monkey bars, I thoroughly enjoyed my time back home. Then again, it’s time for me to continue working toward my ever-growing list of goals. Hope all is well in your world and that you’re doing the same.

Peace and Love,
O

grandma-and-me

Orondé

Orondé Jenkins is a multidisciplinary artist and media consultant based in Nashville. No Average Journey was born out of his desire to help artists grow in their lives and careers.