Don’t freak out when everything goes wrong

How I laugh off most of the disasters that happen in my life

“You seem completely unbothered by things I’d have a panic attack about.”

Someone commented this on my Instagram account a couple days ago, and I remember how this used to NOT be the case at all.

I started traveling in 2018, when I backpacked for 2 years across Europe. This was before I had my online business, and I started out with (what I thought was) a fat stack of cash - $20,000…which actually dwindled down pretty fast.

I was anxious as fuck watching my money slowly get smaller and smaller, and I went from traveling in Airbnbs and Western European (aka more expensive) countries, to “slumming’ it” in Eastern Europe and doing everything as cheaply as I possibly could.

I’m kidding when I say ‘slumming it’ because I ended up liking the Balkans so much I lived there for over 4 years.

There were so many bottom of the barrel moments, due to being cheap and broke, and then some things that just happen no matter what when traveling.

And they took their toll on me.

I started to get incredibly deflated every time something would happen.

I felt like the unluckiest person in the world. And of course, I perpetuated my “bad luck” by constantly reaffirming my bad luck.

Albert Anker's "Fortune Teller," via Wikimedia Commons and my meme skills

Since then, I’ve learned to let random shitty circumstances or accidents roll off my back, and *most of the time* I can laugh off just about anything. I even see most things as a fun challenge nowadays.

I’ll share my perspectives and things I do to shift it from panicking into humor or fun (or even just a neutral emotional state), using a pretty bad visa mistake I made just two days ago, that caused me to flee the country (and leave my cat behind) at a moment’s notice. And then turned into a whole 14 hours of one thing going wrong after another.

I kept the “fun challenge” vibe going for about 12 of those hours, and there were two in between where I got duly stressed. And I’ll show how I got out of that too.

Basically, I woke up on Wednesday morning with a plan to pack my stuff and ride the bus from Ho Chi Minh to Cambodia, since it was my last day of my visa before it expired (or so I thought).

I got the packing part done. And then I got to the bus station and bought my ticket. I thought I was all in the clear, since every time I get on the bus I take a risk that they’ll discover Cleo (my cat) and kick me off. But one of the staff even saw Cleo in her little bag and didn’t seem bothered, so I figured I was good to go.

But then they told me my visa had expired and I wouldn’t be able to leave the country.

What??

“No,” I said, “It says right here that it expires on April 16th.”

“No,” the woman replied, “That’s your passport expiry date. Look at the top right of the page. It says April 6th.”

I couldn’t believe it. Usually I have something to say to officials when they try to stop me from crossing borders or getting on transportation or camping or anything else (I’m used to people trying to stop me from the outside-the-box things I do). But this time, I just stared at her, and asked what I could do about it.

She told me to go to the immigration department, who told me I couldn’t leave the country by bus - that I had to go to the airport to pay my fine and fly out. She said I shouldn’t waste anymore time, that I should fly as soon as I possibly could.

Of course, I knew there’s no way to get a cat on a plane within a day; there are too much paperwork and forms that need to be filled out with the exit and destination countries.

• At first, I looked up countries that didn’t require an import permit - there were a couple, but the last-minute tickets would cost over $2,000.

• Then I had the idea to find a caregiver for Cleo, while I just fly out to visa-free country and then come back to get her.

• I went to a nearby outdoor coffee shop where Cleo could run around without me watching her every second, and managed to find a pet sitter for Cleo and a flight to Malalysia for me that same day.

I was tickled with myself for solving this whole issue within just a couple hours of finding out I just overstayed in a country.

I was even more tickled that I didn’t freak out or get pissed, even a little bit.

What got me to this level of calm when disasters hit the fan: