Sorry Steve Jobs, I left my iPod at home.

Last December, I packed my car, near to bursting, with plants, tapestries, boxes of clothes, furniture, kitchen supplies, funky lights, posters, odds and ends - my entire life as it had been at 408 W. Tucson Avenue in Flagstaff, Arizona. There was the bamboo plant that I had miraculously managed to keep alive since 2006, purchased upon my arrival at N.A.U., the photos of adventures that I had printed in sepia and 'collage-d' my walls with, the coveted Goodwill sweater collection, thrift store treasures, sequin 80's tops - folded and placed in cardboard boxes, costume supplies, wigs, unfinished paintings, my bead box, my "Easter egg bike" (yet to be reassembled after Tommy painted it Easter egg blue), arts and crafts, and countless other pieces of memorabilia - memories encapsulated in my Camry as I journeyed towards the next phase in my life.

I would trade the massively unnecessary accumulation of belongings for what could fit into this:

A backpack. Though a giant backpack at that, this bag would become the holder of my life - quite a downsize from a car's worth of stuff. What do you take halfway around the world? Well, I can summarize it pretty easily - next to nothing.

What did I really bring? To be honest, although not what all people would stuff their bag with first, half of my bag was reserved for climbing gear....

 

 ...all because I would be on the beach climbing rocks like this.

Oh, I did bring clothes too. My clothing collection was reduced to 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of shorts, 1 purse, 1 rain shell/jacket, 5 beach dresses, 1 bikini, 3 shirts, and 1 sweatshirt. I brought 3 pairs of shoes (without counting rock shoes) - 1 pair of sandals, 1 pair of running shoes, and 1 pair of flip flops. As for toiletries, I brought only the basics (shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, etc.) and a small make up bag. Electronics: computer and camera. What? No iPod!? Yup, that's right - I purposefully forgot my iPod. I hope Steve Jobs doesn't haunt me over that one.......too soon? (I basically just forgot that I was moving to Thailand, instead of traveling through, but honestly, while I has traveling in Europe for a couple of months in 2009, I hadn't used my iPod once. On top of that, I sort of hated on folks who walked around Paris with headphones in, Skyping, answering international texts, and jamming B-Spears instead of taking in atmosphere, so I left it behind. I also almost left my computer too, but figured it could help me with lesson planning and allow me to maintain regular contact with those back home.)

I brought 3 books, a small bag of hemp, beads (fuckin' hippies), a knife, some first aid stuff, an outlet converter, a journal, and that's about it. If I forgot to include anything here, it was probably something the size of Carmex.

I brought a backpack - half climbing stuff, half other stuff and at first I would think to myself, "Oh, it would be awesome if I had this shirt or that skirt", but none of it really mattered at the end of the day. Now, I just get rid of stuff as quickly as I acquire it - thinking to myself about the time that I only had what would fit into that single bag. 

It's funny, because as I was leaving from the train station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, my mom mentioned to me that my uncle would be getting married in Australia in October, so if I was still around Thailand, I should think about going. The time of my uncle's wedding was almost a year ago then, and I laughed it off as my mom over planning and I, without any intention of being gone that long. 

It has now been that  long. It is that time in October and I leave for the wedding in Australia on Friday. I'm going to see my mom for the first time in almost a year and I have no intention of returning to America just yet. I look at my backpack in the corner of my room, neglected since I arrived, and I feel the itch for adventure, but the surprising thing is that when my mom asked if there was anything that I needed from back home, a year ago, while it would have been a laundry list of little things, today, I asked for new climbing shoes and left it at that.

10 Things I Was Probably Told and Should Have Listened To

Here are a couple of things, 10 things - to be exact, in a couple of categories, spanning from what I was probably told to what I have learned in the last few years. Hey, I'm an 8 year old and I'm still blaming my blonde hair color on the life lessons that have escaped me, but I did connect a wireless printer to my lap top, on my own, a few days ago and for me, it was prit-ty exciting. What I'm trying to say here is that I'm making progress in life...andddd in Electronicsland! In any case, here's what I've got so far:

10 Things I Was Probably Told and Should Have Listened To

1. Be mindful. Do one thing at a time and be present in that one action.

2. Life requires moderation. Everything in moderation.

3. Everyone has their own story - we all have our own stuff going on. If you take a second to look around, you might discover someone else is going through the same stuff as you. Or, almost more seriously, there might be someone who needs your help.

4. Help people. Your job, as a friend, is to build your friends up. We are competitive people by nature, but learning to be a good friend means overcoming our competitive selves to love and support one another.

