As a traveling boudoir photographer, I spend about 9 months of the year on the road—yes, I travel a ton. One thing that many travelers don’t consider is managing their self-care on the road, but when you’re spending the majority of your time away from home, finding accommodations and routines that work for you is so important! In today’s episode, I’m sharing five of the most important steps I take to maintaining a healthy self-care routine on the road.
Review the Show Notes:
Self-Care on the Road:
1. Schedule Massages Often (2:37)
2. Stay Hydrated (4:57)
3. Consider Food (Pack Food, Room Service, Hotel Restaurants) (6:49)
4. The Hotel Accommodations – Bathtub, Pool, & Hot Tub (8:41)
5. Daily Gratitude (10:43)
Review the Transcript:
Welcome to some place for everybody where we talk about belonging and being a human in our bodies in living in and learning to love our bodies. I’m your host, Carly someplace. This podcast is brought to you by someplace images Good. Well for everybody, you can see the full show notes at someplace for everybody.com. Now, let’s change some self perspectives.
Hi, y’all. It’s Carly someplace. And as usual, I’m so excited to chat with you today. So, today, I want to talk about something we’ve tacked on. And we’ve touched on just a little bit before, but I’m incredibly excited to elaborate on it a little bit. So I want to talk about self care. And again, I feel like this is a topic that I’ve done quite a bit about. But I think it’s such an incredibly important thing for every single person, everybody. So you may or may not know, but I travel a lot. Pretty much the only person that I know that travels more than me is my friend who’s a flight attendant. So that’s something I average, I would say about eight to nine months of travel a year in destination locations for my photography, business, as well as trips for personal travel, different things like that. My love of travel absolutely came from working on a cruise ship. Well, okay, my love of travel was so incredibly elevated. By working on a cruise ship, I woke up in a new location every single day, and I will forever chase the high of just being able to be in all of these beautiful, phenomenal places without having to actually go anywhere, I’m getting to sleep in my own dang bed. But I digress. So I spend a lot of time on the road. And specifically, at the moment, if it’s something is on the west coast, I will drive to it. So I spend a lot of time in my car, I spend a lot of time in hotel rooms, I spend a lot of time on flights, if I’m going anywhere, I will say east of Colorado.
So in general, I would say that I’m pretty used to life on the road and life on the road can be kind of rough sometimes, like sitting in an airplane sitting in a car sitting all day long is such an incredibly hard thing on your body and you don’t even really think about it. A couple of weeks ago, I had major swelling in my ankles, it’s really hard for me to wear compression socks when I drive it’s a little bit easier when I fly. But when I drive, I’m like, No, I don’t want these on. However, there are so many important things that are all around self care that can be completely easily added into a travel schedule. So one of my biggest things that I do for myself for self care, and maybe this sounds super bougie you can tell me I’m super bougie that’s okay. I schedule massages as much as I possibly can. It’s a way for me absolutely to relax. It’s one of those things that I can find in almost every single city. I really love like super deep tissue involved with a lot of stretching. So one of my favorite places, is in general, anywhere that offers a Thai massage, or like a Thai Swedish combo, different things like that.
I can find this in almost every single city that I visit and it’s so incredibly easy to call and get an appointment usually same day, in order to just be able to relax. I find myself doing a lot of this after sessions or after an incredibly long drive or knowing that I’m going to have an incredibly long drive coming up. So being able to schedule something like that being able to just walk in and get a massage and just let my body relax and let my body feel relaxed and feel pampered. It’s honestly otherworldly. It’s such a nice thing. This really stemmed from when I went to Bali with my friends a few years ago, we got off our plane immigration took way longer than we thought it was going to however, we had booked massages for when we got to the villa that we were renting and we got there we were exhausted we’d been traveling for about 2426 hours completely just like so jet lagged so tired. So everything I had booked us to our massages which in Southeast Asia is quite affordable. If you’ve been there you know what I’m talking about. So we had misuses show up to our house and massages we had two hours blocked off. After that experience.
