A year ago today, the worst thing happened that ever happened in my life… And the best thing that ever happened in my life occurred. I went to sleep one night in my two-bedroom house with my garden and I had just gotten enough teaching work to make a living.
In the morning, I got up from my bed and my right side was dead.
I was in a daze and staggered to the top of the steps where, thankfully, I fell at the top of the steps and not down the steps. My neighbors heard me because it was the middle of spring and my windows were open. I was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed as having had a stroke.
At that moment, I had no idea how it would change my life.
I could tell you about how I lost everything and the horrible time I’ve had trying to recover. I could tell you that, but that’s not the sum total of my experience. A catastrophic event in your life is a call to action. I just watched the movie Finding Joe, which talks about the hero’s journey in the work of Joseph Campbell. (If you don’t know who that is, you better learn it now.)
This is the threshold I’m standing on — the call to action. All my life I’ve talked about how I wanted to live in Europe and I wanted to travel and how Anthony Bourdain had the best job in the world, in my opinion. We all know how that worked out for him. That as much as I talked about it I never had the courage to get on the plane and go somewhere foreign.
Tomorrow I am getting on a plane to Houston, Texas, and then on Wednesday, I’m moving to Guadalajara, Mexico. With Covid, Europe isn’t exactly open right now, or at least the Czech Republic and Prague, and it occurred to me that because I’m a digital nomad, I no longer have to choose to accept the treatment I’ve gotten in this country. I got only public housing after my stroke. No Social Security, no disability benefits even though I could barely walk or feed myself, and the food stamps that I already had because I would had gone through a tough time and had just gotten to where I could make it without them. Before the stroke.
Let’s talk about the Housing Authority, who sees us as animals to pen up or children they can order around. They do everything they can to hinder disabled people and live to fine poor people.
When I applied for health insurance, they quoted me a rate that was over $150 more than I made in a month. That was when I snapped. I finally decided to become an ex-Patriate. As one of my gurus says, go where people treat you well.
Poor people and people down on their luck aren’t treated well here.
I’ve traveled extensively in this country for years but had never been outside it except a short stint to Canada in the 1990s. I talked about developing a course for digital nomads, but hadn’t really practiced what I preached. I had developed another career teaching English as a foreign language and I hadn’t even contemplated how that could take me almost anywhere in the world.
I know it seems obvious, but I thought I was too old (54.) I thought I was too fat. I certainly thought someone partially disabled couldn’t do this.
And then I said “Fuck it. I‘m doing this.”
So tomorrow I fly to Houston, then Wednesday I fly to Guadalajara. As Louise said to Thelma, “we’ll be drinking margaritas by the sea, Mamacita.” And she also said, with determination, “I’m going to Mexico. I’m going…”
Yes, I am. And I am not detouring near the Grand Canyon.
Tooltip Text“I’ve always wanted to get as far away as possible from the place that I was born. Far away both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind…”
Paul Bowles
I’m watching Anthony Bourdain in Tangier and and musing about the endless drive to travel I’ve always had, and that Paul Bowles quote he laid on us. Yes… that’s it. That’s it exactly.
You would think that being free to roam this country now with my mobile income would satisfy me, but it feeds that unquenchable need to explore and experience new things: I don’t want to confine myself to the borders of one country, or even one continent. I want it all. Even though I know there is no place or number of places I can go to where I say, “Aha! This is it. I am finished as I have now seen everything I ever want to see.”
It will never happen. I know that now.
I crave something that doesn’t really exist, at least not in a tangible way. It can’t be summed up in a bucket list, although they can serve a purpose. It’s something deeper I suppose. Living with a sense of purpose. A sense of adventure. A sense of wonder.
Some people say when you give up your dreams you die. I’ve given up so many dreams… and found new ones, but I’m still alive. The thing that I think really kills you? Giving up your sense of wonder. Your sense of the sheer madness of the world, the brutality, the suffering and all the horrid things that threaten to break you but make you really understand and appreciate the preciousness of the beautiful moments… watching the sun rise over a desert mesa, the silence under a sky of stars and no other soul around, the sound of the surf and the wind in your hair as you ride your bike along the beach, wine-buzzed laughter among companions, the sun-weathered face of a 103 year-old Navajo woman studying the strange alien creature you are in her world. Driving into the sunset… literally, with the top of the convertible down and Elvis Presley blaring. Or maybe The Gun Club… or Sonny Boy Williamson… or all of the above.
Of course, most people can’t just run away and live as an expat in Morocco or Thailand. But you really don’t have to. It’s all a state of mind… a different way of seeing everything, even the most simple or mundane encounters. It means engaging and being present, not thinking about your shopping list or all the shit at work you have to deal with or who the hell is going to win “American Idol.”
