I consider myself something of a wanderer. People here have started to ask me if I see myself settling in Colorado long-term. My answer is that I have no clue whatsoever. I can see myself here in this area and in this job for around five years total. I can't see further than that, and I suppose I could even change my mind about that sooner. Here is what I do know. Life can start to feel stagnant, even when you are having amazing experiences with great friends or your family. Life can start to feel stagnant even when you are living in a place where you have grown and changed and feel like you truly belong, if you live there long enough. I am feeling better about living here as more time goes by, especially knowing that I get to move downtown soon. I have missed the energy and opportunity of living in the heart of a city and connected to everything.

Having said that, I still miss Chicago and honestly think I always will. It is part of my heart and soul. It's hard to describe. It's just a complete sense of belonging and acceptance and having become who I am there. If I were to move back I would miss the mountains in the same way though. Why can't we be everywhere we want to be at once?

I also miss Kansas City and my family as well. I wish I could be there to see my family weekly instead of every four or five months. I want to see my beautiful nephew learn and grow. Kansas City shaped me too.

I miss people every time I visit and have to leave or every time they visit me and have to go back. I try to avoid seeing some social media posts because if I keep living in the past I won't be able to eve be fully present.

I've been thinking about this a lot clearly. But being a wanderer is just part of who I am. It's the hardest thing in the world to move on and leap and try new things, but it is always worth it. And part of this need to wander also means I have crazy, huge wanderlust.

I just got back from an amazing trip to Alaska. I went with a tour group called Alaska Outdoors. They lead adventure tours more off of the beaten path in small groups. There were nine of us on this tour, plus our awesome guide who basically knew everything about everything. We traveled from Anchorage to Whittier to pick up the ferry to Valdez. The ferry ride to Valdez was 6.5 hours long. We were super lucky and got amazing weather the whole ride. It was the longest I have just enjoyed scenery and done nothing else (except a nap here and there) probably ever. View after view after view.

We set up camp just out of Valdez by and amazing waterfall. The next day we did sea kayaking among icebergs! They warned us not to get too close to icebergs as they can flip at any moment as the water warms them and most of an iceberg is invisible so you can't even tell how big they are. We nearly got flipped when we approached an iceberg the guide said looked "safe," lol. It was kinda awesome. After Valdez, we went to Wrangell St.-Elias national park. We stayed in super cute cabins and got to hike along the glacier. Our last stop was the Matanuska Glacier. We got to camp with a glacier view. In the morning we walked along the safe parts of the glacier.

My major takeaways from the trip: It was so so so nice to be mostly unplugged for a week. Everyone was super nice and fun, and we all engaged with each other and the scenery instead of staring at our phones and social media. It was relaxing. Alaska is huge and amazing and I will definitely be going back.

Springtime

It's been a while since I wrote. Things have been pretty busy, especially at work. I went to Los Angeles last month for spring break. It was my third time in California, but first time in Los Angeles. I loved it. The hiking there is amazing, you can't beat  the weather, and the ocean is just everything. I can't wait to go back.

I have been working to regain a positive mindset. With things at work being tough after spring break, I was falling into a pattern of complaining and negativity. The past week I have really been working on using my positive affirmations to change my mindset. I already see a difference. We're so close to the end of the school year. This Friday we have a rally downtown at the capital for school funding and our pension fund. The district made us take personal days in order to go, but so many people requested it that school for the kids has been cancelled! Education is the key to everything. One day I hope people in this country realize it.

I still am so grateful to have the opportunity to live here. I used to have to drive over an hour to get to any sort of nature preserve away from the city in Chicago and then it would just be grassland, which is fine, but not the challenge I want and need. Here I can drive 35 minutes to Boulder and have amazing views all around me. I need to remember when times are tough that what I have is what I have been dreaming of since I was 17.

Happy Spring everyone!

Hike on

What does hiking mean to me?
Every time I drive west and I see the mountains I feel a release of stress and a burst of joy. I know that I can escape my problems for a few hours and turn off my phone and just be. Work has been stressful lately. If I'm honest, most of the time I feel an undercurrent of stress in this profession. I feel pressure from having to do so many different things, most of which come with deadlines. I also feel an underlying pressure to always be on my toes and have the answer. Sometimes I don't have the answer right away, and that stresses me out. Sometimes I feel like what I'm doing doesn't matter. And sometimes I just straight up run out of patience. It can be hard to focus on the good after you have a tough day or week.

