Rant: "traveling" versus "travailing"

I don't know if it's because of the stress from work, editing in real time the transcripts for the world's top companies. But I didn't notice in a poem I previously posted (April 10, 2015) I used the word "travail" when I meant "travel".  I'm pretty sure I keyed in travel, because I would only use travail if I wanted to mean something that was done with lots of suffering.  (Excuses, excuses.)


I checked on the etymology of the word travail. Google said (yes, I'm treating this search engine like a person and one of my closest friends, sue me) that the origin is the Latin tres palus, which literally meant "three" and "stake". This actually described an instrument of torture called trepalium, which is a Medieval Latin word.  If you're wondering what a trepalium looks like, think of the letter X stabbed vertically with the capital letter I; or an asterisk with a longer middle line.   


I then checked on the etymology of the word travel.  And wonders of wonders, it most likely may have originated from the word travail.  Some would argue that it might have originated from the English word travailen or travelen, which had quite similar spellings.  Either way, these words are synonymous to toil, strive, torment, strenuous.


So imagine this:

                  And here you are still, wide-eyed like a kid,
                  travailing a familiar path with a skip,
                  cheeks burning pinkish with heat
                  pulling a smile as wide as the sky.


I wanted that part of the poem to exude happiness, that carefree feeling of treading a known place where no one is a stranger and nothing feels strange and no one is judgmental to child-like awkwardness.  But that word completely ruined it.  

Or maybe it didn't.  Maybe it made those lines more interesting, because you question that child-like happiness having to go through toil. Could that be possible?  Happy suffering?  Toiling with a sense of wonder?  Am I making sense? (No.)


Damn it.  This must be because of stress from work.