Hey! This is your life! Right here! Right now!
You can find that adventurous spirit and your sense of wonder in your backyard. Slow down and disconnect from technology a bit, like I did at The Garchen Institute outside Chino Valley, Arizona, the home base of H.E. Garchen Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama and the embodiment of pure grace. You don’t have to be Buddhist to go there (although I have been a spiritual tourist as well as physical and geographical), nor to appreciate the sense of transporting to another time and place. And you don’t have to be a Buddhist to recognize the holiness of man who walks the talk, after spending over 20 years in a Chinese prison.
Being in the presence of Rinpoche is sort of like being spiritually stoned. You sort of get this weird feeling and find yourself sort of staring in a daze. Then he chuckles, pats you on the head and carries on.
Don’t bother with cell phones or trying to find wi-fi or TVs if you go there. Really, you can live without them a few days. Many retreatants have taken vows of silence, so don’t expect much noise up in the mountains except the sound of wind and flapping prayer flags. Which is to say, it is divine.
As is everything around you if you see it with the right eyes.
(This post originally appeared on my previous blog, A Table for One Please, in May of 2013.)
It’s 7 am on a Monday morning.
For the last four weeks, I would have dragged my ass out of bed at around 5-5:30 am, waking up before the alarm went off because of some dream related to work that made me wake up frustrated and aggravated from the get-go. I would have felt a dull ache in my upper back and a slight headache. But I wouldn’t check my blood pressure so I could continue in denial. Then I’d check email and Facebook, jump in the shower, pick out a shirt to top off my black pants from my one-stop generic work wardrobe and grab some scrambled eggs and a sausage patty from the free hotel breakfast and drive to work, arriving at 7 am to “start” my day.
I’d spend the next two hours and 15 minutes frantically trying to go through the weekend notes and orders for two units, totaling about 55-60 patients. The stack of paper would look like a novella or screenplay. I’d be trying to get up to our morning department head meeting room because this company keeps the walls covered in papers that track every fucking thing on the planet and I am supposed to read all the notes, check that all the orders were documented and the family notified and write anything pertinent on this board before 9:15 am. Because at 9:15 am, I would be grilled on what was and wasn’t done in front of all the department heads, and there would be hell to pay if it wasn’t done, regardless of what happened before the meeting — regardless of having patients tanking and needing stat chest xrays, having nurses who are trying to pass AM meds and deal with a crisis with no one else to help but me, family members calling to bitch about someone needing a haircut or having new grad nurses who don’t know how to do anything (which I don’t know the procedure either as I’ve worked in this company’s buildings before but I do not know this one as a temp traveler.)
But hey, no problem. And that is the best part of the day when I get the most done.
Then I’d be in morning meeting till 11 am being chewed out and grilled about patients I don’t know as they keep changing my unit manager assignment (6 times in 4 weeks for the record) then try to finish up all the things I didn’t get to before meeting, plus the never-ending crises on the floor. And, oh yes, let’s throw in 6-10 pages of “audits” because of survey deficiency corrections. Then I’d try to get everything done so I could repeat the morning meeting ass-chewing at the afternoon meeting. Then back to the floor to try to get my work done before I gave up at around 6 pm after a day with no breaks, except maybe shoving down a pack of peanut M&Ms. Then eat the hotel dinner, go to bed, and repeat the whole thing the next day.
Yeah, that’s what I would be doing today if I was still working at that job. If I was still working as a nurse.
But… and there is a big but on this one… today I am not working as a nurse, because that job is done. And I am hoping that the nest egg I built up from that hell is enough that it was my last nurse job ever. It’s a long shot, but it’s possible.
See, this temp job work pays a shitload of money. And instead of blowing it frivolously this time, I made a rather large purchase… an RV. It’s nothing fancy or expensive, but a 1978 Georgie Boy Cruise Air. I don’t need big and fancy. I don’t want big and fancy, because I finally realized all that big and fancy expensive shit we buy makes us slaves to jobs we hate. And I don’t want any of it anymore. I started looking at all the crap around me and started seeing it as “x” hours of misery at a job I hate to pay for it. And I started hating all the garbage I lug around everywhere I go.
That was why when this job came up and I was ending a lease on my apartment in Phoenix, I decided to just cut everything down to what could fit in the Jeep Cherokee with me and the two cats.
You see, I finally realized with the way I like to travel I should be full time RVing and should have started long ago. I’ve been planning this and cutting expenses everywhere I can. I’ve lined up freelance writing work and now a job with Google rating ads I can do online from anywhere.
