the world is full of secrets about us

storm coming in, Hoi An, Vietnam

I YOLO'd and regret it. I usually get so despereate for a haircut I end up at whatever salon I pass when the urgency hits. It's a give-it-to-god strategy. This is one of the fails. I am currently in the anger stage of my haircut grief but hopefully it is not long before stage five, surrender.

before

"after"

Changing places all the time requires finding new establishments to get haircuts, waxes, etc.  No one's gonna take that time! This is why many backpackers look like hippies.

When people live in the same place, they are loyal to that spot. The salon I went to today has reviews like, "I have gone to this queen for 3 years, how will I ever leave her?" I know the feeling, I always cling to what I love. If I find a good greek yogurt in a corner store I'm like, "Yorckh, we gotta buy 50 and put them in a portable fridge." The weeks before I moved from Brooklyn to Ecuador, I wondered how I would survive without Kombucha. I think you can predict the answer but if not let me tell you - I was fine. I was drowning in guacamole and mango smoothies in Ecuador, I didn't need no overpriced Kombucha.

mourned leaving this dress on a bus

but it made room for this one

Travel makes me extra attached to my belongings because I think of them as all I have: I only have one pair of jeans! This raincoat has saved my computer! My phone is my lifeline to the Old World! This structured jacket is proof that I was a young professional once! Sometimes drawing a circle around things that make me happy tricks me into thinking there cannot be new happinesses outside of the circle. I left a dress on a bus and beat myself up for days, as if that dress were given to me by Galadriel on my journey to Mordor. Time and travel have proven that loss and change are not just manageable, but fun. There are always good things to come.

my go-to snack in Nicaragua that I loved yet haven't missed since

I'm starting to get that preferences, clothes and interests do not really say anything about me - they are about a phase of my life in which I was in a specific place with certain people and an amount of money that made all of it possible. If I am wearing an alpaca sweater it is not because I am passionate about the alpaca's capacity to hold in warmth, it's because I'm in Cusco.

Change makes me realize how adaptable people actually are. There are so many ways to experience happiness. It does not require the presence of certain people, music, or foods, as I had thought. Not to say those things don't make me happy - just that there absence does not prevent happiness. There are other ways.

I'm not actually allergic to the sun; I've been blessed by many hand-me-down hostel reads; I'm down to share mangoes with bugs. These are truths I recently learned about my very own self. The world is full of secrets about us! This is the craziest thing to me: it is possible that my favorite food is still out there, waiting for me to try it. Ten minutes ago I had chicken in a new way. I thought we were out of new ways to eat chicken. There is no end to the potential favorite foods, dear friends, and spellbinding views in the Universe - not just to discover new kinds of happiness, but new parts of ourselves.


I leave you with an example of how new environment brings out new sides of a person:

the city

the beach