Dumb Choices by the Banks of the Ganges

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This is a cautionary tale told in too many words and with poor quality cellphone photos. Not for the squeamish or those who are my parents. While traveling I'm often faced with having to make the "smart decision" or "dumb decision." I have often chosen to make the "dumb decision" and it's ... Read More

Happy Holi!

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This post is full of cellphone quality photos. Sorry about that. Friends! Surprise! I was in India! Believe me when I say that I am as surprised as you are. There were times during my first trip here a few years ago that I said (possibly out loud to anyone who was within earshot) that I would ... Read More

A Tiny House Trip

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A few weeks ago Airbnb posted a photo of a snowy, tiny-house on their Instagram feed. I loved it, but loved it even more when I saw that it was in Maine. After watching "Tiny: A Story About Small Living" I have been going through an intense tiny-space phase. I've been whittling down my ... Read More

Why I’m Mad at Delta

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Get ready. Because no amount of free Biscoffs can fix this. Over the past few years Delta has continued to make changes to the way travelers can earn elite status. I hadn't paid much attention to it because I knew I'd always get there through my business travel. But, then all my wanderlusty dreams ... Read More

Kratie is pronounced “Crotch-eh”

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You're not rid of me just yet! Over the course of the last three months, I wrote a number of posts about where I was and what I was doing. I didn't always have great wi-fi, so I couldn't do much photo uploading and didn't want to force you all to actually have to read too much. So, I'll post these ... Read More

What Leaving Feels Like

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I've been sitting on this post for a week. Exactly a week. Almost to the hour. I'd planned on keeping it for myself, but figured I'd already told you about eating bugs and going into a bank without pants. What's one more thing? I've been back for a week. Almost to the hour. And the truth is that ... Read More

Khmer Girlfriends Ain’t Easy: Phnom Penh Part Two

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NOTE: After writing this post, I feel compelled to tell you that the title has little to do with the content here. Sometimes your post ends up completely different than you imagine. In Cambodia, all roads seem to lead to Phnom Penh. It's the central hub for getting from South to North and back ... Read More

Kampot: Part Two

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Despite having misled Kamala and Samon's Village about my motorbike riding skills, everything went just fine. On Day #1 we drove up to Bokor National Park, home to the old French Bokor Hill Station. The trip was incredibly beautiful and it was my first look at some real greenery in Cambodia. Rainy ... Read More

From Paradise to Pepper: Kampot Part One

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The title is a bit misleading considering that Kampot is also paradise and my new favorite place. If there's any place I could live in Cambodia, it is Kampot. Athough, I think I really could live many places here. Kampot is green and small and quiet with little adventures waiting to be had. I loved ... Read More

When Koh Ta Kiev Koh Ta Kicked Me Out

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I'm going to follow up the bummer post about genocide with a nice story about sleeping in a tent! On a beach! The first part of this will be about the island, the end will be about how the island got rid of me. After a few days in Phnom Penh I hopped on a little van headed south to Sihanoukville. I ... Read More

