Postcard #1: I Got the Dream Life, then Forgot how to Enjoy it

I always thought once I got the dream life—traveling full-time in a van, chasing the Pan-American Highway, waking up in epic places—I’d finally be happy. But here’s the plot twist: I got everything I wanted… and still felt like a mess inside.

In this episode, I talk about the emotional side of van life that rarely makes it into the Instagram captions. The quiet pressure to “make the most of it,” the guilt of not feeling grateful enough, and the realization that external freedom doesn’t fix your internal stuff.

It’s part travel diary, part emotional spiral, and a reminder that healing doesn’t stop just because your surroundings are beautiful.

We’ll talk about:
    •    What happens when the dream life still feels heavy
    •    Travel burnout and mental health on the road
    •    Learning how to slow down, reconnect, and actually enjoy the life you worked so hard to build

If you’ve ever chased something big and still felt stuck or unfulfilled, you’re not alone. This one’s for the overthinkers, the travelers, and the humans trying to figure it all out.

This is Postcards I Never Sent. Thanks for being here

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

So here's a wild one. I got the dream life I always wanted and forgot how to enjoy it. Seriously. Waking up in wild places, tea with mountain views, driving wherever we want, that kind of dream. Hey, I'm Krista, and welcome to Postcards I Never Sent. I'm currently somewhere in a van between Alaska and Argentina, emotionally and geographically. This podcast is part travel diary, part spiraling, mostly human AF. This is where I say all the things I never put into captions, the conversations I was too scared to have, and the thoughts I scribbled into notebooks that never made it to the mailbox. It's not about pretending I have the answers. It's about sharing the mess, the magic, and everything in between. I'm just trying to make sense of it all and maybe help you feel a little more seen in the process. This episode is a bit of a backstory but also an honest look at what happens when you finally get the life you wanted and it still doesn't feel like enough. The dream was real. I wanted to do van life since high school. The freedom, the adventure, the waking up in the middle of nowhere type of vibe. And somewhere along the way, driving the entire Pan American Highway became the ultimate dream. From Alaska to Argentina, that was the goal. I mean, who doesn't want to go on an epic road trip through more countries than you can count on both hands? But for years, I was too scared, too broke, too unsure. Then I met Will, and everything kind of aligned. We had the same dream, the same drive, and suddenly I was in it. Living the life I used to dream about every day. But here's the thing no one tells you. You can have the dream life and still not feel good. You can be surrounded by epic mountains, turquoise water, and freedom, and still feel numb. Or worse, like you're failing at being happy. Over time, I realized if your inner world is a mess, your dreams can't fix it. So let's back up a bit. My love for travel started in high school after a few trips to resorts with my family, but a trip to Panama with friends and a biology teacher is what made me fall in love with real adventure. This wasn't a regular vacation, like a sitting on the beach, tasty drinks, and all-you-can-eat buffets. It was a life-changing trip for me. There was a whole group of us, me and some friends, that decided to go on this trip when we heard it on the announcements. We're like, heck yeah, that sounds awesome. It was originally supposed to be to Peru, but then after we'd signed up, about a month later, the biology teacher changed it to Panama, and we're like, what the heck's in Panama? Like, weird. We weren't fully on board with Panama, but we had already signed up and we're like, you know what? We're going on an adventure. And it turned out to be one heck of an adventure. We explored rainforests. We went to the middle of nowhere, to the Embra village where there's just people living off the land and living in little huts, no technology and not much connection to nature. like regular life like us they're just in the middle of nowhere it was like an hour long boat ride down a river and it was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had we went to the sandblast islands we jumped out of the boat in the middle of the ocean and went snorkeling we heard howler monkeys in the jungle and saw all kinds of animals and we learned about them because our teacher was a biology teacher and we had a tour guide and it was the most epic trip I'd ever done and it still lives in my heart and it's still one of my favorite adventures I've ever been on. So after that trip I decided I wanted to take a gap year or try van life but I was told that I should probably go to college first. So I did. I picked something I was slightly interested in, dropped out, tried again the next year, dropped out again, then I worked in a again a few years later, finally graduating with a social service work diploma. Somewhere