Travel. Vanlife. Mindful Traveling.

My goal of traveling across the country has always existed, but that’s how it stayed: a goal. I never made proactive steps towards making the distant dream a reality. In fact, I was more fixated on traveling other parts of the world, and perhaps doing a van trip by myself as a middle-aged woman. Never in a million years could I have predicted that a pandemic would strike the world, and in turn, lead my partner to purchase his dream-van, and me come along for the ride. Within a month, we packed up all of our stuff in our apartment…

Travel. Vanlife. Cross country. Digital nomad.

I’ve been on this #vanlife journey since Fall 2020. My partner and I packed up our life in Washington DC, headed out to the west coast, and haven’t looked back since. Throughout our journey, we’ve cluttered and decluttered the van several times, but there is one thing we refuse to let go of. Out of all the shoes, clothing, supplements, containers, gym equipment and all the other sh**— we have in our tiny home, I can’t think of a more important thing to have than this specific item. It keeps us hygienic, it sanitizes things, and it scares away predators…

Imagine trying to separate clumps of peanut butter from globs of jelly after the sandwich has already been mushed together. That was my first relationship — messy and desperate. Surrounding our little love-sandwich though, was nothing — no carrots; no apple slices; no glass of milk — nothing. There was him and there was me and that was it.

After numerous instances of bringing him along on outings with my friends, and then the nights ending sourly because he either felt abandoned by me or I was “too flirtatious” with other people, I quickly learned that group gatherings were not…

Travel. Digital nomads

“Don’t dig all up in the ice cream!”

This is what grandmother would tell me as a kid after I’d scrape a couple layers off of the firm (basically impenetrable) surface of the Kroger brand Cookies and Cream ice cream. In fact, both my mother and grandmother were adamant about keeping the surface of the ice cream presentable (although I think my mother blindly adopted this habit from my grandmother). I know you’re probably thinking, “Who cares about what the inside of an ice cream carton looks like?”

I don’t understand the logic either, but distorting its surface was completely…

If a “worst adult” award existed, I would’ve come in first place. Before I became a freelancer and ran my own tutoring business, I was pretty bad at adulting, specifically as a working professional. The biggest issue, more than my lack of maturity, was that I never held jobs I was passionate about and consequently, I was incapable of hiding my disdain. I arrived late regularly, I was hardly ever enthusiastic about my tasks, and I wasn’t good at sustaining relationships or references because I’d either get fired or quit.

In fact, the last job I had, I abruptly quit…

Before I deleted my Facebook account, I briefly came across my former best friend’s sister’s profile (funny where Facebook leads you) and I saw an announcement she posted regarding her ten-year class reunion. She was her senior class president, so it’s technically her job to organize the event. For clarity purposes, we’ll call my former best friend’s sister Lucy.

When I saw Lucy’s post, immediately, I thought to myself, I’d never go to my class’s ten-year reunion. What would I have to talk about with my former classmates? Moreover, whose class reunion would I even attend given the fact that…

These days, deleting social media is perceived as something shocking; isolating. I’ll admit, it does seem scary to consider removing ourselves from these grand, social circles; at least it was for me. How will we keep up with friends’ birthdays? How will we find acquaintances’ information when we come to visit their city or country? What will we do when we go to an astonishing place but we don’t have a following to share those “moments” with? These are the burning questions of our time.

Have we ever considered asking ourselves a different set of questions though, such as the…

I hate complaining. I don’t like victimization either. Especially as a young, freelance writer, I choose to have a fearless attitude towards an indifferent journalism industry, whose editors often prefer the work of critically acclaimed staff writers who have already covered the subjects I wish to further unpack. Despite all of that, I persist, demonstrating that my perspectives are unique and that my stories are worth being read. I have to believe that I’m worth it.

I’ve applied similar logic to racism. I’ve come to a space in my life where I’ve accepted that this world operates in a Eurocentric…