I have been putting off starting this site for a little while now. You see the grand plan for this site is to document my hungry travel adventures. Hunger both for food, yes, and the deeper soul hunger. I want to talk about healing, happiness and connection. A big part of that will be about food, but not all of it. Sounds great! (I say to myself) So what’s the problem?

Suitcase, I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list. source: pinterest

The issue is that at the moment, I’m not actually traveling. I had it in my mind that I couldn’t possibly start this site until I was literally on the road, with travel stories to share and wondrous photos to post. And then I decided that was bullshit. That it was an excuse to not be doing what I want to be doing, which is kind of reminiscent of my life right now where I am not traveling instead of traveling.

So technically I am a wannabe, which even though I don’t honestly believe this, feels kind of like being a fraud. But that, once again, is the little critic in my head telling me lies. The truth (I imagine) is that the story of how I will get from here (not yet traveling) to there (actually traveling) is going to be an adventure all its own, and hopefully will make for a damn good story (or an introduction to my even larger story). After all, I am hardly the only twenty-something gal who wants to be traveling, but isn’t, so I figure maybe I can be a tad helpful to those of you out there who will be able to learn from my (sure to happen) trials and tribulations.

So here’s the run down on why I want to do this. I had the wonderful, amazing, fabulous, fantastic, stellar (insert additional positive adjectives here) experience of studying abroad in New Zealand during my undergrad. I spent approximately 6 months back packing around The Way Down Under, with a couple of short jaunts to Australia and Fiji thrown in for good measure. Ever since then I’ve had the travel bug and I’ve had it bad. And that was in….2007.

….Yea. So what on Earth happened between 2007 and now? Well, I returned to Los Angeles and completed my bachelor’s at USC. Then, I moved into my first big girl apartment in LA where I was actually responsible for rent and bills. (Although to be fair, my parents did help me out a couple of times with some fast cash when my rent check would have bounced….yikes. Those were bad times. I literally gave myself a stress rash two months in a row when rent was due. I’m not proud of those times.)

Then I managed to stabilize my income slightly and moved into my own 1 bedroom apartment, still in LA, and learned how much I crave and appreciate some alone time. GOOD LORD was it glorious to come home and have space all to myself! Unfortunately, I was also a highly unsatisfied waitress at the time. It was then that I discovered that I was a NERD for food documentaries, food/nutrition books, cooking, and EATING of course. I love how food connects all people and is the centerpiece of culture. I’ve always been an outdoorsy environmentalist, so I easily became entranced with knowing where our food comes from and the impact of various farming practices. So, this whole obsession with “food as medicine” and the idea of really wanting to help people and be of service resulted in me going back to school to get my Master’s Degree in Nutrition and Integrative Health. The catch? The program was back in Maryland, where I’m originally from, and I would be moving out of my solo haven back in with my parents…into my old high school room. Of course the original plan was to crash at my parents only for a few months until I got a full time job and moved into my own place.

HA. HA. Cut to nearly two years later and I am still living at my parents’ because grad school is hard (dammit!) and there are only 24 hours in a day, which means that being a full time student and working full time was crazy talk. Instead, I got a part time job that paid (sadly) far less than what I was making as a waitress in LA. Although, at least I’m no longer a fucking waitress. (Or “server” for you restaurant types. You restaurant types will also understand why I said the previous statement and why the language was 100% necessary.)

So here I am. Finishing up my M.S. and completing my clinical internship, while working part time in a wellness center and sleeping in my old twin-sized bed (I shit you not). I am staring down graduation in (hopefully) a month or so, assuming I can complete all of my clinical requirements that quickly, and I really don’t know what is next. I do know that I want to travel. Now I’ve got to figure out how to make that happen.

So I decided to take the plunge. If my dream is to one day (quite soon, hopefully) be on the road with a travel-food-community-wellness-soul centered website, then maybe I should start the damn website. So here it is, my new site dedicated to trying to live a life of adventure and following my bliss all starting while I’m still finishing up my Master’s Degree and crashing at my parents’ house. Let’s do this.