in between all of that, I lost myself in toxic relationships. One where I felt like I had to earn love. Where I felt like I had to change who I was to fit their life better. Where I had to become smaller and quieter. My anxiety and depression got worse. My confidence tanked. My self-esteem was completely diminished. I even gave up my dream life for travel because they simply didn't have the same dream. I also had a beauty YouTube channel back then. It was growing and it was something I actually enjoyed for a time. It replaced my dream for travel because if I couldn't travel, I needed something else. Then one day it got terminated. randomly and unfairly. It crushed me and it felt like my life was falling apart. Probably sounds a little bit dramatic, but it was my new dream and it was being ripped from me just like the last one. My partner at the time said, crying won't fix anything and it's just YouTube, find something else instead. I know, that's super helpful and super supportive, right? I ended up leaving that relationship a few months later. But yeah, years later, YouTube actually admitted that they'd made a mistake and terminated me wrongfully against their own terms of service after I tweeted at them like a hundred times with their TOS saying, you wrongfully terminated me against your own TOS. Give me my channel back. And this was years later. I literally did not want my beauty YouTube channel back. I'd I just wanted to be able to start a new channel. Because once you get terminated, apparently, you can't start a new channel. But yeah, I just wanted to start a new channel. I wanted it to be a travel channel, which is now called Krista's Compass. So going back to where we were, I had a new dream. After my YouTube channel got terminated, I decided that I wanted to work in film and try acting. It's a little far-fetched, but I thought I'd give it a shot. So I moved to Toronto. I took a shot at working in film. I had a few gigs as a production assistant and a few as a set dresser. And I actually enjoyed it. I even helped with a small indie film with some assistant directors who work on The Expanse and some other fairly big TV shows that are filmed in Toronto. Which also almost led me to taking a mentorship to become an assistant director. I mean, that's pretty wild. Two of them even wrote me a letter of recommendation. I don't remember why I backed out exactly, but I ended up backing out. And then I just didn't have the motivation to get out and find other films at work. My inner world was still a wreck and I spiraled hard and went through probably what I'd say is the most low period of my life. At that time, I would lay in bed until 2pm until I finally would decide to get up and move to the couch to watch Friends. I would lay on the couch until about 2am While binge eating the crappiest foods, I'd cry a lot, a lot of the day, and I barely ever left my apartment, and I would say the meanest things to myself. I actually low-key hated myself. I was a mess, and nobody knew it. Friends was the one thing that kept me going and would put a smile on my face. It's now my comfort show. As soon as I finish the series, I put on the first episode of the first season again. It's just always going on repeat. At some point during my spiral, I remembered there was a nice nature park called High Park a few subway stops away, so I went. Something inside shifted, I felt good, and I felt more at peace being out in nature. I went back again and again, bringing my camera, and I finally reconnected to what I loved. Nature. Adventure. and my love for travel. Not long after that, the premiere of Game of Thrones, the final season, was airing, and it had become a family tradition to watch it all together, so I decided to take a quick trip home to watch it with my family. I did not want to miss that. I felt so sad missing that, so I had to go. And on the bus ride home in the middle of the night, I remember waking up an hour from home. It had just snowed. The sun was just rising. And the snow was glistening beautifully on the trees. I teared up. I would have sobbed if it weren't for the 30 other people on the bus. That would have been super embarrassing. But a quick weekend trip home turned into a week, turned into a month, and then two months, and then it just turned into staying home. I made a few trips back to Toronto for some gigs as a set dresser, but other than that, home was where I was staying. At least for now. Over the next few years, I had lots of ups and downs. I got a part-time job. I quit to travel solo full-time. Then COVID hit. My plans, like many others, got obliterated. I was so close to having the dream life, and it was ripped from my hands right at the last second. So I was feeling pretty crushed. I'd actually... quit my job and I was going to meet a couple of friends in Bali and spend a couple months there. Then I was going to go to East Java, Komodo Islands, a bunch of places in Indonesia. And then I was planning to head up to the Philippines and spend several months there. And then from there, I didn't really have a plan. I just knew that I was going to be traveling full-time