What Are We If We're Not Growing?

Lately I've found several travel writers and other inspirational bloggers. I've been following their stories and feeling a connection to people I don't even know. The internet can be a pretty amazing thing, can't it?

One of my new blogger friends posed this question on a mutual friend's travelogue of her solo journey through Southeast Asia - and it stuck with me.

What are we if we're not growing?
Last week, I decided that sunflowers are my favorite flowers. They're bright and colorful, they provide nutritious seeds, and they are always striving to reach higher and higher, toward the sun. I've never considered what my favorite flower is before, but when I figured it out, it made perfect sense.

Make a Life You Don't Need to Escape From

I started this blog with every intention of it turning into a travelogue for last year's adventures. I left for London almost a year ago, and it was the adventure of a lifetime. It was the exciting, harrowing, terrifying, fantastic trip that would change me forever. Even a year later, I'm not sure if everything I learned and became on that trip has sunken in completely.

I traveled for a good part of nine months last year. My European adventure was only six weeks long, which was about half as long as we planned. Finances and a torn hamstring brought us home early, but the traveling wasn't over. The adventure had just begun.

Coming Off the Vacation High
Anyone who has traveled for long periods of time will tell you that adjusting back to "real life" is difficult. Quitting my job to travel was an adjustment. Working exclusively as a freelance writer was more of an adjustment. And then, returning back to "normal life" with a 8-4 office job was the hardest adjustment of all.

Fitting in Where You Don't Fit In
I've been struck with wanderlust, and no matter how hard I push for "normal life" to be normal for me, it just isn't anymore. This city isn't my home. This monotonous schedule isn't what I want.

More than ever, I feel like the hermit crab that's overgrown its shell; I feel like an over-sized trapezoid trying to fit into a very small, round hole. It doesn't fit anymore. I don't fit into this life anymore.

Accepting the Changes
At first, it was a relief to be back from travels. To walk around town without consciously gripping onto my purse at all times. To sleep in a comfortable bed that is my own. To see my family and hear my native language. To have some familiarity and stability back again. Those are, after all, things I missed most.

But when I returned, nothing was the same. From the outside, my life here looked the same. It had all the right colors, the right people, the right elements. But it didn't take me long to realize it was a facade - and once I removed the sheet that was hiding the truth, I saw chaos and disarray.

When you are in shock or panic, you do everything you can to make things feel normal and stable. You try to get things back to where they were before, even if it means jabbing together pieces of a puzzle that were never meant to fit together.

For a few months, that was my method. Everything was moving in fast forward and I was pretending that my life would go back to normal, all the while denying all the things that changed me while I was gone. It wasn't just the friends I lost, the employer that didn't hire me back, or the long-term-boyfriend-turned-ex. I changed. I was different, and I knew it.

Everyone says this is normal. After you do something adventurous and crazy for a long period of time, getting back to mundane life is a struggle. Then I found this.



What a simple concept. Yet most people, myself included, trick themselves into thinking it's unattainable. I will set out to prove this is possible...that I can create a life for myself that isn't just tolerable, but enjoyable. One I don't want to escape from.

2012 Reflections

I am aware that January is almost over, but since I spent 3 full weeks on narcotics and prescription drugs recovering from a hellish tonsillectomy, I'm finally getting the chance to sit down and think about this new year. Back to Utah, back to my bed for the first time in a month, and without the medications, I finally have a clear mind.

As I reflect on 2012, I can't believe what an insane year it was. It was by far the most adventurous year of my life thus far. I traveled to five different countries -England, France, Spain (2nd time!), Canada, and Mexico.

I also visited 6 National Parks: Waterton Lakes (Alberta), Glacier (Montana), Yellowstone (Wyoming/Idaho), Grand Teton (Wyoming), Canyonlands (Utah), and Arches (Utah).

In 2012 I also visited 5 states - Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Utah.

I spent a weekend at Lake Powell with my family, went whitewater rafting in Moab, camped in a secret underground hobbit house, hiked everywhere, and spent some time at my cabin, which is my favorite place on earth.

I saw 5 bears in the wild, caught a snake, tasted a fruit when I didn't know whether or not it was edible, played in a fountain, kissed under the stars, hiked to beautiful mountain peaks, saw Shakespeare's Globe Theater with my own eyes, and skinny dipped in the Mediterranean sea.