And so I go to the mountains every chance I get to refresh and escape. Hiking is also full of metaphors for life. You have to work hard for a great view. You can't give up. Even if your steps are small or you stumble, you have to keep going to reach the summit. You might be scared sometimes or unsure of how you're going to make it, but with support from the people you are with and with inner strength you can make it all the way. So I keep hiking on.

Colorado Love

I caught myself today thinking to myself, "I don't know if I could ever leave here." Living here has something that living in Chicago and KC didn't. I can leave my place every day and look out and see the mountains from home and from work. I can go out on the weekend, turn off my phone, and see beautiful things. I have a job that I really do love most of the time, even though it can be stressful. I work with some amazing people who really care about what they do.

In the month before I left Chicago, I would sometimes start crying so hard I would hyperventilate. I was terrified to leave the people I loved and the life I had made there. I became a different version of myself there and felt loved and accepted fully. I was so scared. Leaving a place you feel loved and accepted is scary because you can't know what new good things are waiting for you in the new place. All you know is that you are leaving a place you love and people you love.

And now here I am in a new place I already really do love. And never would've known it if I'd been to scared to try.

5 months

When you live far away from friends and family, you will probably always feel at least a little guilty for not being around more, or for not visiting longer, or for wanting to have gone out and started a new life somewhere else in the first place. Even though I know I have needed to do these things, it doesn't stop me from feeling a lot of complicated feelings about them. I have felt like I have abandoned people. I have felt as if I simultaneously will never stop belonging somewhere and also somehow don't belong there anymore at all. I have convinced myself that people will stop liking me because I'm not around all the time anymore and I left them. Crazy stuff. All of this can swirl around in your head leaving you confused and sometimes very upset. 

I feel better about my decision to move to Colorado as more time goes by. Pieces of my life that I didn't have in place before are falling into place, while other pieces I had in Chicago are still missing. I know I'll find them. It's just going to take more searching. 

Family and friends, please know that I love you more than words can ever express. I just had to follow my own path. I can't stand the idea of a life that has any "what ifs."

Fear

I used to let fear stop me from doing things. I used to be so much more shy than I am now, and when things scared me my automatic mode was to cry and panic and avoid to get out of things that terrified me. This started to change for me in college and after. Instead of letting fear stop me, I started to do things in spite of the fear. And the rewards have been huge.

I was scared to go present my research in Chicago. I went, I did well, and I found a new place I wanted to live. I was scared to apply to work at Philmont and do some things I had never done before. I had the most magical summer of my life. I was petrified to move my life to Chicago and start grad school. Look how that turned out. Throughout grad school I was constantly required to do things outside of my general comfort zone to learn the skills I would need to do my job. Each time I was frightened, but every time I did one of these skills, I was less scared the next time. During this career, I am constantly challenged to stand up and become more of a leader and trust my training. It is a little scary every time. I was frightened to travel to Amsterdam by myself for my first solo trip. I have never felt so alive.  I was more scared of moving to Colorado than I have been of anything. That must mean it was the right choice. My job here. Playing volleyball here. Meeting new people and trying to make more friends. It's SCARY. I feel my heart in my throat and my stomach churning some of the time because I am so scared. I sometimes just want to go back to where the job was easier, my routine was set, volleyball was comfortable, and everything was predictable. It would definitely be easier. But I wouldn't be growing.

I can do this. I am doing this.

No regrets

Sometimes I still feel like I'm here on a long vacation. I go on hikes and see amazing things and it's hard to realize I actually live here. I got my Colorado license and registration here this weekend. I am here now. It feels like I have been here forever and it's only been almost three months. It's like I stuck a volume of my life on a shelf and started to write a new one. The girl I became in Kansas City and Chicago is part of who I am now and always will be. And in five years, the girl I will become here will be someone new again.

I can so clearly picture my life and my home back in Chicago. I know exactly what I would be doing each and every day if I had never left. Familiarity is a comfort. But without growing and changing we can't be open to the new and possibly spectacular. There's a reason I am here now.

I still remember my very first hike in the mountains here. I was completely blown away. Something changed in me that day and that trip back when I was 17. I realized that the world is huge and amazing and full of possibilities. That's why I was open to moving to Chicago after I visited there and fell in love. That's why travel and adventure are the most important things to me in my life. Transition between who we are and who we are becoming is such an interesting process. I just want to keep living my life so that I can look back one day without any regrets.