solo and I was scared shitless, but also super stoked. But yeah, COVID sucked and it was scary for a my job back but full-time. Eventually when COVID settled down I was told that I'd have to go back down to part-time. I enjoyed the job but having my income drop 60% wasn't really ideal so I had to get another job. I ended up finding a good job within my own community which I stayed at for about two and a half years and during all this time I had more toxic relationships resulting in worse self-esteem and self-worth issues. I started having brain fog and And feeling fatigued, headaches, stomach pains, my heart would race for no reason. I felt empty inside every now and then. I would toss and turn until 3am more often than not. Sleep deprivation was my middle name. It got worse and worse as time went on. I started to feel how it felt back in Toronto, except I had love and support around me. I didn't turn to my loved ones for support, but just being around them helped me enough. As things opened Ended up, I went on a few trips with a friend and then planned a trip on my own. Then I met Will. We quickly realized we had the exact same dream while watching a meteor shower in Washington State. We both wanted to live the van life and travel the Pan American Highway, the longest road in the world. We decided to do it together. Van life, full time. About six months later, I left my job and my family behind. It was one of the scariest and most difficult things I've ever done in my life. Leaving a somewhat stable job was terrifying. It provided me with at least a little bit of stability in my life since my emotional stability wasn't so great. But leaving my favorite people in the world and knowing that I'd be missing out on my nibblings growing up was the hardest. I discovered nibblings is a really cute word for nieces and nephews so now I use it all the time because it's pretty awesome. But this was my dream and it had been for at least 10 years. So I had to do it. We hit the road and And we finally began my dream life. Now don't get me wrong, van life has been amazing. I've been to so many incredible places, went on some pretty cool adventures, and met some very interesting people. But it's also been really hard. I was still dealing with the same internal struggles, and I didn't understand why. The fatigue, brain fog, stomach pains, 3am wake up calls to pee, tossing and turning for hours before finally falling asleep, daily headaches, none of it went away. I felt irritable way too often. I think a lot of the go-go-go travel lifestyle we began with didn't really help. I didn't have time to rest and I felt a lack of control. We needed to learn that this was a lifestyle, not a never-ending one-week vacation. I just remembered sitting in a crazy beautiful place and just wondering why the heck am i feeling so crappy like why am i sad why do i feel so empty i'm doing exactly what i want with my life but yet i'm sitting here looking at these beautiful mountains and i all i can think of to do is just cry and it felt really crappy like my head's screaming at me asking me why aren't you enjoying this but All I can do is wonder what the heck's wrong with me. I just didn't understand why I was still having the same problems. After a while, I started to think something was seriously wrong with me. Like, actually. So, five months into our travels, I finally saw a doctor in Whitehorse to get some blood work and explain what the heck was going on. I took note on my phone of all the issues I was dealing with physically and mentally. He gave me two questionnaires to fill out and a form for blood work. The blood work came back normal, apparently, and the diagnosis? Moderate to severe depression and anxiety. Of course he had already told me this was the likely issue before sending me for the blood work, but he still sent me anyways to be sure that nothing else was going on. He gave me a pep talk, suggested a book, and recommended therapy. Honestly, I don't know that I was really relieved to know. I think I was more relieved to find out that, you know, I don't have some serious internal issues like physical issues. I just felt... kind of weird and kind of like okay I guess I was right all this time like my suspicions were right I just didn't realize that it could mess you up this much um Will was super helpful he was super supportive and he was like well you know what we'll do whatever it is that you need to do to get better we ended up going to a store and getting like five different um vitamins for me to take, like supplements, and I got a neti pot. Don't ask me why I got the neti pot. I just always had a stuffy nose, and I was like, okay, neti pot's gonna help with this. It's gonna solve a lot of my problems. And so I got a neti pot. I used it twice, and then I got rid of it. It's pretty miserable to use, to be honest. But in all honesty, it didn't hit me all that hard. I wasn't shocked. not in the slightest. I already sort of knew that that was what was going on. But like I said, I just didn't really realize that it would affect me in that many different ways. It was just sort of a confirmation