Tiptoeing Back into Traveling: Post New Orleans Ramblings

In the past few months, while being jostled around by family reunions and summer vacations, I’ve been greedily collecting ideas, plans, maps, and dreams. Rather than a fire burning or a star bursting, I’ve been feeling like a box inside of me was shrinking, and I was stuffing more into it:

things I wanted to discuss in a coffee shop

projects I wanted to start now

phrases and ramblings and pictures.

These ideas, not being unleashed, were beginning to feel stale.

I’ve learned the only solution this is to stuff a bag full of clothes and notebooks, and head to somewhere fresh.

I spent a blink of an eye in New Orleans. I was able to wander through the cemeteries and fall in love (again) with a city that demands your attention to experience both an otherworldly presence and very real history. From the moment I walked into the Museum District, the soft pain and spooky intrigue of New Orleans that I had fell in love with while reading Bob Dylan’s Chronicles last summer jumped in front of me like one of the many blaring saxophone solos I jumped for on Frenchman Street.

The words in Chronicles that defined New Orleans for me faded away and I replaced them with discussions, stories, and permanent words scribbled into a notebook over a French market crepe or quiet moment at Greenwood cemetery.

(Backpacking stories, hostel whisperings, local and tourist recommendations alike.)

These stories are not familiar, and the words become rearranged in every city you visit.

Hostel residents tend to tell the same story, but with a new twist every time. Where-you-headed-next and where-have-you-beens were exchanged, and as usual, I felt the simultaneous groan and a smile that comes from adding a new destination to my mental bucket list (this time, Costa Rica won out as the top dream.)

Quick run-ins and small chats brought your world in close with a tight squeeze and shrunk your story to a quick flip of a few pages.

The bartender at the shack whose name you hear whispered through the grapevine will tell you your future, finally humoring you until you’ve exhausted the thoughts that have been tumbling in your head about where to move and the pain you’ve felt looking at the artists giving it a go in the corners of galleries around the city.

The tarot reader in Jackson Square will tell you what she sees in your face and what you’re aching for in your bones. You’re hit with a smack in the face once you pop out of the bubble of introversion to discuss her cards, realizing your future is yours to write anyway, you don’t even remember her name.

. . .

I write these words as I sit on a Megabus seat bumping through Texas. I’m reflecting on my trip, my gratitude, and I feel my energy being restored. Anyone who asks me if I’m an introvert while in a crowd of people will see the bashful answer on my face before I say, “Oh yeah.” I have to be alone to fill up. I opted out of my reserved seat on the Megabus today (a loss of a whole $1) to find a spot where I wouldn’t be surrounded by people. As I flew through the jobs on my to-do list (giving me the illusion I was flying through Louisiana,) I felt restored back to full.

My assignments for the day are done. My time in New Orleans has drawn to a gentle close, like finishing a good book with a long exhale, putting it back on your bookshelf with great care and knowing that in the future, you’ll revisit it once more with fresh eyes and a great yearning for a different interpretation of the story. It’s time to head back to “real life” now, with a clear mind and a refreshed determination to finally build my “what’s next.”

Detached and Attached Again: How Traveling Questioned My Connections

“How long are you staying?”

I find myself becoming attached to Austin. Places and events, usually. I feel an overwhelming sense of dread when it comes to leaving this city but I’m also plagued with stomachaches, ravenous desires to backpack and move again. I couldn’t think of pursuing yoga teacher training in another city, for example, and I can barely handle missing class on Wednesday nights. I’ve got a favorite drink at a favorite bar. SXSW, I can’t leave Austin before another SXSW. But every day I look in the mirror and tell myself I can’t stay here for much longer. I fantasize over plane tickets. I shy away from year-long leases.

I traced the roots of my tug-of-war on a Saturday night, around midnight. I’m exhausted by the idea of developing deep personal connections, but the lack of these friendships or relationships just fuel the fire that only a plane ticket can put out.

I constantly feel alone, and I blame it on staying in one place. I rely on and long for the romance of single-serving friends, you know, the ones The Narrator mentions in Fight Club before meeting Tyler Durden? The Polish women at Open’er who cackled with me and my friend over Italian men and flip cup. An Australian in a Madrid hostel who told me about a great website for finding hostel jobs. The girls in my hostel room from Brighton who met up with me at a bar after a Tinder date. I couldn’t tell you any of their names, and they don’t remember mine. Attached and detached, without the obligations or expectations of meeting again.

I harshly and unapologetically place these expectations on myself and others when I’m stuck in one place. As a result, I have always felt permanently detached. In every group of friends I’ve ever had I’ve felt like a visitor, an outsider that was accepted, but didn’t belong. The weight of this old pain is just starting to suppress my breathing again. Rejected invitations, for whatever reason, send me into a tailspin. Sharing personal stories in a group closes my throat up. Single-serving friends…they let me enjoy my time. I breathe easier. I’m free to love and share positive energy, without the grasp of any social anxiety.

Admitting this feels unfair. This isn’t a post pointing the blame on a city or the souls of Austin that have welcomed me with open arms and every opportunity in the book. I place more blame, and do so with nothing but love, on moving from place to place. Especially now, maintaining relationships in one place has been overwhelming because I’ve given and received so much energy with other parts of the world.

