I spent 6 months visiting friends all over the country. It was a good reminder not to let distance get in the way.

• I spent months traveling the country to see friends just as I was turning 40.
• I enjoyed my time alone while traveling, as well as time with friends.
• Even a short visit made me feel closer to friends.

For the last 10 years, I’ve celebrated my birthday with small family meals, but as I was turning 40, I changed it up. After getting a taste of solo travel last year during the holidays, I wanted more.

My closest friends were spread out across the country, so I decided to visit as many as I could, and spent about six months traveling. What I had imagined as a fun, sweet time became so much more.

I deepened friendships I’d made through writing

I started my travels a few months before my birthday when two fellow journalists invited me to a girls’ weekend at one of their homes in Chicago in the middle of winter. There, I fell in love with deep-dish pizza and glazed duck wings, and felt a somewhat professional relationship deepen into true friendship. It only took minutes of hanging out in real life for me to realize how much I trusted these two women — and how easy it would be for me to help them with whatever they needed, whenever they asked.

A few weeks later, we teamed up again with three more friends in New York City to attend a book launch party at our teacher’s house. This group is intergenerational — from mid-20s to 60s. We all met in an online writing class two years ago, and we’ve been meeting weekly on Zoom to talk about our work ever since.

Our NYC trip marked the first chance we’d had to meet in person, and it felt like we’d known each other far longer than we had. We are all from different regions of the country, working day jobs in totally different fields, but we share a profound creative optimism. Online, those vibes helped us become friends. In real life, the energy was electric.

I saw my high school BFF twice

Since 2021, we have been meeting in different cities once a year to explore the town, chill, and talk about our lives. Complete with a wine tour, a lot of walks through the quiet streets, and evenings at the hotel hot tub, our trip was a vacation in the truest sense — and a necessary annual recharge of our 25-year friendship.

I saw her again a few weeks later in Central Florida for a long weekend. This time, she picked me up from the airport in a topless Jeep and drove us to the pearly beaches on St. Pete. I got to hang out with her kids and husband, my closest writing pal in undergrad, before I drove up the coast of Florida to my hometown on the panhandle. I left with a stack of amazing book recommendations and a sense that I was still connected to my chosen family, even though we live thousands of miles apart.

I planned a trip that would allow me to see multiple friends

I’d always seen the physical distance between my adult friends and me as an obstacle to overcome. I started to look at it as a map. What if we didn’t need chance encounters at the elementary school pick-up line or weekly wine dates to build and maintain a meaningful bond?

Inspired, I planned a “friend tour” of the Northeast. At the beginning of summer, I went back to NYC to meet with a friend who had reached out to me a year before after reading an essay I published. I then drove to Maine to hang with another pal whom I’d interviewed on my podcast. She invited me to her home, where she introduced me to a totally delicious homemade dirty Dr. Pepper.

My road trip ended with a cozy power walk through Washington, DC, where a journalist friend and I brainstormed pitches that all became successful articles in the coming months. I had visited all three women just to spend time with them. I didn’t have an outcome in mind, but as I drove alone on the long, winding back roads through Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland, I recorded dozens of voice notes, verbally “jotting down” ideas for short stories and essays. Our connections had created an amazing creative energy.

The trip was a perfect blend of time with friends and solo time

These unexpected, delightful creative blooms when I’m in the same room with a person stood out to me on all my trips — but so did the quiet hours alone in airports and on highways, checking maps and itineraries, and planning my day in new places. I had saved money and planned out my trips in advance, but navigating solo, friend to friend, made me feel a sense of agency that I rarely felt in my day-to-day routine back home.

It sounds simple, but in the loving chaos of raising kids and working full time, I rarely think about what I really want to do with the next hour or afternoon. While traveling alone, that was all I thought about. I wanted to spend quiet time with my friends that wasn’t contingent on productivity or an outcome, and I found a way to do it. It was the best gift I could possibly give myself.

Read the original article on Business Insider