and sort of a wake up call at the same time. But I finally accepted that I needed to deal with the internal struggles. But at the same time, all I could think was like, how could I be this unhappy? I have one of the most loving and supportive families you could ever imagine. I have a great partner, a few really good close friends. My childhood wasn't traumatic in the slightest. Like, what the hell's wrong with me? I'm literally living my dream life. I live in a van. I'm in the Yukon. I'm seeing new beautiful places every few days. I'm traveling the Pan American Highway with someone who has the exact same dream as me. Like, it can't really get much better than that. But I kept thinking, wasn't this supposed to fix me? And that thought scared me because it still meant I had work to do, even here. It's one of those things where you think, once I get this, I'll be happy. Once I achieve this, I'll be happy. Once I can do this, I will be happy. But I guess that's not true, after all. And what makes it harder is feeling like I should be happy. That toxic little voice that says, you have nothing to complain about. Other people would kill to have this life. Or, so many people have it so much worse than you. Which they do. I so know that. Believe me. I know. That voice doesn't make the emptiness go away. It just makes you feel guilty on top of it. But that's the thing. Depression doesn't care about your highlight reel. When your brain's chemistry is off and your past has convinced you that you're not enough or too much or just wrong, you carry that with you. Because as it turns out, you can't escape your inner world just by changing your view. And if you're in the thick of it like I was, and sometimes still am, this next part's for you. You're not alone. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. anyone has ever hurt you in the past, that doesn't define you. It doesn't define you. You are not what they say to you. You are who you choose to be. How someone has treated you in the past does not define you. It just speaks loudly about their own character and the type of person that they are. Just because someone treats you like you're worthless it doesn't mean that you are worthless. You can literally have everything you wanted and still be struggling. Because if you don't heal what's underneath, the dream life can feel just as hollow. You see it in so many celebrities. Fame, money, beauty, still deeply unhappy. Because their inner world is a mess. Now I'm not comparing myself to some pop stars, but I get it now. And so many people judge them thinking, if I had all that money, I'd be so happy. Or what do they have to be miserable about? They're rich and famous, but it's not about that. It truly is not about that. I think a lot of us chase a version of happiness that looks good from the outside. And when we don't feel it, we assume we're broken. But maybe it's not about doing it wrong. Maybe it's about feeling all of it. even when it's inconvenient, even when it doesn't make sense. After Alaska, I went home for the holidays. It was supposed to be for a month, but it turned into two and a half months for various reasons. I needed the warmth, stability, a proper kitchen, to be close to my family, and honestly, I really, really needed that. When I was home, that's when I really started digging into what could be going on inside my body. I've learned that anxiety and depression are strongly connected to hormone and cortisol imbalances, and all of that also links to shitty gut health. I read everything I could find about cortisol dysregulation, hormone imbalances, and gut health to try to figure it all out. I started trying little things like cutting out inflammatory foods, tracking my cycle, doing breath work, coming up with a detailed plan of all these things that I need to do to help get things back in check. I implemented these things and even got my mom on the gut healing cleanse, which I was a little more than strict with her about, giving her lectures about cheat meals and blah blah blah. Sorry mom. She was along for the ride, but it wasn't something that was quite as important to her as it was to me. I was strict on her because I was strict on me. Then I hit the road again. Not perfectly healed, but at least I had a plan to continue following. A few weeks after being on the road and implementing what I'd learned, my brain fog, headaches, and fatigue lessened. I didn't have daily crashes around noon where my brain couldn't process anymore. I had more energy than I had in over two years. I wasn't waking up at 3am every night to pee anymore. I was able to fall asleep within 10 minutes of laying in bed. It was a friggin' miracle. Still not perfect, but it felt good to be even 20% better than I had been in the last two years. Now I'm continuing to do the work. I'm reading every self-help book I can, working through CBT, journaling, meditating, breathwork, touching grass, literally, except here in Baja, so I'm touching sand instead. But at this point, I have enough self-help books to start a library and enough half-filled journals to wallpaper the van at least 20 times. Have an