Here For the Hope

I took this picture while at the apex of a panic attack.

This isn't something I've shared with a lot of people, but I want to talk about it.

Content Warning: Suicidal Ideations

The Myth of "Following Your Dreams"

 Does anyone else feel like the phrase "Make changes in your life like quitting your job and be happy!" is extremely patronizing, or is that just me?

Sure, Joe Not-Really-a-Millionaire, you did... something... and now you live in Dubai and now you're happy.  Great.

But I just cannot help but think that that's... patronizing.  And simplistic.  And not at all feasible for the vast majority of human beings.  Some of us don't have the option to just quit our job to be happy.  Some of us have jobs and keep our jobs and aren't considering quitting (at least not yet) not because they make us happy but because they make us money.

I know I personally have spent way too much time, as evidenced by some of my posts, struggling financially to be able to feasibly be at a point where we feel comforatble leaving the stability and comfort of a full-time job that pays well enough to live in a decent part of the country, or world, and don't have the ability to feel comfortable leaving that to follow non-existent dreams.

I guess I simply feel so tired of the influencer and live-for-what-makes-you-happy mentality that I cannot simply comprehend this concept.

Amsterdam 2018

December 8-10, 2018

Heyyyy, long time no see.

Life kind of got in the way between I posted about my Paris trip and now; in between Thanksgiving and Christmas and my dad losing his job and getting a new one meaning that I had to find a new place to live, and moving out, and moving in, and two other trips...  It's been a really crazy past few months.

I'm going to try to make up for it in posting a lot in succession.  Maybe.  Who knows.  We'll see.

The design overhaul I'm trying to work on as well is coming up, but that's going to end up on the backburner for a good long while.

Anyway.  On to the Amsterdam/Netherlands trip.  I'm not sure whether I should call this a Netherlands trip since I did not spend all my time in Amsterdam, or an Amsterdam trip since most of our time was definitely spent in Amsterdam.  The graphic says Amsterdam, so that's what I'm going with on this one.

S is a huge fan of the Netherlands, pretty much all for personal reasons, and she really wanted to share this with me.  So she booked the tickets out of JFK with Norwegian (our favorite airline!) and she spent time talking to me about her special Dutch friends.

Paris 2018

October 12-14, 2018

I realize I never finished posting the next few parts of my Bilbao trip from July, but I do make these trips frequently enough that I just didn't feel like continuing the posts.  If anyone wants me to finish posting about the trip I will, I just don't feel it's necessary right now.  I really just want to focus on getting my Paris trip done and out of the way because it was already a month ago, and I really should have posted sooner.

So here goes.  A post about my adventures in Paris last month.

Euskadi 2018 - Part 1

July 2-10, 2018.

It's that time again!

Time for me to post about a recent trip, even if it's one I make every year now.  It's always a long time coming, but it's so much better for me to make it at least once a year instead of once every who-knows-how-long.  I promised my best friend, and myself, two years ago that I'd make this a regular thing, and I will keep that promise.

I booked the tickets in March or April, about the same time I booked the tickets to the Philippines, after talking to my best friend about the dates, and when she confirmed they'd work for her, I booked them, and when the time came, off I went.

My flight left at 10 PM out of JFK, so I'm not really counting that day as a travel day, since only about 2 hours were actually covered, fewer if you count in the time difference that inevitably occurred within two hours of flying east.