I sense a recurring theme...write about my dreams but don't finish them or just keep repeating the same things. There's a lesson here: look at what you are repeating and
Lather, Rinse, and Repeat!
I started this blog to chronicle my deliberate attempt to find new adventures on familiar terrain, but I've been traveling ever since I started it! (I actually started it in October but didn't post until the end of November because I couldn't think of an appropriate blog name.)
I've been to Michigan to see the lighthouses on Lake Michigan plus the wineries and breweries. (Funny, I spent the first 18 years of my life there and have never seen much north of the city I grew up in.)
I've been to Cleveland for my partner's birthday celebration to go to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (amazing! More to come on that!), see some of Cleveland's world class theater (really, they are third in the nation after NY and Chicago for live theater), check out the lighthouses of Lake Erie, and to partake in Cleveland's rich brewing history--beer! We did a detour on the way home to check out a newly instated national park--Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and of course, hit a winery.
We've just returned from a road trip and took impromptu detours to Mammoth Cave National Park, Birmingham, the Selma to Montgomery Freedom Trail, and ended up in Cape San Blas, Florida, for nine days.
But I'm back now, and I'm fighting off that post travel blues pity party. Instead of feeling sorry for myself that I had to come back to reality, I'm going to capture this trip in full travelogue (forthcoming) and bask in the memories and let those good vibes propel me into a good frame of mind for the coming dreary winter months.
My trips always seem to coincide with finding an amazing book that sets the tone for the journey. I read books all the time, but some books are special and stay with you, and sometimes even change your course.
"Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" was a book I hated to see end. Some books leave you haunted a little bit, and I guess I've got a case of that haunting, that whisper, that spirit. The one that tells me "keep going." So I'm staying true to that spirit! I am still stepping out! Still steppin'!
Right now I have no concrete travel plans in my future. We are contemplating doing Glacier NP, Banff, and a (gasp) cruise to Alaska. Bear with me. It won't be a Royal Caribbean type cruise with tons of antics. We're going to find a small ship that caters to the backpacking crowd. Oh there are the adult cruises, but they are the luxury cruises, where the main event is the culinary flamboyance on board. (In all honesty, I do want to do a luxurious European river cruise someday.) Right now, I want a gritty cruise experience where the action takes place on land not on board. We're choosing the ship route because they say, unless you have a month or so, it's the best way to see Alaska.
Alaska has never been a dream of mine. Nor has Glacier. And because of that, I'm all the more excited! We are going to take an Amtrak train, however, and seeing my own country by train (as I've done in England and Europe and Thailand) has always been a romantic dream of mine. I saw quite a bit of the country from the windows of Greyhound buses when I was in the Air Force, and always loved that even though it took sixteen hours to go a few hundred miles.
But that is another six months or year away, and I've got some living to do with the life I've created here, so I'm writing out some goals and ideas. And I'll keep adding to it as inspirations and notions and wild hairs come to me.
Keeping myself accountable.
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I'm making limoncello from lemons. If I have to be back here, working everyday, then I'm gonna find that spark again. Gonna find things to do that excite me, not things that are supposed to be exciting.
I've got this feeling that the rest of 2012 and 2013 is going to be a different kind of year. My writing is not in hiatus, but I have nothing in production, which frees me up to create and write again. It also will leave a void in some ways, and I want to create new experiences for myself, and then maybe in 2014 go back to production schedule.I think it will always go without saying that Writing will be on my To-do list.
- Read more amazing books
- Go to more music events and write reviews for them in that other blog
- Go camping more often
- Attempt to walk to and from work when the weather gets warm just for the heck of it. (It's 14 miles each way.)
- Plant a garden
- See Lucinda Williams in concert
- Go to that indie music fest in Wisconsin and do the Woodstock thing
- Be super sneaky and happen to be biking near a certain big venue when big ticket names are here and just happen to have beer and food in my backpack
- Have more dinner parties
- Give more gifts to unsuspecting people
- Have my nieces and nephews down for a weekend
- Go to my friend's Hemingway party, which I miss every year
- Write my first song
- Bake holiday goodies for neighbors. (I bought all the ingredients today.)
- Host that performance party I've been talking about for a year
- Get back on stage as an actress
- Get to know my acquaintances better and turn them into friends
- Cook new, delicious dishes
- Take weekend road trips to nearby places
- Buy some cowboy boots
- Take a photo everyday
My journey of a thousand miles, one step at a time.
(My footprints on Cape San Blas!)
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