Hiking Half Dome at Yosemite

I’ve had a lot happen in the last six months, most of which I haven’t found the right words to describe. One thing I can speak to is my trip to Yosemite National Park in September. We got permits to hike Half Dome, and it was an incredibly painful and scary experience. We left well before dawn. My headlight burned out just as the sun thought about rising. Storm clouds loomed at the top, so I rushed the ascent and the descent soon after I felt a drop on my lip. A deer family crossed our path. My feet burned with eight miles to go. It was a painfully long hike, but the landscape was my salve.

Nomaddermedia takes over

In 2020, it dawned on me that I tackled task after task at TGS that would have scared the bejesus out of the old me. I filmed and swam with sea lions one term, then tackled a multi-camera lecture of an educational big wig without advance notice the next. The most extravagant graduations you’ve ever seen? I photographed them three years in a row. They were like weddings with fifteen simultaneous brides each!

The job search reversed some of the confidence I had when I left TGS. Even if you are aware of the politics of job-getting, it’s so easy to let rejections erode your knowledge of your own capacity. I needed a reminder that my media training equipped me handsomely for working as a one-woman production crew from start to finish.

The media landscape outside of a globe-traveling school looked highly specialized to me: wedding photographers, cameramen on huge crews, newborn portrait artists, editors for companies focused on promotional work. I wanted to penetrate the market, but I couldn’t choose my focus. I prefer the variety and challenge of different creative tasks. I like working a mile wide and an inch deep, learning the whole way, under-promising and over-delivering.

This is how Nomaddermedia LLC came to be.

Painted Mines outside Calhan, Colorado

My man and I went for a beautiful three-mile walk in the Paint Mines outside Calhan, Colorado. Compared to some of the more breath-taking landscapes in the Wild West, this spot doesn’t stack up, but the fact that it emerges from rolling farmlands is very interesting. Living in this part of the country is a constant gift of perspective with so much grandeur. It’s essential that we respect these spaces and not use them as Instagram vanity backgrounds. We saw plenty of people standing on the rock formations. Please stay on the gravel trails.

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Multnomah Falls outside Portland, Oregon

My man and I went to visit family in Vancouver, Washington over the first weekend in July. We did a beautiful hike to Multnomah Falls on the Oregon side of the river, and the weather was excellent. Check out that beautiful shiba inu!

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What's changed and what's stayed the same

A lot has changed since my last post when I was contemplating spending money I shouldn’t have to visit an indigenous community I don’t know (I never went) to finishing editing my book about living with a different indigenous community. Obviously, I’ve gotten a year older. I’m 35 now and feeling pretty great about it. I lost one job and then built a profitable business out of my 60 square foot kitchen. I learned about gun safety because people are crazy. I backpacked in the wilderness and learned how to cut hair. I’ve lived through a pretty horrendous global pandemic and, like you, continue to do so.

And I got married.

Seeking Education and Momentum with a Writing Residency in Panama

La Wayaka Current appealed to the traveler in me, and I saw incredible potential for my own learning with the opportunity to live in an indigenous community again. It would be a chance to compare my time in Fiji with a structured and informed experience in Panama. There would be writing time. There would be clarity in juxtaposing cultures and experiences, in the way we can define our own culture more clearly by being far away from it, by experiencing a different one.

And the work they have been putting into developing a long-term relationship with the local community is what I’d like to see most. I’ve been so focused on surface level or even predatory examples of cross-cultural exchange that I’d like to see what it looks like to have a mutually beneficial exchange between two disparate cultures or ways of living on our planet today.

Here's a First: I'm Reading in Denver at The Art of Storytelling Series

So here’s some exciting news: I’ll be a featured reader in an upcoming reading series!

The Art of Storytelling is a reading series based out of Prodigy Coffeehouse in Denver’s Elyria Swansea neighborhood. This is a great business to support for its work in supporting local youth to build professional skills and social capital. Essentially project-based learning (yay!) meant to generate wealth in the local community (yay!!).

The People, Ideas, and Books that Came Away with Me from AWP'19

Sure, it was overwhelming in scale. It required talking to lots of strangers and spending money towards a craft that doesn’t pay much to begin with. And I didn’t have a finished book to promote (a manuscript-in-progress I mentioned for sure).

But as a writer trying to make it my business, the world’s biggest huddle of writers and publishers seemed like the right place to go. I went seeking advice on content, craft, and industry knowledge about publishing, as I continue working to get my narrative right.

Critical Voices on Voluntourism and the Classism of Literature

I’m chipping away at my manuscript one daunting page at a time, but I’ve also been doing some continued hefty research on the topics it addresses. I’m interested in sharing what I’ve found this week in order to spark your thinking. I encourage you to leave your thoughts in the comments so that everyone can benefit from your point of view.

NOTE: If you’ve never considered that voluntourism can have negative effects, the following might be a hard pill to swallow. And if you’ve never considered service abroad to be problematic, I’m very glad you’ve decided to read this post. I wish I would have known about or considered these perspectives decades ago.

I'm not just making sentences these days. I'm making sourdough.

Aside from the thrill that he remembered my silly convo starter from months back, I got another thrill. An idea. Perhaps I could bake bread! What was stopping me now from baking delicious bread, making my own sourdough starter, churning out some unique flavor combinations, and selling to friends? I had a home now. A working oven. I had time. And most importantly, I wasn’t worried about money just yet (that’ll come… thankfully I planned for this income drought).

Iceland through the eyes of my eight year-old niece

Iceland was one of those trips I set my mind to and willed company to follow. Thankfully, my brother was up for a very different kind of trip than his usual beach or city visit. And his daughter, my 8 year-old (now 9) niece. And finally my colleague and co-advisor from TGS. Somehow, our crew came together… different age groups, some strangers at first, novice and experienced travelers… and what transpired was truly enjoyable.