Traveling doesn’t detach you from a single place just to spite you; there’s only so much of your heart to spare. For every whisper of loneliness I feel in the quiet moments around my house, I feel a longing to where another part of my heart is resting. I created Horcruxes while backpacking.

My heart is broken, but beating and shining, hiding, in different corners of the world. I just know there are stories waiting to be written, between two mysterious, beautiful buildings in Barcelona. Shreds of my heart and a stomachache waiting to happen lay quivering at a bus stop in Edinburgh. I picture my fingerprints on a metal balcony, overlooking Warsaw. Exasperated energy still lingers in Copenhagen, where I discovered I was just living one big dream. Even the places I’ve never seen – I know there are people to love and things to learn and stories to be exchanged. Where will I leave a piece of me next?

When I think I lack connection in a single city, I remember that in fact, we’re all connected to each other, everywhere, infinitely. This lets me sink in comfortably to my armchair, but at the same time fires me up to fall in love with the next city and the next soul. I’m torn, to sum it up in two words. I have no immediate solution. So I find rest in the words of my good friend, Jack: “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

Why Yoga and Traveling Go Hand in Hand

Hey friends! I’ve got kind of a different post for you this week…it’s a little longer, with less pictures, but I’ve always wanted to write about my experiences with yoga. I’ve been exploring yoga on and off for many years and it’s really made a great impact on my health, physically and mentally. It’s a great thing to add into daily routine, but it’s also great for traveling, when every day can be different.

There are a few basic reasons why I enjoyed practicing yoga while traveling. You can do it anywhere, it keeps you fit, and it stretches you out after being cramped up on an overnight bus or spending your days hiking/walking/backpacking. Going beyond the physical reasons, however, yoga alleviates some of the mental strain that comes with traveling. I have three little stories about three different experiences I had doing yoga on my trip and when I finally settled down in Austin. Enjoy!

Yoga Centers You (Yoga in Berlin)

By the time I had arrived in Berlin, I had visited seven cities in the span of about two weeks. My head was spinning. I was jetlagged, and an overnight bus/ferry from Copenhagen had not helped one bit. I spent my first few hours at my Couchsurfing host’s house napping.

After scrolling through Couchsurfing meetups, we found a free yoga class in Tempelhofer Park, once of my host’s favorite places in the city. It was perfect: a free, fun activity in a beautiful location. The class was (luckily) held in English, and our yoga instructor said it was one of the biggest free classes she had ever held. People from all over the world attended, and Berlin locals even joined in throughout the class.

It had been the first time I had practiced yoga in a few weeks, but that’s the wonderful thing about yoga. No matter how far you can stretch or how well you know the poses, you can go through a class and get back to the meditative state that yoga provides. I could have been in Berlin, I could have been in Glasgow, I could have been in Philadelphia…but what I focused on during that hour was that I was in my own body. I began to use exercises I learned through meditation as I traveled: I began focusing on my feet as they wander through cities, the feeling of my back against my backpack, or my head pressing against the seat of a bus, train, airplane, etc. No change in scenery can change how I feel within my own body, so whenever I’m feeling lost, I return to focusing on that feeling.

Templehofer Park! via huffingtonpost.com

Yoga Connects You with Others (Yoga in Kielce)

After Berlin, I spent two weeks in Poland volunteering for an English immersion camp for Polish teenagers. I volunteered with 20 other native English speakers. I hadn’t been a while since I had been surrounded by that many people my age for an extended (if you consider a week “extended”) period of time. I was so used to being by myself that when I was faced with so many people, I felt anxious. Were people judging me? Was I well-liked? I was asking the kind of questions I thought I had left behind in high school.

The second week in Poland was a change; many of the same native speakers stuck around, but we were in a new location. We stayed in a gorgeous hotel with a balcony. On the first day in this new location, I decided I would do yoga in the morning before breakfast. I always invited other native speakers to join. I played a YouTube video from one of my favorite yogis (which you can watch here) and some days I’d be by myself, some days I’d be joined by friends. One day in particular, the video wasn’t working. I basically had the video memorized, so I timidly offered to go through what I remembered. I was extremely nervous, but I tried to link together all of the vinyasas in the video the way I remembered. I even added in my favorite stretch during the practice (shout out to pigeon pose!!) By the end of the class, I was able to look at yoga from a new perspective. Paul and Angie were very relaxed as well; the session was a success!

I spent the rest of the day walking on air (even though I kept focusing on my bare feet against the ground). Yoga always provided me with a calm and peaceful energy, and that day I was able to share that with others. I was hooked. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to pursue yoga even deeper.

view from our balcony!

Yoga Shows You Where You Need to Be (Yoga in Austin)

For the time being, I’m stationary. I’ve moved to Austin and signed a year-long lease. Besides wanting to explore this amazing city that I’ve admired from afar for a few years, I really need to save up some money before I travel again.

Within two weeks of moving, I started attending free yoga classes held at the Whole Foods on Mondays and Wednesdays. One Tuesday night, I had been venting to my best friend about my job, asking, “Am I doing enough? Am I making the right choices?”

