The soles replaced before a trip are preparation for effort the photograph will not show.

Most of what makes a trip possible happens weeks earlier and never appears in it. New soles, a repaired zip, the medicine packed, the slow saving: the pictures start at the arrival and skip everything that made arriving bearable. That gap is why other people’s travel can look effortless while yours feels like logistics. It is not that theirs was easier; it is that preparation photographs badly.

Give the boring preparations their due while you are in the middle of them. Noting what you did to make something possible keeps you from remembering the whole thing as luck.