Dear rat race: It’s time for me to move on. And no, we can’t still be friends. I’m never going to own a pair of Louboutins or anything by Versace. But I’ll own my own life, even if it’s now living one moment to the next with the uncertainty of walking away from any kind of “normal” life.
But I saw a great piece of tattoo flash that summed it up perfectly: “Death is certain, but life is not.” Most things are uncertain now, but such is the price of freedom.
This was originally posted on my travel blog, A Table For One Please back in 2012. With the creation of this site, I’m not sure what the fate of that blog will be yet, as I realized this nomadic theme encompasses who I am and how I approach life more than the “table for one” focus of traveling solo. Maybe I’ll just make that a food blog primarily. Maybe I’ll merge it over to this blog. I’m not sure yet. I do know I have strong feelings about being comfortable traveling — and living — on your own, and I already have too many damn blogs to really maintain two on loosely the same topic (which pretty much tells me where this is going.) But I felt this first post from over there fit well over here, so I’m pulling it over to start the long process of killing one of my darlings to create something new, and better.
Okay, I’ve tried to start a million blogs, some out of sheer interest in a topic, some to make money. I started so many blogs, I had no time to put into any of them. So I decided to try to distill all that restless energy (sounds much nicer than “too much time on my hands” don’t you think?) into a couple of blogs… okay, just three, tops.
I have so many interests I had a terrible time narrowing things down, but one thing I did know — if I could have any job on the planet, it would be Anthony Bourdain’s. I’m a budding hardcore foodie, and I love to travel, but Bourdain goes beyond a simple cooking show, or a travel show — that’s merely the backdrop of his show. I knew I wanted to do something that transcends whatever excuse of a theme that sets the premise.
I’m a single woman. I never wanted kids, and always wanted to live as a “free woman” as I call it. Don’t get me wrong, I love men, and would love to find a partner somewhere on this road, but I’m prepared for that not to happen and am okay with that. It occurred to me there are a million “mommy blogs,” but very few by single women — single women by choice, and/or single women who have no children.
Women who — hopefully — are comfortable in their singleness, and embrace it. Or are trying to.
I’m glad to be one of those who has no problem going to movies or events or restaurants by myself and often run into many women who feel somewhat uncomfortable with that when I tell them I do all these things solo.
That’s when I realized “a table for one” was the perfect metaphor for the travel blog I wanted to create embracing those who live their lives solo. (But hopefully, those who don’t will find value and entertainment here as well.) The premise is solo travel and dining… but it’s going to be about more than that, of course.
Like Bourdain, it’s inevitable to pull in your other interests… such as my love of rock and roll, dive bars, and photography. And then there’s thrift store shopping and all things vintage. Let’s throw in a little poker and road-tripping the southwestern desert.
The possibilities are limitless. Well, endless once I get on the road.
My love is photography, but I pay the bills as a travel nurse. I’m currently in The Middle of Nowhere, Colorado, on an assignment and plan to dig in for the winter. But… and it’s a big “but”… I’m saving for an RV and plan to go full time RVing and writing in the next 6 months.
So we may be a bit short on adventure and long on philosophizing for a few months, but I suppose the backstory of how this crazy, middle-aged woman found herself traveling solo in life in an RV (solo except two cats) is an important part of the big picture, as well.
I’ll try not to be too boring, but make no promises of staying too strict about the topic. I’m aspiring to be Anthony Bourdain, but suspect I’ll end up more Bridget Jones.
I grew up in a small town in Indiana full of cornfields and with a population of about 3,000 in the county seat. I’m thankful I got to grow up in a place where you didn’t have to lock doors and could go walking alone at night, even if I did struggle with trying to blend in, weird child that I was (and weird adult that I am now.) But I don’t regret my decision to pick up and leave that town, where my options were pretty much get married and have kids, or become a waitress or bank teller, or maybe get to keep writing for the weekly newspaper on an unlivable wage.
I often think about how simple life was then and how friendly people were and have often thought of going back. Of being somewhere where I naturally belonged and knew most everyone and could just hang out at the local bar or a pig roast on weekends. But then I get a reminder of the old saying about never being able to go home again. Like I did tonight.
I had “friended” one of my old high school friends on Facebook and had even thought that if I did go back, we would have much in common, as she had traveled and lived much of her life single, although she did eventually have kids. I felt she would be the one person most likely to understand me out of anyone.