5. Go to the Daft Punk 2007 "Alive" Tour!!!!! If you don't go see Daft Punk at Red Rocks in 2007, you will regret it. I passed it up to go see MOE instead, and while MOE was great, the 2007 Alive album is earth shattering! As a result, I have been waiting for Daft Punk to announce another tour, since 2007, and I'm still waiting. They had to go make the Tron soundtrack and now they are just chilling or something...something other than touring. You don't know how much I am kicking myself over this one! Last thing - there were the rumor that they would be surprise guests at Coachella in 2009. False. This was a tasteless prank and I'm dying! Go on tour Daft Punk, go on tour!

6. Do what feels right - for you. Not for anybody else. So much of my life I've been caught up in the rat race and the expectations that were projected on me. However, it is indisputable that a life lived for anyone but yourself, is a life unfulfilled.

7. To follow this - Don't be so hard on yourself.

8. Life Learning. Even if someone is only one year older than you, listen to them, that's one year longer than you've been alive and they might have something to teach you.

9. Volunteer. Take jobs for the experience, not just for the dolla dolla billz.

10. Your life will be really cool when you are 23. Just wait and see. If ten years ago, someone would have told me that this was going to be my life, I would not have believed them. I guess that's pretty rad.

10 Things I Know I Was Told, But Didn't Listen To

1. Be vulnerable. It's okay to ask for help. Is it some kind of unwritten rule that asking for help is supposed to be hard? From seeking help while falling behind in class to needing emotional support - asking for help has got to be one of the most challenging things for me.

2. In order to love someone else, you must first love yourself.

 

3. You are in control of your emotions. People can only make you feel a certain way if you let them. On the other side, though, we are not responsible for the emotional health of anyone else, to the extent that if someone is struggling with, for example, self-esteem issues, staying in a destructive relationship with that person is not your obligation. We can't 'fix' people. We can offer our love and support, but at the end of the day, if your relationship with someone is producing mutual damage, you are not doing them any favors by sticking it out for longer than you intended to.

4. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Life is full circle; think about how you treat people.

5. Play the game. Sometimes you just have to play the game, especially when it comes to school. (In high school, I would fight the system relentlessly. Now that I'm a teacher, I'm scoping out the other side of the playing field and I wish I could have talked some sense into my 16 year old self, but then again, I probably wouldn't have listened.)

6. On that note, Listen. Be a good listener. Hear people and what they have to say. Feigning interest doesn't go ignored.

7. If you can dream it, you can do it. My friend used to have this as her voice mail message, so every time you would reach her voice mail, it was like getting a pep talk from an inspirational speaker. I used to lump this in the box of silly self-help titles - Discovering Your Road to Self Discovery - and the likes, but I still remember that cheese ball quotation and I am starting to live out its message.

8. References are important. Don't burn bridges. Hah! Working at Los Alamos County Golf Course comes to mind. I definitely should not have been behind the wheel of a golf cart, nor should I have been hired at any kind of job as a 15 year old.

9. Be Honest. In all senses.

10. Save. Money. Manage. Money. My wake up call came when I was in Europe. I was broke, backpacking, and had one more night in France before making it to London and flying home. It was pouring with rain and I had just taken the train from Paris to Lille, in hopes that they would let me bump my prepaid ticket to London, set for the following morning, to that night. That way, I could make it to my friends in England and would have a place to sleep for the night. Unfortunately, I had no such luck. The last train to London had departed by the time I turned up in Lille and I was left with less that 5 euros in my pocket, outside of the locked train station, wondering where I was going to spend the night. As I sat on my backpack and weighed the importance of water versus food versus a bathroom (p.s. screw bathrooms that you have to pay for), a couple of squatters from Venice rounded the corner and prepared to lay out sleeping bags for the night. I grabbed my stuff, made my way to them, introduced myself, and the 3 of us enjoyed the last of my Nutella, great conversation, and a night at the train station - my backpack carabiner-ed to my body. Moral of the story: water fountains are a developed world luxury and money is bullshit, but it can be handy.

10 Things That I Was Told and Changed My Life

1. "It's stupid to not go to class. I have a 4.0 'cause I just go."

2. "That's not something you work on making into a reality, you just make it happen..." (On saving for travels back home).