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  • Eight-year-old me used to call 800-numbers for travel brochures because all I wanted to do was leave my little town and see things. There are a lot of little plans I had for myself and some of them haven’t happened yet. I abandoned the idea of pencil skirts, I never met Jordan Knight and I don’t own a huge house with a catwalk over the pool like in “Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitters’s Dead.” But I’ve been places. And I have found some of the best people in those place. This morning I ran through Hanoi and it occurred to me that maybe all I ever wanted to do was weave through motorbikes on smoggy streets and then pull money out of my bra to buy an apple on the street. And I’m doing it. I’ll probably do some other things with my life too, but today I’m gonna remember that this is something. Some days, this life is really something. . Eight-year-old me would be laughing hysterically at just how ridiculous all of this is. And at just how right she was.
  • But do I look familiar - when we were just larkspur and leaves. 👋🏼 @gregoryalanisakov . I drank half of a cup of coffee and now I can’t stop thinking about train accidents, Lyme disease, climate change, electrical fires caused by faulty wires, irreparable damage to the elasticity of my skin due to repeated sun exposure, indictments, kidneys, whether or not I’ll ever find my lost debit card* and how expensive snow tires might be. Over and over again on a neverending loop forever. . * I won’t. Because it’s definitely on the ground next to a gas pump at a service station on the Mass Pike right where I left it two weeks ago at 3am. It’s probably safe to get a replacement now.
  • I missed New York. It came up out of nowhere, in unexpected ways and always for different reasons. It was erratic and new every time. . A friend sent me a blurry photo of the full moon between unmistakably New York City buildings. It was her birthday and she’d spent the very end of it on a “boat that doesn’t go anywhere” talking to an Irish bartender who got stuck on his way to Australia. I smelled that night from 500 miles away and I missed it because I’d lived a version of it before. “Don’t let this make you miss New York!” she followed up with. She knows me and my ability to be nostalgic over lives that were never even mine. . An hour later another friend texted me about a man who’d seen her on the street and yelled “Hey lady! Come and shave my body parts!” He followed up with “look at me!” when she didn’t respond. When I asked why he did it she said, “because I’m a human woman living in New York.” . Being a human woman living in New York was the greatest and it was also pretty gross. It was full moons and subway floods and $1 tacos. And it was also strange people asking for things I didn’t want to give. In all parts of my life. . But listen: Don’t shave anyone’s body parts unless you really, really, really, really want to. Which is to say, you don’t have to give up anything you’d rather keep.
  • Last year I bought a planner and a bunch of cool pens and today I threw the freaking thing away. It was sitting there unused all this time except when I had something planned that I suspected would definitely, probably, mostly happen. For example, Thanksgiving and dentist appointments that had already occurred. I finally decided that using my Ocean State Job Lots (👋🏼 New Englanders) $2 lined notebook (which is probably overpriced) still makes me an alright human. It’s been the best part of my day aside from the video of the skeleton puppet dancing to Chubby Checker that @hdstarin sent me. Throw your planners away. Keep the pens. Use cheap notebooks. Eat chocolate chips. Don’t let anyone tell you not to “sass” them. Literally the only advice I feel qualified to give in this season of my life.
  • Five years ago today (give or take) I walked out out of my New York City corporate job for the last time. It was 70 percent incredibly exhilarating and 25 percent sad and about 5 percent surprising. I’d known for months that the day would come. . Within 30 minutes I was hanging with two pals, within 40 minutes @starktransformation had called to say she was pregnant and the next day @theretropolitan took the day off to show me my first Elvira movie. At that point I kinda knew it would be okay. . Four years ago today (give or take) I woke up in a tent in a forest in Colorado after having a terrible dream about that job. And then it all felt fine. Somehow that dream exactly a year later allowed me to process the whole thing and let it go. . In that time I’ve worked in San Francisco, Denver and most recently back in New York City. I taught English in Vietnam, fell in love with Cambodia, started photographing post offices with my dad’s old Nikon F, traveled through Guatemala and spent a collective four months in India on two separate occasions which included being a passenger for hours and hours and hours on the back of a Royal Enfield in the Himalayas. I applied and was selected to go to Israel with 49 women and I learned a whole lot of things that the program probably had no intention of teaching me. . I got a little healthier, ran a half marathon and was able to devote weeks at a time to being with my family in Florida. . But let’s be clear. I also spent more days than I can count sitting around not being able to start anything, crossing off things like “wake up” on my to-do list. I guess with all of that I became more clear about what I can do. I got quieter and louder. . Every October 3rd since then I’ve noted where I am and taken inventory. I was in a tent in Colorado (twice!), I was in India, I was in Portland en route to an amazing work project in Chicago and I was in England. Every single inventory tells me I’m better than I was five years ago even if the day-to-day doesn’t always say that.
