Karmen Wiid

My brother once told me, white-faced and gripping the car door, that I drive the way I live.

“And how is that?”

“LALALALALA,” he shouted, as I changed lanes with what I maintain was perfectly adequate foresight.

He didn’t mean it as a compliment, of course. But it might be my favourite one.

Because from the outside, I imagine my life does look a little like that. Slightly improvised and a touch chaotic. Music too loud, windows down, swerving from one non-plan to the next while Taylor Swift blares triumphantly in the background.

I dare say my current travel companions would agree with him. Heads are frequently shaken at me as I pull out my journal on the side of the street while we’re supposed to be hauling backpacks into a trunk, or when I stop mid-walk because the light has shifted and I need to take a picture of this exact shade of pink before it disappears. 

I am slightly ashamed to admit that it has happened more than once that someone asks me to open Google Maps to find the café we’re headed to, and I end up in my notes app. Or I’m sent to the front desk to ask for towels and am discovered ten minutes later looking up at a tree on the sidewalk. 

“Karmen?”

“Epicurus once said…”

Lalalalala

It’s interesting travelling with people for such a protracted stretch of time after spending the better half of three years mostly on my own. It exposes you.

Because the funny thing is, if you had asked me five months ago to describe myself, I would’ve told you I’m extremely organised. Capable, even. On top of things for sure definitely no doubt. I’ve taken myself all over the world with nothing but a backpack, a smile, and a laggy Google Translate. I have navigated border crossings, overnight buses, visa forms, and foreign bureaucracies without blinking.

Alone, I am remarkably competent. But in company, something softer, or perhaps less efficient, comes to the fore.

Solitude allowed me to curate my strengths, but it seems community reveals the cracks.

When you travel alone, you are both the planner and the poet. The logistics department and the dreamer. There is no one to notice if you take ten extra minutes to sit with a thought, no raised eyebrow if you detour because the light has shifted in a way that feels important.

But with others, the gap between intention and execution becomes visible.

It’s not that I don’t care about the towels. I do. I will fetch them. Eventually. But somewhere between the reception desk and the stairwell, a sentence forms or a question lodges itself in my mind or an idea floats by and I know I have to follow it. 

From the outside, it looks like LALALALA. From the inside, it feels like attention, intuition. 

Someone asked me recently, with genuine curiosity, “So what is it exactly that you do?”

It’s a fair question. One I’ve been trying to answer for myself too, honestly. 

I type on my laptop sometimes. Drink a lot of coffee. Write loads in my journal…. I…. I make podcast episodes that I hope help people. I laugh a lot and spend way too much money on long swishy skirts that all look suspiciously similar.

I travel. I read. I think. I make things out of thoughts. I’m kinda a full-time traveller. Kinda not.

It’s all very muddy and flowy and sparkly. 

Thus far, I’ve been able to swerve into and out of “adulthood” without much worry. Sometimes I am terribly serious and working… you know, taking client calls, meetings, figuring things out like Slack and Excel and Clickup (ohhhh, do I hate Clickup). Other times I’m allowed, quite generously I might add, to be adorably broke and carefree. All because I’m young.

My friends and I often talk about how some things are exceptionally cool and adventurous when you’re young, but decidedly sad as you get older. Hitchhiking, for example, or living out of a backpack, sleeping in bunk beds with snoring Germans, drinking cheap wine… and the list goes on.  

But somewhere in your mid-twenties, someone appears at the door of the adulthood party with a clipboard. Suddenly, you are expected to announce yourself. It feels a little like Bridgerton, what with the ushers guarding the entrance to the ballroom. The adulthood ball awaits inside, but before you can step through the doors, you must first be formally introduced to the members of the ton. Accomplishments first. Personality later.

They’re asking you to, in one tidy sentence, summarise exactly what you’ve done with your life so far. Make it short, legible and impressive. Preferably something that fits neatly into a LinkedIn bio.

The trouble is, I don’t think a muddy, sparkly life survives that kind of announcement.

I don’t think you can formally present “scribbling in my journal” to a ballroom of strangers and expect applause. I don’t think “thinking for a very long time about one idea” translates particularly well into bullet points.

And yet…

And yet. 

I am not drifting.

There is a strange assumption that if something cannot be summarised, it must be unserious. That if it does not ladder neatly upwards, it must be stalling. That if you are not climbing, you are circling.

But what if circling is the point? 

What if paying attention is a profession of its own?

Yes, I know, from the passenger seat it may look like I am recklessly swerving from one lane to the next. Like I am perpetually almost late, almost elsewhere, almost distracted. But from where I’m sitting, there is a beautiful and deliberate hum beneath it all.

I read because I am trying to understand the world. I write because I am trying to understand myself. I travel because I want to test both of those understandings against reality.

That might not fit into a LinkedIn bio or impress the ushers at the ballroom doors.

But it feels like living.

And here’s what I’ve realised, travelling within a small group after years of being mostly alone… I didn’t become more organised. I didn’t shed the flightiness or outgrow the LALALALA.

I just didn’t have anyone around long enough to notice it.

When you travel solo, there is no one to shake their head when you drift off mid-task or to gently say, “Karmen, the towels?” You can be both wildly competent and wildly dreamy without contradiction, because you are the only one keeping score.

And I was competent. I survived beautifully. I navigated countries and currencies and languages with nothing but instinct and a backpack. I did so well, in fact, that I almost convinced myself the LALALALA had quietened down.

It hadn’t, though. It was just uninterrupted.

Travelling with others has brought it back to the surface, not because it wasn’t there, but because now there are witnesses. There is soft laughter and raised eyebrows every now and then. There is someone else in the passenger seat.

But another thing I’ve realised, probably the most important of all… I don’t want to get rid of that part of me. 

As a teenager I thought I had to fix myself. I was made to feel like I’m too much, too in my head, too dreamy. Too easily distracted by light and language and half-formed ideas. 

But being a dreamer is not my flaw. It is my greatest strength. 

It is why I survived being alone. It is why I built a life that looks muddy and flowy and sparkly in the first place. It is why I can sit with a thought long enough for it to become something worth sharing and, if I’m lucky, make someone else feel a little less alone in their own LALALALA.

So this is what I want to tell you, fellow dreamer, the one who has been told to tone it down, focus, be realistic, be efficient.

You are not behind. You are not unserious. You are not broken. You are paying attention.

And the people who changed the world, or at the very least, changed the texture of it, were rarely the ones who followed the blueprint. History remembers the poets, the painters, the famously weird and dreamy, and impractical. 

They are the ones whose work we return to when we are lonely and who make us feel seen. 

I’m not suggesting we all abandon logistics or refuse to fetch the towels. I am just saying that the part of you that drifts mid-task because a thought feels urgent, might not be a defect. It might be the point. Or perhaps, the entrypoint to something meaningful and authentic. 

You can be both wildly competent and wildly dreamy without contradiction.

Maybe LALALALALA isn’t chaos at all. Maybe it’s attention spilling over.

Maybe it’s what happens when you refuse to turn down the music just because the road ahead looks serious.

Yeah my brother was gripping the car door, half terrified, half entertained. But I knew what I was doing. I know what I’m doing. 

So here’s my announcement to the ton: I’m intuitively and intentionally life-ing my way around the world. 

You’re welcome to join and sing along. 

But do know, I prefer to keep the windows down.