Bringing Stillness Home
Rest and explore like your on vacation.
Paris, France
This world is busy. Everything moves fast, and at every moment it feels like we need to move faster than the next trend, the next person, and the next app just to stay relevant. I love to travel, and it appears as if I’m always on the go—always busy. But in truth, I travel to be still—to be present.
It’s hard to be still at home. There are bills, ideas, and endless distractions. I scroll more, so I consume more, and then I think more. My mind races with thoughts of how I can be better. How can I make my space prettier? How can I work out to achieve a certain body type? My time is occupied with endless thoughts of change and movement. Very seldom do I just sit and be.
Traveling gives me the opportunity to sit back, absorb my surroundings, and simply exist. These are the times when my current body type will have to do. I’m not worrying about laundry, bills, or the two thousand unfinished projects waiting for me at home. I’m just enjoying my time—the environment, the experience, the moment of where I am. This is why I love to travel: time slows down, I slow down, and these are the moments when I really feel alive.
Unfortunately, I can’t travel 24/7. I have to return home—to reality. But what has become clear to me is this: I need to bring the stillness and peace I find while traveling back home with me.
I ditched a schedule for an at home itinerary.
As I write this, I find myself wondering—am I contradicting myself? An itinerary and stillness feel like opposing ideas. But stillness isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about doing less and noticing more. It’s about the space we give ourselves to breathe, absorb, and enjoy the moment—sometimes a very simple moment.
As an ADHD girly, putting my brain on pause is a struggle. All of my tabs stay open. I’m never really multitasking—just switching from one page to the next. One idea, one project, one form of entertainment after another.
Building an “at-home itinerary” works because it gently tricks my brain. Calling it a schedule doesn’t work—my brain doesn’t like that. Schedules feel forced, and forced never feels fun. Traveling, on the other hand, has taught me how to plan with excitement. The anticipation alone motivates me to follow through and actually experience what I set out to do—whether it’s the pleasure principle or just a dopamine hit.
When something is on an itinerary, I rarely consider skipping it. I know my time in that place is limited, and I may never return. Can you imagine planning a trip overseas only to stay in your hotel room scrolling on your phone or rewatching an old Netflix series? Yet, that’s exactly what I’ve done at home. A dance class I planned to attend—skipped, simply because I didn’t feel like leaving the house anymore. Maybe the dopamine from my phone felt easier, more immediate, than the thing I had intentionally planned.
But a recent life event gave me a sobering reality check: we assume we have time. We believe we’ll get to it later—that we’ll go eventually, try it again someday, or start when the timing feels right. And if we’re lucky, we do. But time is not guaranteed.
So when I return home, I like to remind myself to put local adventure on my list. I dont always need to be out of the country to experience adventure, culture or nature and conciously be still in these moments. I can’t say that I’ve perfected it. But learning how to be still at home and disregard to desire to “progress” in one area or another has done wonders for me. It’s realizing, being home does not mean I need to constantly be in “level up” mode. I’m not sure if I’m the only one that feels this way, but I’d like to hear how you practice “enjoying life” and “being still” outside of traveling.