First of all, if you’re just looking for the videos and the slide show of my trip to Raja Ampat, you’re almost in the right place. Those are HERE!

If you’re thinking “Raja who?” or “Who cares about your vacation slides?”, then you ARE in the right place.

The enormous luxury of my personal blog is that I can categorically ignore everything I want to ignore about the “proper” way to write a blog post, with the right structure and key words to support Search Engine Optimization to achieve the goals of the organization investing time and money in publishing the post, if all I wanted is a place to publish long form content and share stuff with people I know, and maybe meet some people I’d like to get to know. And be ready for the inevitable slings and arrows from people who might find it and don’t like me.

While my husband and I don’t use the “R” word (retirement), I know I will reach a point where I finally close the doors of my current professional government contracts consulting practice at Summit Insight, and turn my energy and attention to other pursuits.

I harbor the fervent hope that the life I live — my whole life, not just the professional part — can always make a difference in the world. No one needs to lose any sleep over whether we’re trying hard enough for this to be true. Whether or not we realize or acknowledge this, the way the world evolves, and the stories of every one of us unfolds, are inextricably linked.

There are so many places and causes and people and things that need help! It’s easy to despair that the list is so long that nothing any one person does makes a difference. It’s also not hard to look around and find thousands of stories of individuals who know that their choices and actions absolutely matter. That was the lesson of the littlest “Who” in “Horton Hears A Who.” Forgive me if I don’t footnote this and include an illustration.

The only things I can know for sure are that, if we are friends, your list of those things probably has a few in common with mine, and almost certainly has different things, in a different order, than mine does.

I like self-assessment quizzes, though I am careful not to pick those ones that are busy collecting my personal information in order to hack me later. A few years ago, I did a quiz I would have loved to share with you, but can no longer find, that I found genuinely helpful and spot on. The results gave me some comfort when I was puzzling through what I wanted to do and be when I grow up.

This one was one of those four-block matrix models, and I forget what all four of the boxes were. But I remember the one where I really didn’t fit, and the one where I really did. After I finished the questions, the quiz result told me that it might be okay to let go of the idea that the way I could be most effective in the world was by being a Social Justice Warrior.

People who are truly good and effective Social Justice Warriors require a store of patience and resilience and focus (was that a squirrel? which squirrel needs me most?) and dedication and determination and unshakeable commitment that (hello, ADHD brain) I simply lack. I’ve volunteered at various points for organizations as varied as the Girl Guides of Canada, the Junior League of Northern Virginia, the HERA Women’s Cancer Foundation, a reader for the blind, and the National Veterans In Procurement (VIP) faculty, to name just a few.

I admire (and easily feel not good enough when I see) the work of friends I admire who are relentlessly raising funds for hospitals and medical research and communities around me and in the larger world. I do stuff for a while, and then move on to something else. I donate a little bit all over the place, support a couple of artists on Patreon, but I’m not one of those people who picks one big thing and goes all in.

But the role that showed up in the assessment as my happy place was some crossover between teacher and explorer and creator.

And that left me feeling more optimistic: maybe I could pay attention to the flow of opportunities and experiences in my life that give me joy — start there — and by sharing them, maybe nudge one or two people to something that makes a positive difference for them. And be okay with two ideas: first, if that’s all that happens, it’s enough. Second, none of us can ever know the difference we make for someone else many years from now, down their road.

Which takes me to why I am publishing this post and its companion, The Raja Ampat Dive Trip.

I didn’t start out being very comfortable in the water. I sank. I was not a natural swimmer.

I cheated on the Oshawa Centennial Pool Tadpoles test. I didn’t like opening my eyes underwater, which one had to do to pass the test. I watched as the instructors went down the line and asked every Tadpole wanna-be how many of the instructor’s fingers they saw underwater. By the time they got to me, I figured out the system. “Two,” I said triumphantly, with my eyes screwed tightly shut. I still have my undeserved Tadpole badge somewhere.

I will save for another day and another blog post, the entire journey and the stories of everyone who played a part in getting me from Oshawa to Raja Ampat.

Traveling halfway around the world to get here was a long trip that gave me a lot of time to think. And the experience was so rich that I marveled at the whole collection of people and events that chained together to make it happen at all.

To paraphrase the advice from the pen of comic book writer Stan Lee, from Uncle Ben to Spiderman, “With great opportunities comes great responsibilities.” Just being there, I got a view of creatures and environments on our planet that relatively few people ever get to see. I got a profound sense of our interconnection as living beings on this planet.

In order to care about something or someone, you first have to experience it — if not first-hand, then through the eyes and ears and words of someone who can take you as close as you can get without making the trip or having that experience yourself.

Research shows that the benefits of travel and vacation for people are not just the time away, but also (for some, not so much for me, because I get pre-trip travel anxiety) the anticipation of the journey and enjoying and sharing the memories of the experiences.

I have had the privilege of traveling to dozens of places. The Raja Ampat Trip was one for my personal record books: for distance, for the investment of time and money, for the complexity of the activities, for the amount of gear and experience and training and infrastructure it took…and for the raw beauty of what I saw.

I came home and, as I sorted through over two thousand pictures and videos to find the ones truly worth sharing, realized I was feeling a sense of mission.

I wanted to share this with friends who were curious to see, and learn, and maybe, as a result of seeing and learning those new things, consider how they might think and choose just a little differently, in even small ways that might help preserve and protect the enormously beautiful planet that cares for and protects us all.