3. Secret to workplace satisfaction: "People seem to like me at work, because I just work hard and do a good job." I am only starting to understand what it means to strive for something...anything...in a working environment - besides the ability to slide by and still get paid. I don't know why it has taken me so long to start understanding the emotional fulfillment that comes with laboring for the sake of success. Perhaps it's because I've just never really been trying to work all that hard in the first place. Yet, despite being in Thailand and definitely not moving here to work hard, by any means, I'm starting to catch on to the real world implications of my position. I am inspired by my students and I'm recognizing the importance of exerting myself for their benefit. Hey, and it turns out, there are good feelings associated with doing a good job - besides getting a paycheck! Hell, it's never really been about the paycheck here.

4. "It's okay to breakup. There is something beautiful about breakups - you usually learn a lot about yourself in the process."

5. "You haven't ever really been on your own. Think about it." Learning to be okay on my own has been one of the most valuable things that I have ever done. It did take a friend calling me out though.

6. "I don't have to drink to have a good time." Whaaaaat? I guess I hadn't ever thought about it.

7. "Education is the one thing that can never be taken away from you."

8. "I'd rather spend money on experiences than things."

9. "It's not your fault." 

10. "I love you." In different contexts - no one being more important than the other.

Finally, 

10 Things I Live By

1. Twenty to thirty years old is our mother fucking decade! This is the best time of our lives. Sure, I know that when I turn the big 3-0 I'll be saying, "thirty to forty is our mother fucking decade" and so on, but for now, twenty to thirty is our mother fucking decade!

2. Life is too short not to surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you.

3. The meaning of life is learning how to love.

4. The people we are in relationships with should grab hold of our world views, on either side, and expand them.

5. Living like an 8 year old.

6. "Twenty years from now you will be more concerned by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines...sail away from the safe harbor..catch the trade winds in your sail...explore, dream, discover." - Mark Twain

7. Every relationship prepares us for the next.

8. "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." - I had this tremendously powerful poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, stenciled on my bedroom walls back home. The message of perseverance and strength will always remind me of where I've come from and what I'm capable of.
 

9. Gratitude and Love. Remind people in your life that you love them...often.

10. "The 'perfect' time never arrives. You're always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they'll never happen." - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson



I'm sure there are a lot of other things that I could have included here (like I'd rather date a 'someone' with a subaru than a hottie with a Hummer - haha), but there's the quick and dirty version.These are the things that have shaped my life and I hope that from reading these, you start to think about what has enriched your life too or what has been the reality check/truth bomb that you might have needed as an angsty teen, a mother-fucking-decade-twenty-something, or beyond.

Cookie Monster...and other stories

Now, I'm not sure which one it is, but in this mouth, there is a sweet tooth...

....and once I figure out which one of them is responsible for the sugar cravings, the love of ice cream, and the obsession with chocolate, I swear, I'll pull the tooth myself!

Although I've been settling for 7/11 snacks (p.s. Life in Thailand revolves around 7/11 - they cover the country like Starbucks in NYC and are where I pay for my electricity, purchase water, anddd get credit for my phone), I have to say, they've got some mean ice cream cones - all for pennies! I'm sorry, but it is the recession and there is freakin' chocolate in the bottom of the cone! Tell me that's not delicious!

Jokes about ice cream and Dewberry cookie fantasies aside, we don't often think about how many decisions we make each day about food, yet, from morning until midnight snacks, we are constantly making choices about what we eat, when, and why. The shenanigans part for me is that somewhere on the journey from dysfunctional teen to now, an emotional baggage component latched on to this decision calculus and sabotaged any element of normal eating behavior. Baggage, I've learned, that can start off as simple calorie counting and evolve into a lifetime of abnormal eating.

I am writing about this because I've recently started to see how common disordered eating is and the feeling of being alone in this struggle has been lessening, a little (we do tend to always feel alone in our endeavors - carrying the weight of the world on our backs as we stumble to overcome the challenges life hands us, don't we?). It was while laying on the beach in one of the most beautiful places in Thailand, a place where you shouldn't have a care in the world, that a friend of mine joked with me that she had always considered herself the type of "beer goggles mistake" that leaves a hook up ("hook up": referring to the other person involved, not the event - to clarify and maintain the structural integrity of this sentence) wondering the morning after, "What the hell happened last night?". I laughed while shooting back, "Me too!", thinking about the shell of makeup and alcohol that allows us to feign self confidence. It took a second for the the seriousness of her confession to sink in; this girl, someone who I consider one of the most beautiful people I have ever met, was harboring a massive insecurity. In my mind, I was wondering, "How is it possible that someone, who I consider absolutely gorgeous, can feel like this?"