extensive morning routine. Wake up, hydrate with electrolytes, 10 minutes of sunlight, cold water splash to the face, lymphatic massage, 15 minutes of movement practice, a quick workout, walking barefoot, skincare, reading, morning pages. and 10 minutes of mindful practice. And that doesn't include eating a healthy complete breakfast, drinking gut-soothing tea while I'm reading, my elix drops, or my few supplements that I literally always forget to take. I even have an evening routine that I don't always follow through with. When it comes to self-help tools, you name it, I'm either doing it, tried it, or it's on my never-ending list of things to try. All of these things are intentional and help me in different areas of my life, whether it's lowering cortisol, balancing hormones, or just helping me get my brain to shut the hell up. It's extensive, yes. Do I get everything done on my long list of things to do every single day? Not even close. At first, I put lots of pressure on myself to get it all done, but I've learned to go a little easier on myself. As long as I check off a few tasks from my long list of things to do, I'm doing better for myself than I was before. Even completing four things on my list will help me improve my well-being in some way. If you force yourself to do it all, the self-help tools aren't even going to be helping you at this point. You're just going to create more overwhelm and the feeling that you aren't doing enough. I went a little overboard with my shit, let's be real, but you really don't have to. All you need are a couple of tools, a couple of things to help you in different areas of your life to help you heal. It is a slow process, but you will get there. If I had to name a few things that helped me the most, it's the smallest stuff. like stepping out of the van and going for a walk when I didn't want to, drinking a cute aesthetic drink in my cute glass cups, watching Studio Ghibli movies, morning pages journaling, creative journaling, giving my family a call when I miss them, which is literally all day every day, but obviously I can't be on the phone with them 24-7, so now I mainly call them during my grocery shopping time, where my anxiety and overwhelm is at its highest. Of course, I call them other random times too. And whenever there's a big family gathering that I'm heartbroken about missing, it's the little things that always make the biggest difference. It doesn't matter how small it is. If it's something that you enjoy, it'll probably help you. And also, I don't know what your version of a cute aesthetic drink is, but I hope you have one. Honestly, message me what it is. I collect emotional support beverages now. Honestly, it didn't fix everything. And it won't. Not for a while. Some days I feel better. Some days I still spiral. But I'm trying. Healing takes time. Will knows whenever I have an off day, and he's super supportive during these harder days. His instinct now is to either put on Friends, Studio Ghibli lo-fi music, or my BFF Tay-Tay. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for it, but he still does it, and eventually I'll start laughing at a joke Chandler made or singing along with Tay-Tay or to one of the Totoro songs, and it does help. Those are a few very small things that just can change my mood and even bring the smallest amount of joy into my life, and you should find those little things too. This has been a big lesson for me, one that I didn't really see coming, and one that I've been struggling with accepting how it could even be possible. I have accepted that the anxiety and depression are there, but accepting the fact that it's possible is hard. Because how can I be unhappy or lost when I'm always in such beautiful places? But now I know that my inner world needs a lot of love and compassion. Because healing isn't linear. Dreams don't come with a guarantee of happiness. And sometimes the version of you that fought so hard to get here still needs to be held. Okay, before I write this imaginary postcard, let me just say this was really, really hard to talk about. I rewrote this script about 37 times. I mean, there's something so... weirdly vulnerable about saying that you're living your dream and still not completely okay. But that's the point of this podcast, right? If I were to write a postcard about this part of the journey, it would say, This isn't what I imagined. It's messier, slower, harder. But I'm here. And I'm working on it. That has to be enough. Maybe the destination isn't a place. Maybe it's within. And if that's you right now, if you're living a life you worked hard to build and you still feel off, I see you. You're not ungrateful. You're not broken. You're just healing. Maybe it's not that you're doing it wrong. Maybe you're just human. This is Postcards I Never Sent. I'll see you in the next one, probably somewhere new, slightly unhinged, and of course, still figuring it out. If this episode resonated with you, it would mean the world if you left a review. It helps more than you know, and it's one of the best ways to help other messy, curious humans find this little corner of the internet.