How hard did I bomb my 2018 New Year's Resolution?

I like the idea of New Year’s resolutions in the same way I like the idea of year-round goal setting and constant self-improvement. That was something I enjoyed about my two- to five-month stints abroad for work. My TGS terms sectioned life into manageable time periods in which I could feasibly take on challenges, improve skills, change habits, or assess a shift in my thinking from start to finish. I was always reflecting on the pre- and post- trip “me.”

For the last few years, I’ve chosen reading challenges on New Year’s, and for the last few years, I’ve fallen short of every resolution. 13 out of 20. 29 out of 40. If I counted all the books I started, then both years would have been “missions accomplished,” but what’s the point in cutting corners with personal challenges? Though we humans seem collectively terrible at keeping NYE resolutions (just observe gym attendance alone throughout the year), I don’t believe they’re made to be broken.

Take stock of your writing life with these eight questions

Using Roxanne Gay’s 2013 AWP article as inspiration, I answered these questions for myself as an exercise of reflection in this somewhat solitary practice of writing. If you’re a writer looking to take stock of your own progress and engagement with writing, I encourage you to try this for yourself! It required me to put into words what I had been struggling to communicate with my friends and family regarding the third draft of my WIP and my new stationary writing life.

When you know you're ready to start nesting...

When I left my job and the transient lifestyle, a lot of people were excited for me, albeit curious to see if I might get restless or bored in one place. I wondered the same but was convinced it was my time to test this settled life regardless.

Because for years, I struggled to leave my friends and family behind with every flight, even though I knew how lucky I was to be boarding those flights. Even though I liked where I was headed. And it was tiring—physically and emotionally—to pack up possessions that felt increasingly worthless and sleep in one more IKEA bed. Apparently all that movement, all those time zone changes, and many awkward nights of sleep gave me adrenal fatigue, amongst the effects of constant travel that could be measured or pinpointed.

The White Savior Conversation continues...

I recently came across an Instagram account called @nowhitesaviors, run by a collection of people from Uganda, Kenya, USA, and possibly more locales (some are anonymous). I spent the following two hours browsing their content and comments and going down the rabbit holes of articles they referenced, accounts they hope to educate for their wrongdoings, as well as accounts they support for their ethical storytelling and advocacy.

"Are you published yet?" and other thoughts on success in the writing profession

I interpret these as supportive and encouraging questions—from people who have been cheering me on through the gestation of this book. But these questions also relate to the self-study of the publishing world that has consumed the “gap year” I just began, an industry and a process that surprises me regularly in its opacity and complexity.

Yes to Denver. Yes to Blogging. Yes to a New Life in One Place.

Yes, I think my new life started a month ago, on July 1st, when I officially closed out the three major experiences of my early adulthood: my 2.5-year stint in graduate school, my 7-year tenure at THINK Global School, and my 10-year lifestyle on the road.

In what felt like one swift Band-Aid tug—amidst what I tried to make a slow and smooth transition—I stopped becoming a nomadic educator and started the life of a stationary writer. It took me off-guard, that simultaneous and instantaneous change to my identity.

Why I'm leaving "the best job in the world" to be "unemployed"

My choice to stop traveling with TGS comes with a big implication: I will no longer be nomadic. Perhaps you might call it "settling down." I've always hated this concept because of what it implied: that I'm accepting a less desirable fate, pausing the whirlwind of my twenties and letting the dust settle in my thirties, that I'm hanging up my backpack and passport for good. I don't think any of these are the case.

Cover image by Ina B.

I think I'm doing "summer break" wrong... ah, who cares.

So I read, adrenal fatigue appears to be a 21st century issue, in that the diminishment of real physical danger in our daily lives has manifested itself into a constant stress that treats all threats as equals. If this is the case, take me back to the days of subsistence farming, jumps in the swimming hole, and dinner by candlelight. I guess I want to be Amish! Or better yet, Fijian!

But obviously I've gained a tremendous amount from this active, dynamic life bouncing around the world. I'm trying to take it easy, give myself a break before Botswana amps up, but as my previous list indicates, I treat "breaks" like stolen time. I will fill the time I have, a compulsive little worker pumped with caffeine to complement a puny trickle of cortisol.

Parkinson's Law, they call it. Well, C.N. Parkinson has officially taken over my wet, hot, American summer break. And even if that means more of this compulsive, fight or flight mode, as long as I have a finished book by next February, I'm fine with that.

110,745 kilometers later: an update on Nomadderwhere

I'm watching the Vancouver Marathon from my apartment window and giggling as seagulls drift by at eye-level. Canada represents my final destination of this academic year, and though it was an exciting year and an important one for my own growth, I am glad it's behind me.

Traveling with a math expert this year introduced me to the beauty of slow data. With every car ride or room change, she plugged miles traversed or beds switched into a spreadsheet. By the end of 220 days "on the road," she presented to us the impressive numbers of our #cdtravels:

110,745 kilometers of transit = 2.76 times around the world
Total hours on planes, trains & automobiles (not layovers or wait time): 246 hours / 6 work weeks
50 beds roughly, averaging 4.4 nights per bed

If you're wondering why I spent the last year making an epic carbon footprint (not proud of that), take a peek at the TGS Changemaker Program and read my post on this curriculum development mission. If you're not sure how I went from travel media to writing curriculum documents for a high school, I understand your confusion. It surprised me, too. Here's something on my evolution.

Last year at this time, I was living in Florence, Italy with THINK Global School, plugging away at graduate school and enjoying as stable a lifestyle as I've achieved in the last decade. Between then and now, I changed jobs, visited ten countries, and wrote two years of projects with three colleagues.

Here's what it was like...