I have been in Denver so long now, I really wish to wander away again. I find that I am anxious for the next adventure. The catch is that I made a commitment to perform some work for my mother’s company, which in turn helps me pay for the wandering.

No matter how much I wish I could survive without money and just serve others for free, our society does not allow that. I suppose I could walk the country, but I’m maybe not that free-spirited yet. This leads me to accomplishing work for my mother’s company. Data input, fairly simple, but tedious. So though I had intended to leave today there was more work to accomplish.

This brings up two issues. First I am upset that I didn’t get to stick to my schedule. I had finally figured out this schedule, and my old-self, that control freak is really distressed that I am still here. There is a small part of me which feels that I should throw the whole trip right out the window. Second, I really dislike tedious data input work. So today was just really tough. I am selfish in the fact that I don’t like doing work which is not entertaining for me. The matter is that someone needs to do the work and I need to do something to replenish my traveling money.

The job I was in prior to traveling was a job that I really did not like, but it was so multi-faceted that I was constantly hopping tasks. I did not leave that job merely because I disliked it, but I definitely am much happier not being there. For everything in life there is a cost, and the attitude I choose is how I determine the positive or negative value of the cost. Today was extremely valuable, though tedious. I have not yet finished the data inputting, but will finish it from the road this week. I appreciate that I have the opportunity to move on in the morning to the next adventure, and that I have more work to do which will provide me funds.

The issues I described above seem so menial, but they felt slightly devastating. Stuck in a place I want to leave, and stuck doing work that I didn’t enjoy was rather claustrophobic. When they are put down on paper (or computer screen) it seems ridiculous that I even recount the issues. This though is a tool to realizing what menial concerns those are. I feel better now having seen it written out. I am also able to be grateful for what I received and what I was able to do for others.

Time to get some sleep before I hit the road!

Signing off Denver, CO

Dear Wanderer,

I wish I could tell you that every day of this journey, and of life is exciting. I find myself often defining what an average, un-special day looks like in this blog. Often I consider not sharing on these days. The thing about not sharing is that then you might come to believe that the only important days in life are those that feel extraordinary.

Even as I journey I struggle to recognize the value of days where no large epiphany’s occur or exciting adventures continue. Defining this to you dear reader, helps me remember that I am striving to be ordinary and sometimes it is a little extra. I valued today because it was low-key, not much exciting going on. I was able to value the time I had to pause and reflect upon nothing. Many people find that they struggle to find down time, and when they achieve it to appreciate it.

I recall that in my previous world I often wished I had down time, and when I found it, I felt the need to fill it with activities or chores. I still have a lengthy to-do list, but when I take down time and don’t accomplish those tasks I am allowing my body rest. It is an exercise in valuing myself when I can just be, whether it is meditating, watching netflix, reading, or just sitting in silence. I used to be stressed in these moments, but find that with practice I am becoming better and be grateful instead of stressed out and anxious.

The big highlight for today was Monopoly. I often feel like nobody ever likes monopoly. My cousin Berto, his Fiance’ Calah, and I got to enjoy private time together, playing Monopoly. It wasn’t just any Monopoly, it was Jurrasic Park 3 Monopoly. That was a pretty exciting evening for me. We had Pizza, Soda, and played a board game. I miss having friends to play board games with. My entire life Berto has been a constant. He is one month younger than me, and so we grew up as close as siblings. (I think he forgave me for the time I knocked him in the family jewels… he was teasing me… I may have had anger issues… we were 9… ha ha ha)

Having a day where I was already slowed down, and not feeling stressed, I was able to enjoy this evening so much more. If in all things I am just taking things as they come, and working on not allowing things to stress me, then I can only become more and more successful.

As I tell you that I do this, you may wonder how it is done. The trick to removing the stress from areas of your life is to practice introspection. In moments where you find yourself stressed, have a conversation (out loud or in your head) with yourself. Talk yourself through it, admit to what is really going on in your head, and prioritize those thoughts. If it is too overwhelming, then take a break from it. It is okay to give yourself permission to take a break and not focus on it. Whatever you do, do not run away from it. Take a pause, but don’t hit the stop button. If you merely push it off and continue to push it off then whatever the issue is continues to build pressure and importance until it bursts. Often it helps when overwhelmed to talk it through with another person. Call a friend and ask them to just listen and not give advice. You already have the answer, sometimes you just need a listening ear to break the chaos.