It absolutely blew my mind that she had the same thoughts as I, not the hook up thing (event this time, not the person - haha), but concerning her self image. For me, I've known for a long time that instead of getting over my hang ups about food that emerged as a teenager, I've only gotten worse, but I'm only starting to understand that my insecurities, taking form in disordered eating, are not abnormal. When we think about eating disorders, many people's minds immediately jump to an image of a 14 year old gawky teen who skips lunch and calls herself fat, but the reality is that disordered eating isn't isolated to high school kids, but develops across all demographics - even in the 20 to 30 age range - during our "mother fucking decades!" (as I refer to them).

Turns out, there isn't an expiration date for self consciousness. There isn't a magic age we reach where we have it all figured out. When I was doing that whole community organizing thing, I was working alongside women, 60 +, who, in between our phone calling and political discussions, would communicate their insecurities, their disordered eating patterns, and their struggles. We connected over it. We understood one another because their concerns and irregularities were the same as mine. One of my favorite volunteers, a 67 year old with a firecracker personality, would use her volunteer hours to gush to me about "gentlemen friends who were only interesting in sex", her daily trials and tribulations, and her struggles with anorexia, divorce, children, loss, depression, and love. It was through these pseudo therapy sessions (therapy for us both), that she helped me to realize that we don't wake up one day with our lives together; we don't have some "eureka" moment when we understand how to love ourselves. Instead, we are constantly redefining our lives and searching for what "works" - learning how to love.

When it comes to food, too many of us have tumultuous relationships with the stuff. I sometimes wish I could be a character in Brave New World, just taking pills and being regulated without any of the real emotional stuff! For as this volunteer divulged her self esteem and eating issues, I was sent down memory lane to the emergence of my own struggles. I remember, as a "tween", having my mom talk to me about how her life was shaped by, well, shape. She claimed that one of the hardest things she went through, when she was young, was "being fat". She would repeatedly tell my sister and I about how quitting ballet and taking up the hobby of baking had contoured her life in a literal and figurative way. Additionally, she believed that she could protect us from this painful path by obsessing over our own eating and weight, repeating, "bodies are beautiful", without knowing how to love her body either. Thus, nature and nurture culminated in a twenty something who can't be 8 years old when it comes to food.

When I moved to Thailand, I thought that rice and green tea would finally make me look like a skinny Thai girl without curves or meat on my body of any kind, but unemployment and a partier's heart put me on the fast track to a beer belly with no money for climbing. Moving here was fantastic for me, but different, as Phuket is not an active place in the same way that Flagstaff, Arizona is active. I used to ride my bike nonstop in Arizona, walk everywhere, hike constantly, trek to the climbing gym, and then climb all afternoon. However, in Thailand, my bicycle was traded for a motorbike, there is no "urban trail" system between my house and work, and with the exception of climbing, my activities began to diminish. On top of that, eating out in Thailand is cheaper than cooking for yourself, therefore, "family dinners" with climbers and an organic food store catering to my binges on berries instead of ice cream were replaced by junk food and restaurant portions. I felt trapped in foreign waters and a downward spiral.  

With my first teaching pay check, I decided I needed to make some changes. I signed up for a membership at a local gym, a month before my birthday, thinking to myself that 23 years old is too old to not love yourself. I started getting active again - doing yoga, running, lifting weights, getting in more weekends of rock climbing, but without much change to my negative self perception. I got stronger and I ran faster, but I still felt ashamed of myself and how I looked. I was trying to fit the mold of what I wanted to look like, what I felt I should look like, but with my emotions contingent on a scale with growing numbers, I reverted back to obsessive calorie counting, calculating meals versus exercise output, cutting various foods from my diet, then messing up and binging, followed by purging, more binging, then purging again. Ugh, what a spiral!

In my head, I was shouting, "Why can't I be normal? Why can't I just eat what I want to eat, exercise because I want to - not because I'll feel guilty if I don't, and look good?" I felt more and more out of control. I was like this exercise cookie monster - a bad version of myself, where I couldn't stop beating myself up for not looking a certain way, but kept on binging without knowing how to quit. Can't stop, won't stop.

