When things don't go your way, what's the story you tell yourself?
I've asked myself this question a lot in the last few days after fighting off a couple unfortunate challenges while traveling to Antarctica.
Common-ish challenges, nothing too bad, but still kinda sh*tty (Unfortunately, this is a pun. No, I didn't sh*t myself. Chill).
Right now, I'm writing this while floating in the Antarctic Peninsula where we just finished crossing the Drake Passage, the infamous stretch of ocean between South America and Antarctica.
Apparently the waters get so rough that there's a name for it, the “Drake Shake".
Was it bad? Not really, considering there have been over 800 shipwrecks caused by the violent waters here.
Did it feel like you were being cradled to sleep by the Hulk? Yeah, sometimes.
78 Hours of Chaos
Before getting to Antarctica, I had to actually get to Antarctica.
Which, in my case, required about 42 hours of total travel time.
Including short rest stops, it looked like:
✈️ 18 hours of flights to Buenos Aires
🚗 1-hour car ride to a hotel
⏳ 3 hours to shower, eat, and rest
🛫 11 hours waiting for a delayed flight to Ushuaia
🏨 1.5 hours of sleep in a last-minute hotel
✈️ 3.5-hour flight to Ushuaia
🚢 4 more hours on a bus before boarding the boat
Rough calculations equate to about 42 hours of travel with about 6 hours of sleep.
Stepping foot on the boat safely was great.
The food virus that I caught that led to the next 36 hours in bed, not as great.
Two days of eating nothing, the runs, fever, chills, yadda, yadda, trouble in paradise.
The fun part of suffering, for me, is the opportunity to practice seeing the silver lining.
The Why Behind Unexpected Chaos
I've always been in the camp of "things happen for a reason."
It's probably a result of being raised by (almost) hippie asian parents, who are very "go with the flow" and spiritual in the way they accept any worldly experience they encounter, whether it's good or bad.
Now, by default, when bad things happen, I looks past the present moment to see what I'm about to learn.
Quite woo woo, but hey this is my newsletter.
So after all the travel delays, sleep deprivation, and hourly bathroom episodes, I started wondering: why was I being put through the wringer?
Then, I got to see a penguin for the first time.
Penguins are amazingly resilient but also absurd in the best way. They’re naturally curious creatures that clumsy on land but effortlessly smooth in the water, zipping around like tiny torpedoes.
They stick together, always in tight groups, always curious about the world around them.
They exist in one of the harshest climates on Earth, yet they still waddle around, looking completely unbothered by the wind, cold, and snow.
Somewhere between my fever breaking and seeing those little guys stare back at me, it clicked.
It wasn’t just about making it to Antarctica. It was about seeing past the rough parts—the long travel, the sleepless nights, the food poisoning—and realizing that what was waiting on the other side wasn’t just penguins.
It was a reminder that the world still has things that exist simply to be wild, resilient, and kind of hilarious.
And maybe that’s the whole point. Life gets messy, exhausting, and unpredictable.
But if you look beyond the rough patches, there’s always something waiting that makes it all worth it.
In my case, it was penguins.
Best,
Frey
