It's Been a Long Day

When I graduated high school, we made tri-fold poster boards.  I honestly don't remember what the purpose of these boards was, but essentially they were supposed to capture and highlight our high school experiences.  

Everyone picked a title or theme for their board.

I picked this cartoon from Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.  

The title of my board was "It's been a long day."

I own multiple Calvin and Hobbes printed books.  I absolutely love them.  For some light reading the other night, I was flipping through my Calvin and Hobbes The Sunday Pages 1985-1995 and came across that cartoon.  

I ended up reading the entire book (it's not that hard to do, it is full of comics after all) and the very last strip in the book is the final Calvin and Hobbes strip of the series.

It's beautifully minimalist.  And personally, that's the strip I want to inhabit.  Let's go exploring.

Gorgeous, everyday luxuries

Sometimes I struggle with being in the present.  I forget to appreciate the beauty of everyday pleasures.  I don't just mean a divine cup of coffee or the birds melodically chirping outside, although those count.  I find that I am actually better at noticing and appreciating tiny indulgences and nature's backdrop than I am at the bigger security net of my life. 

I woke up today in a bed with a mattress, pillow, clean warm sheets, multiple fleecy blankets and a comforter.  This bed is located inside of a house that has electricity, running water, an interior heating/cooling system and advanced fiber-optic technology courtesy of Verizon.  Let's add to the picture the fact that I woke up in a place of safety, without fear of where my next meal would come from or if a militant mob would bust down the door guns blazing.  That's not to say that there isn't plenty of propaganda out there assaulting my eyes and ears on a daily basis, warning me of larger than life dangers that threaten to collapse all that I have previously mentioned as complete anarchy envelopes this country, in what has become truly epic fear mongering brought to us through the relatively recent development of news as a commercial product streamed live into our set top boxes and mobile devices.

Alas, it seems quite logical then why I tend to forget from time to time just how good I've really got it.  I'm constantly being shown images of those who supposedly have more than I do (and told that I should want it) while simultaneously being threatened with potential loss of all my "less than" current holdings.  It's absurd.

I suppose I am having this mental dialogue 1. because it's something other than studying for my exam and 2. because I am thinking about traveling in the future where many of my current conveniences may not be available.  I'm taking a moment and appreciating that on the road it is going to be different.  Depending on where I'm at, life could be very different.   Granted, I do not plan on venturing into the Congo- but seeing as how I plan on continuing this website throughout my adventures, I've been thinking about internet access.  It may not be so easy to come by in some places. 

And what about stuff?  For anyone who has not seen George Carlin's hilarious bit about "Stuff" go watch it now.

As for Carlin's all-too-accurate description of our stuff versus other people's shit, we really do own a colossal amount of crap.  In that vein, I actually am a big fan of living more simply, and am looking forward to forcibly owning less.  That said, making sure to have everything I need, especially safety and health-wise will be a big deal.  I also will truly not want to lose/have stolen anything important.  I do believe that people are remarkably overzealous with their concern and fear about what can happen somewhere else, but it pays to be smart.

Of course, at this stage in the game, I don't even know where I will be going and under what circumstances.  Will I be going into a country after already having procured employment?  Will I just pack up and go and figure out income on the road?   

All of these thoughts are dancing around my brain when I really should be studying.  So very much on my mind these days.  The joy of a quiet mind.  What's that like?

photo credits: Pinterest and simpleijustdo.com

Holy Crap, this site is LIVE!

Today is this site's birthday. 

I officially jumped in.  The Hungry Gypsy is live.  No longer just a trial site for my eyes only, these words can be accessed on the world wide web.  Yikes. 

You see, I actually wrote the previous posts while designing this site before it was truly viewable online.  Now shit gets real.

My original plan was to start this post with a disclaimer. I'd talk about how this site is a work in progress, and how my tendency to get caught up in minutiae inspired me to avoid being trapped by my own detail-oriented self-spiral and just make the damn thing live already.  (That and the web hosting site may or may not have forced my hand by expiring my trial and requiring me to woman-up to the real thing.)

Instead I'm gonna move past it and just make those changes as I go.

The latest with me is that I am still studying for my board exam, feeling all kinds of unprepared.  It is NOT super fun to feel like after drowning in "learning" for the past two years, my actual retention of such classically favorite subjects as organic chemistry, biochemistry and physiology is less than stellar.  The woes of overly-compressed learning and taxed adrenals. 

This exam is going to be one of those fun "memorization-based" tests.  In "real life" we do not need to have micronutrient fact sheets memorized.  You just need to know where to look that information up.  Real life has books.  Exams do not.  Granted, I'm not discounting the education portion- a layman may not only not know where to look this information up, but may not know what it meant even if he did.  Owning a book and having truly studied a subject are not the same thing.  I'm just saying that it is a pain in the tukkis to memorize so much information for such a comprehensive test.  Basically I'm just bitching. 

But on to happier things:  The plan seems to be that after (hopefully) passing this exam in November, I will stay through the holidays and then start a year of adventure in the New Year.  I'm so excited!  Where should I go first??

photo credits: Pinterest

Ok, for real this time

OK, truth time.  I wrote that first post well over a month ago and I just now posted it.  Man, am I victim of my own inner critic or what?!  I literally said to myself WEEKS ago that my procrastinating was bullshit, and I kept procrastinating!  So, here I am writing to say that as of this week, I’m done. 

I thought about editing that last post to exclude the comments about graduation being a month-ish away, but that felt wrong.  It felt like a cover up of my own lame continued procrastination and I didn’t want to do that.  I want to be honest and say, yep, I talked a good talk there for a while and I still had nothing to show for it.  But NOW that ends.  I’m putting this together and I’m putting this out there despite the fact that I still feel remarkably unsure of myself.  I have such dreams of grandeur for this site, and one day it will look like and be all that I’ve imagined, but for now it’s a work in progress that I’m OWNING right NOW. 

This week has been hard.  With the official completion of my Master's degree, I'm having one of those classic "...and now what?!" moments. 

So, next step? 

Ummm….keep applying to jobs?  Save up some money?  Get my ass on a plane? 

That last one needs to happen.  But exactly how?  Should I get a "real" job and save up money for a bit and then hit the road (or air)?  Or should I go ahead and jump on a plane to a low cost of living country and figure out a source of income on the fly?  How about Peacecorps?  Joining the Peacecorp has been an idea of mine for many many years, and I'm thinking that it may be an excellent way to see the world, be of service, and gain priceless life education.  But it is a 27 month commitment.  Is that what I want?

Time to do some soul searching and see what comes up.

photo credits: Pinterest

Welcome to The Hungry Gypsy

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?

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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.

Photo credits: Pinterest