I've got a sugar tooth. I've got some baggage to work through. I'm writing about this, because I used to think that I was just screwed up, that too many years of disordered eating had piled up - fluctuating back and forth between low points and "better", that I was alone in this journey to "get right" with food. However, I'm learning that it is normal to be abnormal, which is fucked up, but comforting, because - 1. It means that it is not just me going through this and 2. I realize that it is something that I can conquer. I'm not destined to end up like my favorite volunteer, a fantastic woman, but someone who has let food struggles define her life, not just as a twenty something, but beyond our mother fucking decades, to the present. I don't have to be like my mom, still fighting ghosts from a lifetime past. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to wallow in self hate. I don't want to look back on my existence and see a girl who let disordered eating define her. So many of us have stories like this and it is unsettling, but despite the normality of abnormal eating, there are many people who have made the transition from disordered eating to healthy living in both mind and body. There are success stories that conclude this tale and it starts with stopping the comparison, in taking a second to appreciate the magic of our bodies - despite what we look like or don't look like, the number on the scale, or the size of jeans you squeeze into, and redefining our relationship with food.

I'm not a monster, I'm just at war with myself, searching for "me" between fat and skinny. Though a long way from normal, I'm staying active, abstaining from 7/11 ice cream (though not making rules against it), and trying to work towards being healthy. It is through acknowledging my struggle that I hope to alter my negative relationship with eating and have my fights with food look more like cafeteria food-fights. (I think they might be a little bit more fun.) I don't have all of the answers and the journey remains unclear, but I'm working to break the cycle of my past, keep all of my teeth, and look forward with optimism, motivation, and love. Fortunately, for loving myself, I can read of the ingredients - it contains a little bit of forgiveness and a little bit of "one step at a time".








http://mypurposefullife.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/health-by-the-numbers/ (My friend, Laura, has been writing an amazing blog about her own struggles with disordered eating. It is informative and inspirational.)

I'm coming out

I'm coming out. It's October 11th, National Coming Out Day, and it's time that we had an honest discussion.

First things first -
National Coming Out Day was founded the year I was born, 1988, by a psychologist from New Mexico, Robert Eichberg and Los Angeles activist Jean O'Leary. This is a day that supports the discussion about what it means to be LGBT, the community, and the difficulty of "coming out" about your sexual orientation. Despite varying responses to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer persons (I'm not sure what is preferred, but I have always included queer identity by tacking "Q" onto the end of the LGBT acronym - LGBTQ, however, Human Rights Campaign does not.), this day is observed in many countries around the world, thus solidarity is growing, despite the struggles and intolerance. By acknowledging the day, we also acknowledge the emotional experience of "coming out", encourage people to live openly, and begin moving towards societal and political changes. Thus, in honor of this day, I'm coming out.

I am a "straight ally" (haha) as Human Rights Campaign would coin folks who prefer heterosexual relationships. I'm telling the world this, because even though my sexual orientation is more readily accepted in my cultural context, I want to be open about it and bring awareness to the fact that while it is easy for me to say, "I am a straight female", many people do not have the luxury of being honest about their own identities or preferences for fear of judgment, violence, ostracism, nonacceptance, etc.

I said before embarking on this whole blogging operation, that I was a "habitual journaler", so making the transition from keeping my writing more or less private to opening it up to the public realm, has been a little bit of a feeling out process. The subtitle for my blog started as, "Hey, I never got an instruction manual for this", a title which I believed embodied my mindset at the time - a little confused, a little lost, and a little okay with the lack of real understanding for this whole "life" thing. Although I am sure of some things in my life, the types of people I prefer sexually and what types of food I like to eat (haha - always spicy!), I was unsure when I started writing, what I wanted with my blog, other than to share some of my experiences and work through foggy or transitional times in my life. I believed that blogging would serve as an outlet, similar to what my previous LiveJournal account provided for me (a place to vent, rant, gush, reflect, and grow), however, it seems that my plans to keep myself pretty well protected by walls, coupled with intricate methods of self armor and security, is less supported by public blogging (you can not keep some posts private and some posts public like you can with LiveJournal). Honesty. It is not always easy being honest with yourself. It is even harder being honest with people around you, especially when it comes to sensitive personal issues.

As you can see above, my subtitle has changed. My journal is what it was from the beginning: "A twenty something's story of staying 8 years old at heart while exploring as a teacher in Thailand and a student in life, love, health, and happiness." My life is constantly changing and I am continuously reevaluating what is important to me and what makes me, well, me.

Life is tumultuous. It is a little bit of a struggle sometimes. I'm learning about the issues that arise in my little personal bubble and I hope, through this blog, to connect with people regardless of differences in lifestyle, sexual orientation, or other labels and identities that separate us, but also unite us. It sounds cheesy, but I'm just working it out too. I might be able to be honest about the people I prefer sexually without risk of negative backlash, but I am learning to be honest with myself too, my blog, and the handful of people who may or may not read through the sometimes directionless lines that comprise this little blog I've got going.