I’m literally just feeling like butter after having been traveling all day being through airports, long layovers, massive timezone changes. It was so nice to be able to just sit down and actually relax. It started our trip off. So phenomenally amazing. And I will never go back. Anytime I have an international flight. Now that is one of the first things that I do and that I scheduled for myself, knowing that it’s going to help my body one adjust and to relax. It’s a huge, huge thing for me for self care. And like I’m saying a lot of places can be super affordable for this. My second tip, and this may be it just goes for everybody. In general, for self care while being on the road, and having this crazy life that I lead is hydrating, so much hydration. Being able to take my
gigantic water bottle with me pretty much everywhere, and just being able to hydrate specifically before I go to sleep and first thing in the morning, obviously yes throughout the day, but like changing climates, being on planes, being able to, you know, just do all of this other stuff. Water, y’all. Water is important. I know, we know this, but I think that we forget it a lot. And I think that where when we travel, we let ourselves have these allowances of like, being able to eat different things and being able to try different things that we’re not doing. But the biggest factor is hydration. So being able to stay hydrated, being able to drink out of the same water bottle that I drink out of when I’m home and I know I’m consuming the right amount of water for my body is a huge, huge thing in order to let my body adjust and to take care of myself. Plus, the more water you drink, obviously, it’s going to help your body in so many different ways, not just while you’re on the road, which is why it’s a kind of an all around tip.
But especially when you’re traveling, the travel everything. If you’re not drinking enough water during travel days, or vacations or trips, it’s huge. And it’s gonna make you feel absolutely exhausted, it’s gonna make you feel so slow and gross. You’re gonna have, especially if you’re actually like vacationing, and doing things like that vacation is a time that we let ourselves splurge in so many different ways, whether it be drinking different types of alcohol that we don’t usually do, going out for cocktails, or just eating food that’s like super rich and super fantastic by trying new restaurants in places that we’re at. And the key factor for regulating so much of that in our bodies is definitely water, so much water. So my third tip has to revolve around food. So and this is maybe this doesn’t seem like self care at all. But this is self care to me, because I know that when I’m traveling and I’m absolutely exhausted, I am not gonna want to like go find food. So it’s really important to me to book spaces that are either so incredibly close to restaurants. So if you’re booking an Airbnb, and there’s a cute downtown that you can go check out. Or if there’s like a restaurant next door, different things like that food within walking distance is amazing. And beyond that food in hotel rooms, I am such an advocate for hotel restaurants. Most of the time, they’re pretty decent. In some places, they’re pretty freakin phenomenal.
And sometimes they even have like amazing rating systems. So in order to be able to go and do everything that I’m doing all day, and if I am shooting sessions, or if I’m running around, or if I’m doing anything, I generally am taking that time when I’m not actually working to myself. And being able to order room service or just walk downstairs and grab a meal is such an incredibly important thing. And it helps me care for myself. I don’t know about y’all, but like when I’m working and when I’m like going crazy on the road eating is not the top of my priority list, I just have so many other things going on, I’ve got I can’t even tell you so many different factors. So eating is like I don’t eat until I start viewing. So in order to make that so much easier on myself on for me for self care is being able to order something that either I can walk next door to pick up or walk downstairs to pick up being able to make those small changes just for myself, knowing how I travel. And everybody travels differently, maybe that’s not a big deal for you. Maybe your trips are based around food, maybe your trips are based around trying these amazing restaurants. And that’s phenomenal. But for me having that access is so incredibly important. Another big factor that I look for generally when I’m booking hotels, or I’m booking spaces that I’m going to be staying in for a little bit is for me, y’all, I’m a bathtub person. I love a bubble bath.
And I love love, love a hot tub. So finding a hotel that has a nice hot tub and pool, finding a hotel that has decent sized bathtubs, so that I can take a bath after a long day and read my book or listen to a podcast or listen to an audiobook. Knowing that these are things that helped me relax and helped me feel like I’m actually caring for my body. Instead of just taking a shower. Don’t get me wrong. I like some really nice showers too. But like if I truly want to relax, being able to take a bath. It’s so important to me. And being able to take a bath obviously is very different than being able to get in a hot tub somewhere.
