I picked up Kristin Newman’s What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding because I was in desperate need of something to cure my wanderlust. It was the latter half of 2021 and the pandemic made travel feel illegal. Flying on a plane crammed with hundreds of other travellers felt like a faraway and outlandish memory (did I dream it?!).

So, this book was the perfect getaway. It took me back to the early 2000s when travel was much more practical, and people did it for the right reasons (i.e., adventure, self-discovery, etc.), and not for the picturesque Instagram posts. I was craving an authentic travel story from an imageless novel, not a travel influencer’s sponsor-ridden account.

Kristin Newman did not disappoint. My affinity for this book was largely influenced by Kristin’s personality and narration. She speaks to her readers with the authenticity of a wild, unfiltered best friend.  Some might call her selfish or egocentric, but I felt the opposite when I read her story. Her desire to lead a life that prioritizes HER dreams was refreshing. Kristin wasn’t just a traveller in her 20s, a time when most people decided to “see the world”; she was a traveller well into her 30s too. While the world around her tried to feed her a narrative of marriage and children, Kristin laughed in society’s face as her ambitious adventures continued each year.

Her relentless zeal to do “the thing you’re supposed to do in the place you’re supposed to do it” was my favourite thing about her. For Kristin, a travel fanatic who found herself in outrageous foreign situations, her passion found her horseback riding in the Icelandic tundra. On the other hand, for me, a university student who was living at home during the pandemic, the novel inspired me to enjoy my present moment in the way I felt best. This meant curling up with hot tea and watching “Love is Blind” on a cold February evening after finishing my Zoom classes. It didn’t give me the same boost of serotonin as I think a vagabond horseback-riding Kristin would feel, but it surely was the thing to do in the place I was in.

“I love to do the thing you’re supposed to do in the place you’re supposed to do it.”

Don’t get me wrong, when Kristin’s story begins, it’s a tad overwhelming. I felt like I suddenly made a new friend at a loud party and I needed to catch up on her entire life in an hour. It was difficult to follow, a lot of names and stories crammed into a few pages, but it was exhilarating nonetheless. I found myself connecting with Kristin’s friends and their personalities. They were in different stages of their lives, some married with kids, others divorced and heartbroken, but they reunited most years for their shared love of travel. There’s an unwavering unity that forms between groups that travel together and every friend group hopes to continue these similar adventures as they grow up and find their roots. You come from different lives, jobs, families, and backgrounds, but in those few days that you spend on vacation together, you are characters with the same backdrop, forced to navigate (and enjoy) the same things.

Kristin Newman is unapologetically the main character of her own life. It’s something that most of us are missing. With easy and abundant access to the lives of others who are cooler, richer, and younger than us, we tend to forget about ourselves. 

We all need to be a little more like Kristin, gripping the pen that dictates our fate and waiting for no one.