Take a second to think today about National Coming Out Day and the experience of those around you. In Thailand, a "Kathoey" or ladyboy, is a man who dress as a woman and in many cases, undergoes medical treatments to "feminize". Thailand is unique in the sense that it is generally much more accepting of gay or transgendered individuals than western culture and as a result, it sometimes feels like ladyboys are everywhere - not an exception or a minority in the societal structure. There are beauty pageants, festivals, and bands - all consisting of or celebrating ladyboys. Even on the high school campus where I teach, we had ladyboys come and preform for the students. People talk about ladyboys openly; ladyboys are not shunned or demonized in the community setting. In fact, they are seen as integral to the Thailand cultural experience - and not just for photo ops. It is a level of acceptance that I never experienced in the conservative armpit of the United States (a.k.a. The Grand Canyon state - Arizona), nor had I considered it as an obtainable reality in modern society due to the hate crimes and harassment that seemed rampant on university campuses while I was a student.

I'm coming out. I'm working on honesty with myself and with those around me. Moreover, I am trying to empathize with those who struggle with this on a deeper level, in hopes that breaking down these walls will result in greater tolerance, love, and openness in our world at large. Happy National Coming Out Day.

For more information about National Coming Out Day -
http://lgbtq.gmu.edu/programs/nationalcomingoutday.php

How To Spot a "Life-Flexer"

Recently, I have come into contact with a personality-type I have dubbed: "life-flexer". A life-flexer is someone who flexes their life...at you. If you say someone is "flexing", you are usually referring to them showing off - much like Will Ferrell's character, Ron Burgundy, who, while doing bicep curls, is a prime example of this. "I'm not sure if you heard me counting, I did over a thousand." Flexer.

In a sentence: "That person is flexing so hard." = "That person is working very hard to show off." Flexer.

If someone is a "life-flexer", they are desperately trying to show off their life, flaunting their achievements or their lifestyle. Usually a life-flexer will make statements that, no matter what they are actually saying, sound something like, "my life is so much better than your life."

Life-flexer.

You can meet a life-flexer anywhere and at anytime, but your chances increase when you are traveling. The life-flexer will raise their nose in the air while saying, "oh, you 'did' Thailand, did you? Well I presume that you went to Chiang Mai, Bangkok, and yes, of course the Full Moon Party...lah-dee-dah." They are like the travel hipsters - the people who only want to travel to a place if you've never heard of it before. The ones who say, "Burma is the "new" Laos; Laos is the "new" Thailand." Hilarious.

Traveling, in my experience, generally makes people humble. For me, it's about not having all of the right answers or doing it "better" than other people; it's about being a fish out of water and taking it one step at a time in an area that I might know little to nothing about. It's about being in difficult situations, finding solace in the humility of people and discovering beauty in yourself and your surroundings. Instead of competing, viewing people as teachers, and yourself as a perpetual student. That's certainly enough to make you humble. Yeah, maybe I'm still falling down Alice's rabbit hole of introspection and reflection, but I'm pretty sure that life is about learning how to love people, not forcing personal experiences down someone else' throat.

"I'm psyched that you've been to Nepal, seen the Great Wall and have two houses in the United States. I imagine that's pretty rad and I'm really excited for you!"

I just think that instead of life flexing, we should be vibe-ing off of each other and the boundless possibilities. Speaking of possibilities, one of the most amazing and most unlife-flexer people I know, my old house mate and great friend from Flaggy town, Tommy Strehlow, messaged me over the weekend, presenting the idea that he might be heading out to Thailand in December - to live! I wanted to puke all over myself! I started getting little-kid-the-night-before-Christmas-feelings and I was overwhelmed with emotions epitomizing sheer 8-year-oldness! Tommy in Thailand? Now, I'm not one of those people who stands a chance at...well, not getting their hopes up, so I won't even pretend that I'm trying to fight it. Honestly, I've got high-apple-pie-in-the-sky-hopes as I would be absolutely thrilled to see his positive and amazing self here for some balcony banter (what we call chilling on our balcony with friends), dancing, exploring and all around good times in South East Asia.

Until then, I'm "doing Thailand" the best way I know how, avoiding life-flexers and looking out for possibilities. Boundless possibilities...



Photo Credit:
1. blocheadclimbing.blogspot.com
2. instapop.com