When I’m looking for private spaces like Airbnb ease and such, I will look for things that have a hot tub. It’s awesome. It makes me feel like I can just relax, sit back, maybe drink a glass of wine or in the morning, drink a cup of coffee and just chill out and it just lets me have a different mindset for the day. It’s so important to just be able to unwind wherever you are in any way. And if it’s not a hard job or if I’m Got a hotel, again, that bathtub factor is super incredibly important for me, I know everybody’s going to be different on this on the way that you feel like you get to relax, maybe it’s having the biggest bed you possibly can, maybe it’s having those things. But when you’re looking at these spaces, it’s really usually worth the money to have that small upgrade, to be able to care for yourself better in those small ways, and make everything that you’re doing feel like it’s about you, as well as about whatever else is going on.
Yes, they’re definitely commodities, but they are definitely things that make me feel better in my body, they helped me relax, they helped me care for myself, they give me time to unwind, I would call that pretty important. So my last self care tip is actually something that I challenge you to implement in your everyday life. Every single day, my boyfriend and I tell each other three things that we’re grateful for right before we go to bed, we’re ending our day, on a note of gratitude. And I think that it’s such an incredibly powerful habit to get into, to be able to change so much of what you’ve got going on. If you are on the road for a vacation or anything like that. It’s really easy to like, be like, Oh, my gosh, we had so many exciting things happened today, and then this and this, and this and this and this. But it’s also really incredibly important to reflect on the gratitude for those things, and what got you there, I found that just doing this practice, every single day in my regular life, obviously, I do it while I’m on the road as well. But doing this every single day makes a huge difference in how I find myself feeling good when I’m falling asleep. And when I’ve had a hard day, and it’s really hard to find, you know, the second grateful thing that the second thing that I’m grateful for, or the third thing that I’m grateful for, I know that being able to sit and find and dig deep and find those things that I am grateful for, is going to make me feel better in the long run.
And I feel like sometimes you would be like, I don’t know if that’s self care, Carly, but it truly is. So whether you do this with somebody who holds you accountable, or you just have a tiny little notebook, or even notes in your phone, those are all ways that you can take this small step and acknowledge what you’re grateful for. And by doing that, be able to care for yourself and see what comes up over and over and over again, that you’re grateful for, be able to lean into those things, be able to find things that you are grateful for that you didn’t really realize you were especially again, while you’re traveling, there’s so many overwhelming things, if you’re just on a trip for yourself, or vacation, even if you work from the road like I do, finding things that you’re grateful for every day, and speaking them into the universe is such an incredibly important thing. So I hope you’ve enjoyed just a few of my tips of what it’s like to be on the road. And to take these small things and use them as self care for yourself. I know that these are things that obviously I do and maybe they don’t all all apply to you. But that’s okay.
Everybody is going to have things that really makes their life feel better while they’re traveling. And being able to care for ourselves and give ourselves things that we want and that make us feel better in our bodies. Even if that’s just from you know, relaxing aches and pains, different things like that. It’s an incredibly important factor in being able to sustain a busy life. For me, it helps me sustain this life that I have on the road so much. And it’s just caring for myself, it’s putting myself first in almost all of these scenarios, which is something we all struggle with to do, because we’re taught not to. So I encourage you to go ahead and lean in to these things that make you feel better while you’re traveling things that give you anything, I give you permission to do these things for yourself and to find ways that you can practice self care anywhere. I would love to hear some of the ways that you all care for yourselves as well. When you’re traveling or when you’re doing something. Feel free to send me an email, shoot me a message on Instagram, any of those things. And while you’re at it would love if you would like us if you would follow us if you would rate and subscribe for the podcast. There’s so many different factors, share this episode with somebody and be like, Hey, you traveled a lot. Maybe you should take these things into consideration. I appreciate every single bit of what y’all do. And I hope that when you’re traveling, you can find some things for yourself and you can care for yourself in these ways, even when you’re not traveling. Very important. So have a great day, y’all.
Thanks so much for listening to someplace for everybody. If you love this episode, would you mind leaving me a review on your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the show. If you’re looking for a community to live on you and support you and your self love Journey, come join our all gender Facebook group someplace for everybody which can be found in the show notes at someplace for everybody.com Until we meet again, be kind to yourself.