  • In March I had a feeling I might need something to occupy my time (see past post) so I registered for a half-marathon in Bristol. It was the only race I could find that was a) more than a 10k, b) less than a marathon, c) involved a trip and d) wasn’t in Australia. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ And then I didn’t train for it. I did lots of track laps in Boulder for four days with big intentions to increase and get sweaty. Instead I found out I really like cycling in a dark room with sweaty people and I did that more than running. 👋🏼@jibecycling. Then my gym was doing construction and I complained about the hammering and couldn’t show my face after they refunded me for two months. Then I found out about the Lyme thing and took a whole bunch of antibiotics and worried instead of training. Then I camped in Italy and ate pasta instead of training. Then things got down to the wire and my hip started to hurt. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Then there was a month left and I went to Florida for a visit. Instead of running, I helped @hdstarin clean out a storage unit, looked through my old childhood school work and ate paella. I ran a 10k last weekend and my hip was healed but my knee hurt. I went to acupuncture twice and then one more cycling class. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ And here I am now with a bag full of Body Glide, those gels you eat during a race and a playlist for Sunday. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I considered bagging the whole thing, and while I don’t recommend running a long distance with inadequate training, I can wholeheartedly get behind hilariously ill advised endeavors undertaken with intention. In the end, maybe I’ll have flown across an ocean to walk 13 miles listening to Arianna Grande and Soulja Boy. If you know me, you know I’ve traveled further for dumber things. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Ask me about getting my ears cleaned by a blind man at the banks of the Ganges.
  • I have a bunch of fears, but the biggest one lately is that my fear of fear will keep me from doing the things that are the most me. So, one of my biggest fears is fear. . If we run into each other in twenty years and I haven’t driven a car carrying a bed over the border to another country, do me a favor and tell me I’m a dummy. . The bed can be a blanket on the back seat of my Jeep. That counts. But it doesn’t count if I don’t have a knife and a paper map. . #behindtheshot: we drove up the Mt. Washington auto road on a rainy cloudy day listening to the guided CD tell us how magnificent the views were. We ran into 5 lost hikers who didn’t have a way down and one of them jammed his sweaty butt into the backseat with me to get to the bottom of the mountain. He almost left his Powerade but I made him take it with him. We ended up not camping.
  • A few months ago I resigned from my job. It was a great job that I mostly loved. I loved who I spent my days with and I loved the idea of the whole thing. But at some point I started to lose the plot. My life got a lot weird and I had a feeling I was in the wrong place. Physically, emotionally and geographically. Things felt wrong. There were mornings where sun streamed inside (that’s my favorite) and the giant tree outside was leafy green and I still felt a little mismatched, misplaced and sad. Not enough to intensely feel it, but enough to find it after time. . The day of my resignation letter wasn’t planned. It just all fell into (or out of?) place and I hit send. As strange as it felt, it was clear that it wasn’t the right situation for me anymore and, because of that, it wasn’t the right situation for the little company. . It’s hard to accept the privilege of being able to leave a job in a world where having the benefits that come with one are also a privilege. It makes me feel a little gross. . But in addition to some other wonky things related to it, my job became who I was. My work failures felt like personal and human failures. My successes were how I measured all of my self worth. None of that was really true for who I wanted to be, though. I wanted to be a kind friend. A person who paid attention, listened and remembered important things for people. I wasn’t any of those things. . And so, here I am a little over three months later. I’ve visited friends I haven’t seen in five years, I’ve called friends in the middle of the day just to check in. I’ve sent birthday cards, postcards to say hello and I’ve brought ashwagandah into my life. I cut out gluten. I brought back meat. I got rid of half of all the sentimental shit I’ve been lugging around because living in the now is a thing. . I’m trying to be myself. Some nights I can’t sleep because I wonder if I should have tried harder to appreciate more. The answer to that is yes because the answer to that is always yes. But, I also know the decision was the right one that day for tons of reasons. Even if, on some rainy and dumb days, it doesn’t feel that way.

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