But 2012 was also the most soul-wrenching, comfort zone-shattering, heartbreaking year of my life. I lost the only job I'd ever loved, along with 20 or so friends. I lost my very best friend in Utah and don't know why. The man I spent 4 1/2 years planning my life with disappeared. I tore my hamstring and still can't sit in a chair comfortably.

I underwent the most major identity crisis I ever have. There were three aspects that made up me and my life in Utah: Matt, 24 hour fitness, and my editing job. In just a few months, life changed all of that for me. When I tore my hamstring, I couldn't workout or attend fitness events, which, prior to that point, had made up about 90% of my social life. I planned to become a certified Zumba instructor, but my leg had different plans. Then I wasn't hired back at the job I loved and nobody ever explained why. Then Matt decided to up and leave with no word. With the three main parts of my identity shattered, I had to pick myself up and turn into something and someone else.

At the beginning of 2012, and especially before my trip to Europe, I asked God for refinement. I wanted to be tested and stretched past my limits because I wanted to come out a stronger person. And let me tell you - He didn't take that request lightly; I asked for refinement, and that's exactly what I got.

2012 was full of adventures and heartache, cultural exploration, laughing until I cried, and crying until I laughed. I can't wait to see what 2013 brings!

Freelance Life

Working freelance isn't as easy as most people think it is. Sure, I get to sleep in if I feel like it although I don't because I wake up and go to the gym first thing in the morning. I really don't "have" to work if I am not in the mood, but I really do need to work as much as possible, because freelance isn't the most profitable business to be in, at least not yet.

People think I do nothing all day long, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Sure, I can sit around in yoga pants with my hair in a bun, but I am always working on multiple projects at once. Even though freelance writing and gym time are the only two basic things on my schedule for a day, I do have to schedule the writing time. Most projects have deadlines, and it's important that I don't mix them up.

Here's an example from this week:

1. Rewrite a 500-word article that another writer published on bankruptcy and medical bills.
2. Write a 600-word article on new bankruptcy laws and eligibility.
3. Write an article for a scrapbooking magazine.
4. Write 13 instruction guides for creating birthday and holiday cards for a scrapbooking magazine.
5. Write website content for a local law firm. (home page, services, about us)
6. Write 30+ blogs and articles for a marketing company every day.
7. Create content for a website business I'm starting with one of my good friends. Write up business plan and service details.
8. Edit excerpts from Justin's manuscript. Yes, I'm editing a book for an LDS writer!

See? I'm busy. Plus, I've also been doing a coach training academy for my Beachbody business, learning all about how to be a better coach and how to get more people invested in their health and fitness. I also met with a personal trainer this week to figure out how to kick start my own fitness to get me past this plateau. And I've been doing the Beachbody Ultimate Reset, which is a 21-day reset and detox nutrition plan. So lots of cooking and planning out recipes and supplements.

Solitude.

There are few things more beautiful than sitting alone in a house, after everyone else is asleep, sipping tea, listening to relaxing music, and burning a candle that smells like Christmas.

Live Your Way to Answers

"I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

Taking It All In -The Ups and Downs

In many ways, I am living the life. I quit my job to travel the world, and left everything I knew behind to step into the unknown. It's had some pretty severe ups and downs, but at the end of the day, I know this is all a learning experience, and I know that I am being refined in ways I can't even see yet.

From the outsider's perspective, it may look like my life is easy. Write from home when I feel like it, go on road trips or other vacations whenever I want to. Hiking, camping, rafting. But amidst all the adventures and trips, I'm also on the brink of disaster at any given second, and I'm in the center of a midlife crisis. So while I am having the time of my life, and having more fun than I ever have before, the lows are just as deep as the highs are high.

Making the decision to live an adventurous life was the best decision I've ever made. I've learned and seen more in this past six months than in several years, and I love it. Yesterday I found a poem I wrote a year ago, at the end of an uneventful summer that I spent in an office, sitting at a desk. Here's an excerpt:

"I see a V of 22 ducks flying in a row in the sky
and their freedom of flight makes me want to cry.
Birds are so free
and then there is me
at a desk as my life passes me by."

Clearly, summer of 2011 was not a great one for me. Now it's mid-September 2012, and I can't even believe all the things I've seen and done this year. I'm dealing with some pretty hard stuff right now, but looking back at this makes me grateful. I'm dealing with life changes, some of them not so pleasant, but at least that means I am progressing! Last year I felt like my life was passing me by and I was stuck where I was at. Today I feel like my life is changing so quickly I can hardly keep up with it. Some days are unbearably hard to deal with, but I'd take too much change over no change, any day.