be nice
"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." John Templeton
How wild is this?
One of my true pet peeves is the lack of pleasantries these days.
It takes nothing to ask someone how their day is going, to say “hi, how are you?”
Instead, we are met with “Can I take your order?” “Do you have a reservation?” upon walking up to a counter or into a restaurant.
Last week, my mom and I went to my favorite restaurant in Sacramento, Camden.
We walked in and were kindly greeted, as usual.
My mom was being so nice.
I actually caught myself thinking “Ugh, let’s get sat.”
WHAT.
WHY?
Is 32 seconds of kindness going to kill me?
The juxtaposition of my pet peeve to my internal response was not lost on me.
Now, add that I am intentionally residing in a foreign country for the next 6 weeks, and they are so pleasant, and I freeze like a statue every time someone asks how I am in Greek.
My brain immediately thinks, “Bien, y tu?” And I remind myself I’m not in Mexico, Colombia, or Spain.
Sigh.
And not sure if any of you use Duolingo, but I find the passive aggressiveness of that little bird to be annoying.
So, I made it to Greece.
It’s phenomenal.
The energy here is just so good and so in alignment with me, and who I am.
If you get it, you get it.
I feel lighter, happier, more grounded, more content.
My travel day to get here was one for the books.
When I have a long travel day, I kind of disassociate. I start somewhere, end up somewhere else.
But this one…whoo!
My flight out of SFO was 3 hours delayed.
This did not bode well for my 90 minutes in between flights.
JetBlue rebooked me on an American Airlines flight, but it didn’t leave until 6:15pm (originally was supposed to be on a flight at 8:45am, we landed at JFK at 9:45).
So, I spent 9 hours wandering JFK.
The American Airlines flight landed 10 minutes before my flight to Thessaloniki was set to take off, so you can assume correctly that I missed that one, too.
Got on the phone with British Airways, and the only other direct flight to Thessaloniki was via the other airport in London, Gatwick.
So, I took an hour bus ride there.
Spent 90 minutes in line to check my bag (it was utter chaos).
And still had 4 hours to wait before my flight took off.
Yay.
I fell asleep on a bench in the airport.
Thankfully woke myself up.
How you may wonder?
Snoring.
Arrived in Thessaloniki, called a cab, got in, and he immediately got pulled over.
Like we didn’t even drive 2 feet, and the cop was on foot!
He got off with a warning, but it was a lot of yelling in Greek and at that point, all I could do was laugh.
I made it to my apartment 45 hours after I had left Sacramento, and just as the sun went down.
I hustled down to the water and caught the last colors melting from the sky, and then went to one of my favorite bars to have a Negroni and officially be “here”.
It feels like I never left, yet also seems like it’s been forever, but I have been very comfortably getting back into my routine I created last year.
I have slept great, and am working really hard on the podcast relaunch.
July 10th is going to be here in the blink of an eye, and I am so excited to get this out into the world.
Stay tuned!
Until next week ✨
Yes, indeed!