Practice these things, and if you need help, reach out and ask questions.

Signing off Denver, CO

Today was a day of healing.

After the time spent with my dad fixing my bike yesterday we took a ride this morning that went really well. Initially I felt bad, because I am a horrible rider. I knew I would slow him down. He had the ultimate amount of patience for me, and it was really fantastic. 7 miles in he offered to let me go back and he would continue on to do his normal 35 miles. I was so pleased. I probably would have sucked it up and kept going, just because I want to be awesome at riding like my dad, but he was smart. So I turned around and after getting lost I returned to my parents house for a total of 14.5 miles.

It really has me in awe at how the relationship with my dad is changing. We are communicating better and loving first, criticizing second. We are enjoying our time together and I can tell that we are both less stressed. I think this has to do with he is changing, I am changing, and we are both growing in to our adult relationship as father and daughter.

It was with pleasure that after this I went to meet with RA, a man who is like a second father to me, and someone that I thought I lost almost two years ago to my struggles. RA owned the company that I worked for in Denver. Everyone there was like family, when I started having troubles they pointed it out. I still don’t recall how much I was losing it back then, but I trust that they knew me well enough that their concern was genuine. However, I did not react well to their urging me to get help. I walked around scared and feeling alone. I assumed any day they would can me for being crazy.

At that time I think I was wearing the “crazy” as a badge on my shirt. I had a right to be crazy, right? There had been a lot of stuff in the previous years that my sweet, kind mind just couldn’t wrap itself around… so it was a great excuse. I now know that if I am wearing the “crazy” badge, it is because I am choosing to. I am choosing to play the victim, requesting special attention and affection because I am not quite of sound mind. It really wasn’t getting me anywhere. I didn’t have the tools or the understanding at the time to be any different. I have said it before, and it still stands true… I was either the victim or the hero… there was no in between.

So I met up with RA today and sat down to just catch up. This was something that I was terrified of, up until the moment I saw his smiling face. When I went to the office a few weeks ago and everyone was happy to see me I assumed that they were just being polite. That changed when I saw RA. The familial feeling was still there. The love and respect in his was unchanged from two years ago. One of his first questions was “What happened?”, right after he said “I’ve missed you”.

We got in deep quick. I laid out where I was when I left, what I perceived and felt, what I was going through. He shared his perspective on it, which was much different than mine. In that flash of a moment I determined that perception without clarification is just like assuming. If I had been more clear headed then, as I am now, maybe I would have never left. He asked if I would move back to Denver, and if I did, would I come back to the company.

That request was more than my heart could imagine. I am not ready to go back to Denver, and maybe I will never be, but if I am, I know I have a job or at least an extended family who I will always be connected to.

So wanderer, you are probably wondering where this story applies to you… If I had not kept myself open to the chance to speak openly with both my dad and RA, I would not have felt this sense of love and understanding that today I feel. This is an important part of the journey… searching for clarification in your past. We can leave the past behind us, but if we have a chance to heal, don’t we owe it to ourselves to try?

Please, for your own sake, take the leap and try.

Signing off Denver, CO.

It was just one of those days where I only felt like doing things because I had made plans with other people. The problem I find when I get comfortable is that I become lazy. If I am uncomfortable then I am continuously staying active. I find that a little ironic. Being home at my parents though I am very comfortable. Though they have moved, I still have a strong sense of home with the same pictures on the walls and the familiar smells of my parents.

My dad really wanted to go a bike ride. I was maybe a little more than reluctant because he is a serious rider, I am, what I would call, an imaginary rider. I drive around with a bike on the back of my car and imagine I ride my bicycle. Today was going to be the day that my dad took me on a ride with him… or so we thought. My dad being the good cyclist he is decided we needed to perform full primary maintenance on my bike. He basically meant grease the chain and fill the tires. I will admit I was slightly embarrassed at the state of my bicycle. Keeping it shiny, oiled, and clean has never been one of my priorities. I have always looked for my fathers approval and we have had many bumps in the road which have increasingly made me not want to work on projects with him.

Even this past Saturday when we did work on my car I stood by full of anxiety and trying to not be in his way. I am a lot like my dad. We get easily frustrated, it changes the tone of our voice and our words become harsher. If we are working with someone it often appears to have been directed at them, even though we maybe don’t mean it. Even though I realize this I have just tried to steer clear of projects with my father for years. No matter what I comprehend about the situation, it still hurts to hear harsh words and anger pointed my direction. I love my dad and it makes me sad that I don’t want to work alongside him. The moment of sheer panic and anxiety where I feel I can do no right with my dad is when I burst in to tears and go walk miles in the cold without a coat. I can’t blame all of this on my father, but I do wonder if we could have learned to communicate better.