On the bus to the class, I saw a tweet advertising that finally volunteer positions for Fun Fun Fun Fest had become live. I had been waiting on this application for a while, especially after having a blast volunteering for Austin City Limits.

I usually keep my eyes closed while I practice, but something about the flow of the class that night led me to keep them open. I remember gazing at the lights strung along the trees on the Plaza. I saw 300 Austinites practicing with me. I saw the neon glow of Waterloo Records, just a street away.

At the end of the class, in savasana (Corpse Pose, aka when you lie flat on your back and soak in your practice), I felt the activation of my third eye. I hadn’t been focusing on that chakra, so it was kind of odd. I told myself I would figure out what this feeling meant later and continued with my meditation.

After class, I looked deeper into what the third eye chakra symbolized. I found this quote from personaltao.com: “The third eye is our ability to see what might be, to see potential.” That sentence tied my whole day together in a nice little present. When I was 15, I was determined to move to Austin. I didn’t really have that much reasoning behind it, but that type of intuition is what the third eye provides. I knew there was something for me here. The day of the class, I was gathering inspiration from Austin; the music festivals I hoped to work for, the record stores, the bookstore I had visited next to Whole Foods…even going to the class itself. When I explore Austin, I’m exploring my potential.

There are many things I hope to explore while I’m in Austin: the city itself, yoga, blogging, crafting, my next steps in life…and I’ll hopefully continue to post throughout this new journey! If you have suggestions/feedback/etc. let me know in the comments or shoot me an email! (Info is on my Contact page). Thanks again for reading!

What is WWOOF? And 5 Reasons Why You Should

“You’re going to what?”

I envision my trip to include bouncing around from couch to couch to hostel to hostel, but when I need to breathe, I’m hoping I can WWOOF. I spent a few weeks last summer “WWOOFing” in Pennsylavia, New Mexico and Texas (which you’ll read more about in later posts) and I’m itching to make WWOOF a part of my Europe adventure. There are tons of countries to choose from, so before I ask advice on where to WWOOF, I’ll answer the question….

a hike in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of my first days at Sunflower River ended with watching the sunset here.

What is WWOOF?

WWOOF’s website sums it up pretty nicely: “WWOOF is an exchange – In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles.”

You buy a subscription for a year in the country/countries you want to WWOOF in. You make a profile, and you are then able to access the country’s list of hosts. The hosts will tell you where they live, what kind of help they need, your accommodations, and any other preferences they have. You email the farms you would like to WWOOF at, and if/when they respond you can set up dates to farm, etc. Last year I had the pleasure of WWOOFing at Pennypack Farm and Education Center in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, Sunflower River and Purple Sage Ranch in New Mexico, and Cassiopeia Farm in Austin, Texas. I wouldn’t trade that summer for anything.

Why WWOOF?

1. The Work

Most WWOOF farms ask for 20-30 hours a week; in many cases, I worked from 6-12 every day before it got too hot and had the rest of the afternoon/evening to explore the surrounding area/city. Jobs vary, but mine included tending to gardens, preserving food (and learning how to make an amazing strawberry jam), building a chicken coop, a gate, and digging a swale. I got to use my hands, get down in the dirt, and learn new skills. Most communications jobs don’t need someone who can handle an excavator, but if they do, I got the job.

Pennypack Farm crew!

2. The People

The list of people I met through WWOOFing is too long to list: hosts, fellow WWOOFers, friends of the farm…but they all deserve a shoutout. WWOOFing is a team effort, and while I saw many similarities in how WWOOFers saw the world and their place in caring for it, I also learned a lot. My hosts were more than willing to tell you about cool places around town, introduce you to friends, and tell you their stories. Fellow WWOOFers and I went on hikes and went to concerts. I know I can reach out to many of these people in the future and I now have new friends in the Southwest.

3. The Expense

Free housing? Free food (some of which you grow yourself)? What more do I need to say?

the beginnings of a Three Sisters Garden in Austin, TX

4. The Earth

I slept in a tent in the middle of a lightning storm, spent weeks with soil under my fingernails, and hiked around the ruins from the Anasazi and Navajo tribes. WWOOFing is all about learning, and through WWOOF you learn a lot about caring for the Earth, and more important, how important taking on this responsibility is. I’ve never met anyone so excited about tomatoes, or anyone so compassionate for their chickens. Every day on the farm, every seedling sprouting into a vegetable, is a miracle. It was nice to be given that reminder.

Candy Kitchen, NM

5. The Choices

You can WWOOF in most countries, not only around Europe but also around the world. There are over 1800 in the United States alone. You can WWOOF at some farms for a few nights to a few months. You can bring your pets to some farms if you want, you can bring your kids to some farms if you want (my dad’s planning to WWOOF next fall…I might just have to come with). You can choose to farm a bus ride away from the city, or secluded in the country. So. Many. Options.

I have a subscription to WWOOF Ireland right now, and I’m debating WWOOFing in Greece, France, or Hungary. Give me your picks in the comments, and if you’re interested in WWOOF at all, feel free to ask me questions!