The Importance of Being Ernest

Before leaving home, I mentioned to mum that I felt like I should re-double my efforts this year when it came to communication with friends. I am pretty good at regularly skyping, emailing and texting some people and with others - nothing. It isn't through lack of wanting to talk to these people. It's a mixture of our times not meeting up, me being terrible with sending postcards and the like and both of us being busy. A big one is also that sometimes it feels hard to contact someone without writing out a saga of what you have been doing. A nice thing about contacting my parents is that both of them send me little snippets, sometimes just a link to an interesting website that makes our contact very casual and easy.

 

This is as far as I got on any postcards last year

So I said to mum that I would try to be better with postcards (something I have never been good at) that I would tee up more Skype dates on purpose instead of leaving it to chance, and send more personal emails. Her reply both relived me (because subliminally I knew I wouldn't be able to uphold these aims) and rang true. She reminded me how time after time I had said something similar to this and it had not come to pass, and that it didn't matter. I was away, I was busy and that was ok. Skype when I could and write on this blog to let people know what I was up to. Most importantly she said that I each time I did report on what I was doing, make it sincere. Her words were something like 'Not like some of those accounts on Facebook where you only see a one-sided perspective of who and how they are'.

That is the essence of communicating. Be sincere. When you are travelling it is so easy to spark jealousy in those at home and whilst that might be fine for a certain amount of time, It can become tiresome (unless that person REALLY loves you, or has to love you, like your parents). So tell them when you are having a hard time, homesick, stomach sick, stressed or tired. Don't complain, nobody likes that, but admit  when you are having a down day. 'I'm really loving all the markets in Barcelona, but I'm finding it hard to talk to people in the hostel, I haven't been going out in the evenings because I can't seem to make friends with any of them'. Let them know when they can help you 'I'm missing everyone, tell me what you did for the weekend'. And some advice I could actually use myself, when you think of them, let them know. It is very little effort to post a picture of something that reminded you of them on facebook and say 'hey this awesome kombi van made me think of the ones we always planned to buy!  what have you been up to?'

So although I may not be in constant communication whilst I am away,  I promise that when I am, I will be sincere. And no one should ever be shy about reaching out to me with a newsy message out of the blue, however long it's been since we have spoken. All my love from the very beginning of my journey (Beijing airport), Gemma Xxx