I only point this all out so that you can understand what occurred today, and this past Saturday. I was full of anxiety in fixing my bike with my dad. He has high standards and he knows what he is doing. I could really care less, that is not my focus. So when the first POP occurred I about fell in to tears and just ran away. It was like an explosion in my heart, I felt like I just couldn’t do right by him. I knew my dad only had a limited amount of time to bike today and here I was getting in the way of his plans. I didn’t really think this was going to end well for me. I don’t have the money to fix a bike, nor do I have the patients to deal with an upset dad.

I’ll tell you right quick that both tires blew, and then the patches on each one blew, and the gear cable was all sorts of jacked. We did not end up going for a bike ride. What physically happened to the bike is not the moral of today’s story.

I don’t know that I have seen my dad with so much patience for my failings in quite a number of years. I recall as a small child I would help him paint or in middle school I helped him remodel the basement. These moments from my early days are fond memories that have appeared as dreams. In high school I felt I could do no right by him, and that continued into my adult years. I have had my moments where I stood up to him, and felt maybe I was making headway, only to feel the verbal backhand another time.

Don’t think my father was a horrible person. He is human, just like me. We have for years struggled to communicate and I have had some very hard feelings. I have always been determined to figure it out, because I don’t want to live in a world where I feel I have no father, which seemed easier than dealing with the emotional upheaval.

So to the happy part. Today my dad had unlimited patience for me and my bicycle. I kept waiting for the outburst as the problems increased and continued. I waited for his upset and frustrated words as I told him I didn’t have the money to fix it, so he my as well keep it. I felt like my bike defeated me and it was easier to give up than argue with my dad. With tears in my eyes and a quivering lip my dad rallied me and we went to get the parts we needed. I had plans with a friend and he had a meeting a little while later, so he told me we would fix it when I got back. I was anxious about this thought, because at any moment the other shoe could drop.

I returned from hiking with my friend to find my dad humming pleasantly almost finished fixing my bike. He even had enough patience to teach me how to finish fixing it. Much like when he had enough patience last Saturday to teach me how to replace my own spark plugs.

We sat there at the end of the day and chatted. I recall for so many years my dad had been really sick, and no matter our struggles I was always afraid his bad health would win out before we could understand each other. At the point that his health was not in a good place he got the transfer to CO. It was with this transfer that he got better specialists and the help he needed. His world started changing after he got the help he needed. It is like it revitalized him. We had a conversation about how he felt different, rejuvenated, and blessed. I suddenly was seeing the dad I recall from childhood, the one who wasn’t aggravated by my every short coming.

I realized that I have seen this dad a lot over the years but because of his own struggles this was not the dad that won out in most cases. This was the dad that hugged me before judging me when I shared the hardest news I ever had to share with him. This was the dad who sat there and listened as I told him about my struggles with anxiety, depression, and PTS, with tears in his own eyes. This is the man who has loved me my whole life, but we both hit a rough patch and failed to communicate.

So over the last year as he has been learning and growing and healing in his new position in CO. I have been doing the same in my own life. I know that there is significant change in my dad, where he feels revitalized. I also know that I am going through significant change. So here I am at the end of the day less afraid of my father. More accepting of the fact he is human and I am human. More able to love before judging, and more capable of communicating.

The thing is that I have offered this chance to so many people in my life, but it was always hard to stay open minded about my family and the fact they are human too. The chance I offer is one to communicate, where I focus on listening, or being more patient than usual. I could have just said no to all of this, often that is my go to, but I really wanted to understand this man who is my father. Relationships take work, patience, kindness, and above all love. My ability to keep this in my today allowed me to let my father in, and led to understanding for both of us.

At the end of the day the terrible scary monster of a father I imagined I had is gone. My perceptions were crushed and in their dust was the man I have always known was there, but now it’s just honest and true, no more shadows. We’re all just human, aren’t we? I love you dad, and am so glad I am getting to know you better.

Signing off Commerce City, CO.