We were exchanging comments on a thread on my Facebook about a silly B movie I love and suddenly, she hits me with how she misses her “old” buddy and how I talk too much about me… on my Facebook page (you know, the site I use to promote my writing and try to make a living.) And just posts this out of the blue when we’re talking about “Sharknado” and Sybian machines of all things:
“you seem superficial alot…I am your biggest fan…your pics fascinate me. I have traveled as well, dined exquisitely, and dreamed…however, I don’t have a bone of conceit in my body”
Blindsided is an understatement. That was about the last person from there I would have expected to make such hurtful comments, and make them publicly without provocation. And one of the few people whose words could actually be hurtful, even 30 or so years after the last time I saw her.
I don’t even know exactly what brought it on… the fact I post links to my work, this blog… I really don’t know.
“I’m a poor photographer and writer struggling to survive. I don’t think I pretend for one minute I live some charmed glamorous life — in fact, I’m trying to convey the opposite: After 20+ years of wiping asses and stressing myself to the point I’d rather put a bullet in my head than work another day as a nurse, I now do a crappy work at home job that barely pays my bills to try to get to a point I can make a living doing something I love. But my life is my own again. I’m sorry I’m not still the same person you knew in high school. I’m sorry I’m not the same passive, weak, let everyone walk all over me person I was then, but you have NO idea what I have been through the last 30 years and no right to judge me.”
Then she kept insisting I didn’t understand and she wasn’t judging me. She was complimenting me… she loved my “spirit.” Would that be the spirit you just did your best to crush 60 seconds ago? The one you were cutting down and trying to put back in its place even as you were complimenting it?
She only remembers the girl who let everyone walk all over her, and has never met the woman I am now. She thinks of the girl who would never stick up for herself and let everyone kick her. But that girl is gone. That doesn’t mean the one who replaced her is better or worse, and if I had to pick one, probably worse, to tell you the truth. Almost certainly worse, actually.
I don’t know… maybe I am superficial or conceited, but I can’t go back to or give time to people who want to knock me down. Why does it always seem to be women who do that?
And it reminded me again of another friend of mine from high school. A guy who went to a top college and worked in New York in advertising. After many years he moved back for a simpler life, and threw himself into the community, resurrecting the old Canoe Races event and bringing in more tourism, which is the primary economic product there. Then I read in back issues of the paper how he was pushed off the committee for it, and he and his wife banned from even volunteering ever again for this event they had poured their heart and soul into, because of complaints from volunteers for the annual event.
The reasons cited? His arrogance. His conceit.
I guess it’s better to get it out and see it now rather than after going back so I can avoid a huge mistake. As Susan J. Matt said in The American Journal of History:
“The phrase ‘you can’t go home again’ has entered American speech to mean that once you have left your country town or provincial backwater city for a sophisticated metropolis you can’t return to the narrow confines of your previous way of life and, more generally, attempts to relive youthful memories will always fail.”
Note that last part: “Attempts to relive youthful memories will always fail.”
It’s a hard lesson to learn and remember, but I guess you really can’t go home again, indeed.
… is change itself, as they say. Or, as I say, same shit, different day. SSDD.
Well, the RV deal hit a bit of a snafu. More than a bit, actually. When the so-called owner of the RV bought it about 7 years ago, seems he never got the title transferred to his name. So that means it remains in the name of a dead man in the registration roster of New York, and that’s more than a bit of a problem.
It’s a deal killer.
New York requires that he register it before he can transfer it to me. Despite having the documentation to put it in his name, New York will not issue a title immediately when it is filed for, because… well, they’re New York and want to make things as difficult as possible. So they make you wait 4-6 weeks for it to come in the mail. Seems the son who listed the RV for sale didn’t know — or claims he didn’t know — dear old dad has been getting a dealer tag from someone in the family whenever they want to drive it, in order to avoid actually registering the vehicle.
So after filling up the gas tanks numerous times to get to Rochester, NY, which was the commute from hell, and spending a whole weekend in the crappiest Motel 6 ever (and that is saying something my friends) as they kept putting me off and finalizing the transaction, I find out that I cannot get the vehicle in my name for 4-6 weeks.
I walked away from the whole mess.
Faced with the unexpected large expense of fitting my car to be towed (the cheapest I could find was about $1600) I found myself scared to death I was going to spend all my money on getting the RV and setting up my car, then have it breakdown and be forced to do another travel nurse assignment. I am determined that someday I will get an RV, but I’m afraid today just isn’t quite that day yet. Maybe I’m just being a chicken shit (probably is more like it,) but for now I just want to find a small town to get a little house in, and do my work at home gig.
Peace. Quiet. Sanity.
A chance to just let the dust settle and figure what the hell I want to be when I grow up. Presuming I ever do. Yeah… right…
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