life lessons

I guess it could have been worse

January 1, 2017 Advice (that you probably shouldn't follow)

I have just tried some computer updates and all my content from my blog has disappeared.

Inhale….Exhale…Keep everything in perspective…

 

I am on with live chat as I type.

10 Years! That’s how far content went back on Adventure Adikt. I hope it’s not gone forever.

Adventures through 50+ countries. Adventures in going back to school. Moving adventures (and more moving). Hiking adventures. Adventures with friends. Solo adventures.

I completely changed in the last 10 years. I hardly recognize that person who landed in Italy in early February 2006. She changed.

20-something Michelle celebrating a birthday in Rome

A lot. Hopefully for the better.

I’ve changed careers. Twice. I’ve traveled a lot more. I’ve loved. And lost.

I know more about ‘balance’. I think I’ve learned how to put things in perspective.

In my early 20’s, life was all about following some predetermined life path set up by society. I may have failed miserably on following the predictable path that went college—>marriage—->career—->house—->children, but I have definitely succeeded on following MY path. It went something like this college–>travel—>more college—>Career 1—>more college—->more travel—>even more travel–>more college—>Career 2—>more travel. I hope I can continue to learn and travel for the rest of my life. If I find love, that’s great, but I’m not counting on it.

I think I’m a better person than I was 10 years ago. I like to think that I am able to keep perspective in all areas of life. If I have to start over, well, there’s no time like the present.

I welcomed Kaos into my life almost immediately upon returning from my adventures in South America

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I lost my first blog of substance to the internet ghosts in July 2016. For a while I was undecided if I wanted to continue writing. After all, no one reads blogs any more. People are gravitating to social media like instagram and snapchat. People like short videos. I’m not sure a video of me will ever see the light of day. I’ve kept journals my entire life and when I started blogging on the internet in 2004 it seemed like an extension of that. Most people who read what I wrote I knew in real life. I never really thought about strangers caring what I had to say. And when they did, they were so nice. This was before internet trolls were huge, and keyboard warriors still hid in the basement and didn’t target blogs. The early 2000s were tumultuous, but I finally achieved a little stability when I moved to Durham and started a career in healthcare (pediatrics even). For the first time in my life, I felt free to make my own decisions and go where I wanted to go. My first stop was Italy and travel waxed and waned over the next 10 years, but I covered a lot of ground in North and South America and Europe. At the tail end of 2015, I began a new career as a registered nurse. 

I also started feeling life was stale. I changed careers because it was ugh. My long term partner and I were also ugh. I didn’t love where I lived, but didn’t know where else to go. Is this what they talk about when they say mid-life crisis. My friends were getting married and having kids and I wanted no part of that life. I did a lot of back and forth and really cemented the decision that no-I don’t want to have kids. It’s just not something I’ve ever thought about and now firmly ensconced in my 30’s, I’m comfortable with that decision. I don’t know that I will ever get the urge to settle down, get married, and establish roots. Maybe I’m just wired differently.

I decided to create this version of my blog because 6 months of no writing feels weird to me. I’ve been able to recover some random posts. I also kept a paper journal during the last 10 years so I can recreated some of my past posts–especially travel related ones. I took a class in creative non fiction and while to stay true to the CNF genre, one is supposed to write about factual events. I created a fictional character based on an amalgam of several people and followed her life for a few years. It’s realistic enough that it could be mistaken for truth. All this to say, I still like writing, and taking pictures, and traveling. And meeting people. And I don’t like the predictability of ‘regular life.’

I mean, do you? Africa is pretty big so we’d have to narrow down exactly where to go, but I am pretty sure I could probably make it happen by Friday

Getting away from it all

November 22, 2015 Wanderlust

I’d rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on Earth.                                                                                                      Steve McQueen

I have always been an independent sort. As I kid, I often ‘ran away from home’. Often. I never went  very far –usually exploring the outer reaches of our 25 acres. Many times, I had my school backpack and stuffed it with a sleeping bag, snacks and a book and had a good day.  Summers were great as I often set up a tent somewhere on the property and was ‘away’ for a few days at a time.   A couple of times, I  built a little raft a floated it on the creek pretending to be Tom Sawyer. As a child, my fondest wish to be a boy scout. Our town didn’t have a girl scouts, but that didn’t stop me from checking out books in the library on ‘wilderness survival’.  I taught myself cool things like how to build a fire, how to set up a tent, and how not to get attacked by bears.

Up until my mid 20’s I considered myself to be pretty outdoorsy, enjoying to spend as much time outside and under the sun as possible, hiking, biking, communicating with nature and all that crap. But somewhere along the line, things changed. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly when this happen, but I think it had something to do with getting my first big girl job. Working 6 days a week with minimal vacation time sucked the life out of my soul, and after about 2 years, I couldn’t do it anymore. It had been 2 years since I’d had a vacation so just after my two year work-anniversary, I took off to the North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

The Outer Banks is awesome. The northern half where Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is by far the more popular part of the Outer Banks. Ocracoke Lighthouse is gleaming white. It was built in 1823, the second oldest still in use in the nation. It’s not a tall as Hatteras or as famous but nevertheless it is an awesome site!

Ocracoke Island sits 23 miles off the North Carolina coast and a quarter mile south of Hatteras Island. It usually measures 17 miles long and a mile wide. The deserted, windblown beaches of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore make up the northern 90 percent of the island, and a small village of hotels, restaurants, shops, homes makes up the southern 10 percent. It’s a great place to get away from it all.

Going to the Outer Banks helped me re-assess my priorities in life. Did I want a life of relative security and stability? Did I want a life where taking a vacation was more of a headache than a means of relaxation? Hell no. I didn’t want that when I started, and after two years I didn’t like where that life was leading. Subconsciously I guess I realized how unhappy I was with my life, and deep down I was yearning to get back to my childhood roots, and to the last time I was really happy with life. I needed to get dirty, sleep under the stars again, and paddle about around on a body of water on a regular basis.

And where did I have this profound, existential realization? In a tent, under the stars off the coast of North Carolina in an area where the one of the most infamous pirates in history roamed.

I sure know how to pick my moments.

There is something incredibly cliche, but true about laying out under the stars, way out in the middle of nowhere, hearing waves crash on the shore that triggers some scary deep thoughts, right? Right? Please say this is not just me.

Seeing the sun rise over the ocean…

watching dolphins play in the ocean…

observing patterns in the sand…

These were the kinds of moments I had been missing over the past few years. Taking a step back away from all the craziness, all the rush, all of the stress that is involved with chasing the “American Dream” and realizing that simple, peaceful quiet moments abroad are often the most meaningful and profound. I exited the rat race at that moment [even thought it still took a while to start chasing MY American Dream].

It’s been 8 years since I’ve had that revelation. In that time I’ve traveled to more than 40 countries. I’ve had short adventures and long ones. I’ve become a registered nurse. I’m on my way to becoming a nurse practitioner. As I paddled around and explored the barrier islands off South Carolina’s coast, I felt the stress of the last few weeks melt away. I was light years removed from the stress of the last few weeks. With each stroke of my kayak, I felt so far removed from the hustle and bustle of life, I could feel a smile creep on my face for the first time in a while.

This was my kind of travel.

And I need to do it way more often.