Today I cried. Not all day, not necessarily for that long. Today I cried because I needed to cry. I wanted to cry. I have a pretty morbid unfeeling reaction to death most of the time. I reserve myself from it. It is not the idea of a body rotting in the ground that pains me, or even the way the person was removed from this world. The pain occurs when I think of the what won’t be. Therefore I cry less when someone of a respectable old age passes away. They have lived a long life, we can sit and rejoice in the passage of time and the blessings that came with it. Death is inevitable, that is why it should not be feared.

I can’t fathom what is on the other side, is it heaven/hell, is it nothing? Maybe nothing can be either heaven or hell depending on the soul. I really try not to focus on what is next after this life, because I can’t know for certain.

I had this dream once that made me feel like angels are real, and so is heaven and hell, but that is a story for another day, even though it applies to everyday in my life.

Today I cried because the world is so unfair, people die at the hand of others… they die by their own hand… or sometimes they die without a real reason being known. I am of the age where people are starting families and having babies. I have had so many people join the club of parents who have lost babies. I say baby when others may say fetus. I am not here to debate science or politics with you. For any parent who ever wanted their child that they no longer have it was a baby, whether 9 weeks or 9 months pregnant.

I honestly try and give myself a good cry at least once a month. It is not that I hide from it the rest of the month, I just don’t feel like crying as much since I stopped drinking and started meditating. I guess this week I will have two good cries. I cried over the same thing on Sunday, apparently the death of those who never get to experience life has really been on my mind this week. I know why that is, but I am not ready to tell you yet. I also know why today I cry over it, but that is not my story to tell.

I used to cry over the past and the present and how I wished my life had been different or I had been a different person. Now mainly I cry over the lives that won’t be. Even these tears have changed from what they were a year ago. I cry because it hurts that they are gone, for everyone who experiences a loss too young. I cry for those people, not for myself, but also for myself. I think I cry because I was almost one of those gone too young.

I am living my life for those who can’t, I cannot take this for granted. I don’t think any of can. There are so many lives that will never be fully lived, so those of us who get the chance. We can’t go wasting them. We have to really live for those who won’t, because if you could ask their ghosts, most of them probably wish they could.

Signing off Commerce City, CO.

Wanderers, it is hard to find something poignant to say every day. Today was not special, I had no new epiphany to share or any great moment to tell you about. This I am fine with. So that’s what we’ll discuss today.

You cannot expect everyday in life to be a roller coaster full of ups and downs. That may be what gives you an adrenaline rush and makes life worth while, but we are not meant to have every day be extraordinary. If that were the case then we’d never feel that excitement of living. It is also true that if we feel that every single day we will go insane at some point. It’s the origins of midlife crisis and work place breakdowns. It’s alcoholism and anxiety attacks. The body needs a rest.

This is hard for people in America to believe, because we are taught to run faster and harder than everyone else in the rat race. Then if we don’t achieve these extremely high expectations we are failures or just mediocre at best. So what happens if you don’t achieve the job, the house, the spouse, the car, the kids, the status? If you allowed yourself to believe that was your purpose in life, it can lead to mental health issues, physically issues, and especially emotional confusion. You might lose the confidence or the drive to survive in life. It’s common, the world had never taught you life can be different. You’ve never been taught that “mediocre” isn’t second best. It isn’t even real.

You are a person of value, for your friends, your neighbors, that random person you kindly help, because we are human. Our value is not established by the GDP of the country we live in, though many think so. Our value is by our contribution, which may look different than someone else’s contribution. Because though we are all human, we also have individual strengths and weaknesses. It is not indicated by the gender you were born or the color of your skin.

I find moments where I feel I am not contributing in my life, since I pay no rent and don’t hold a job, I have even not gotten back in to school yet. I am contributing though, I love my neighbors who are everywhere around me as I travel. I show value to those down on their luck and share smiles. I tell my story, which has a whole lot of value. That is not my ego talking. I am working to facilitate open conversation with people in my life, both known and strangers. I also receive stories in return. Confidence is built by being okay with telling our story.

So being okay with a day where I don’t tell my story, where I tackle the necessities of life, and allow my body, mind, and soul rest… That is part of the process, it’s part of life. It very well may be that this story ends one day, because I don’t find each new day unique and beautiful. It may be that the poignant parts become my norm. I may find I no longer wander because my appetite has been fulfilled. Oh how part of me longs for that day, but the wanderer is still hungry, still searching. I’m beginning to wonder what I’m looking for… What do you think?

Signing off Commerce City, CO