Traveling Insights: An Inside Perspective

The Puget Sound on a blissfully cloudy day 2019 marks time in three years that I spent money on travel that wasn't related to work or school. Since 2013 I've been keeping this travel blog as a way to share with others my adventures and, more recently, tips and tricks on how to travel on other people's dimes. Today's post is about showing support for those you love by being there for them during one of the most defining moments of their lives. No, I'm not talking about graduating from high school, moving out of the country, or losing your virginity. I'm talking about the sacred, somewhat strange ritual we humans like to call marriage. I can say this having spent the last few months working for a catering company whose business is comprised mostly of weddings; 70 percent, in fact. Weddings are fascinating microcosms of culture. You can tell so much by a couple based on who attends, how much they drink (if alcohol is served at all), what kind of music...

If you're anything like me, some weeks you wake up on Tuesday and already feel like you've lost control of the week. Deadlines come and go and you didn't even have it written down somewhere. You're going going going and can't remember the last time you took a moment to breathe. About half-way through last semester I decided to take control of the scatter-brained, willy nilly weeks I was having by creating a checklist that would keep me grounded. What motivated me to do this? I'd forgotten about assignments and showed up to class not having done the readings more often than I would like to admit, which is very unlike me. Plus, I realized that unless I actually schedule time to sleep or do fun things, they don't happen. Or they do happen, but at the expense of my productivity or deadlines for school and work. What developed out of this desire to have a system in place to keep my mental stability in check became my Sunday Wellness Check-In. Call it what ...

My last post written about the overview of this blog was originally drafted in February. It's quite remarkable for me to think about how much has happened since then and what the future months (and years) hold. My work interning with Voices for Rural Resilience is hands-down one of the best decisions I could have made this semester to maintain my mental stability and seek to build my network outside of the classroom. I reflected the other day on why I am not attracted to joining any clubs on campus and instead chose to put my efforts into serving as a board member of the Seward Neighborhood Group. Return on investment in relationships was a big driver. For some reason I feel like network that I can build through the community I live in, versus the one associated with the University, is much more powerful. Maybe it just comes back to this inclination I have towards working with older people. I've noticed that I don't go to hardly any of the social activities organized b...