I am so loved. I have friends who would get on a plane and fly half way around the states to spend my birthday weekend with me.
It was a very wonderful birthday. We ran around Vegas, went to the Grand Canyon, and saw a Cirque Du Soleil show.
My heart is so full of this love. I am so happy to have these people in my life and these memories in my mind.
November is often the month we remember to go through the things we are grateful for. I am so thankful for the people who I have met and those I call friends, they have made life worth living.
I love you guys.
Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
As I am sitting here, drinking my coffee, I find myself reminiscing. Just thinking about life. My life. Looking back five years ago, three years ago, even last year – where I am, what I am doing today – this is not where I had imagined myself at. If you told me a year ago that this is where I would be, living at home with my mother, and that I would be happy about it – I would have laughed at you. I would have gone as far as to call you crazy. “My mom lives in Ohio. I am never going back to Ohio. Have you lost your mind?”
I know what happiness feels like. It feels like wanting to be awake. It feels free, lifted of any burden. It is the feeling of contentment AND the motivation to change.
A short five years ago… I was at a strange time in my life. I was selfish and self-seeking. A huge part of me still is selfish and self-seeking. If you asked me five years ago what was important to me, I would have answered very different from what I would tell you today. My priorities included money and myself. Not family and friends, certainly not God. As far as I was concerned then, there was no God.
However, I was hungry for something more. An adventure, and an adventure I would most unquestionably get.
It was around December 2008 that I had decided I needed to move to Florida. I had no family or friends in Florida (yet), but doggone it, that’s where I needed to be. Lucky for me, a photographer I had worked with in Toledo, Ohio knew a friend in Destin, Florida who needed a roommate. It was a ways off from my original plan of Miami, but Florida is Florida is Florida – and that’s where I was going to be!
Four years ago today I was still in Ohio, my car had broken down and drained all the money I had saved to move to Florida – it looked hopeless (as it should be very obvious to you now, nothing stops me from getting what I want – not even money or the lack thereof). I just didn’t believe I was going to make it out of Ohio alive. Then it dawned on me, the love of money controls everything. This love for money controls your thoughts and actions. It caused fear and uncertainty. Doubt. If there is one thing life has taught me, it is that I have no time for doubt.
A second thing life has taught me? That I have no time for bull sh*t.
So the next month I hopped in my car, let my boss know I was taking a week vacation to Florida (which required me to put everything I owned and could possibly fit into my car…) and I made the drive. The photographer’s friend still needed a roommate, and I conveniently needed a place to stay. Just for a week, right? While I was here on my week vacation, it occurred to me that I would also need a job, wouldn’t I? Seeing how unemployment was at an all time high, I was shocked to be hired at the first place I applied.
At this moment, I realized – I should probably let my boyfriend and work know that I am not coming back.
Three years ago from today, I was very far from where I started this post and equally far from where I am going to end it. I was unhappy and married. Not necessarily unhappily married, just married and unhappy – and the two may or may not go hand in hand.
That’s probably an exact thought I had three years ago from today.
I was getting ready to go to my morning serving job and then preparing my other uniform for my night serving job. Work. That is what my year consisted of. Work and sleep. It was then that I found out how happy you could be while you were dreaming, and how angry you could be when someone woke you up.
Shortly after, I had an epiphany – you didn’t have to be asleep to dream.
Two years ago I was training to run my first 5k. I hate running. I hate exercising in general. I ran most of the 5k, and walked the last bit. Let me assure you, this was an accomplishment. Not necessarily one I was proud of. Yet, an accomplishment still the same.
However, it was just like the year before, filled with the never ending excitement of sleep. At this moment it was impossible not to have imagined a rejected future, but also I imagined a life of many countries, of vast and enduring adventure, of walking, riding, and driving in foreign places.
Just one year ago from today – more recent, yet still just as unreachable as any other event in the past; I was getting ready to go into Carrabba’s for work. I was sure to work as many hours in the night as I could, and sleep the rest of the day away. I would find myself sleeping until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I was most certainly depressed. Some people turn to alcohol, drugs, television, or other addictive behaviors to tune out the reality of life; I sleep.
I sleep, because in my dreams I am able to make up a reality much more suited to my overactive imagination and vain ambition.
It was this summer that I planned out what was to be the most epic road trip of all time. My plans were a facade (a word with which I know the meaning, but butcher the pronunciation of every time). Planning was the dreaming I could do while I was awake, at least until I could escape to the solace of my bed. It was everything I talked about, wrote about, and thought about. “The Trip.” It was going to take me away from whatever nightmare I felt I was living through, and it was going to be memorable.
The trip was most certainly memorable, but I learned the nightmare wasn’t one you could escape simply by waking up.
Then there is today. July 20, 2013. Had you told me last year that a year from now I would be living with my mother, and I would be happy, you would have been right. However, Ohio would no longer be her home anymore either. The place I am at now is happier than I could have imagined for myself in the buried chaos of the last five years.
What I find even more crazy is that a year from now a stranger will pull this blog up, read this post, and then think to themselves what an odd person wrote this blog – and then that stranger may realize that they were indeed the author of this blog, just a very different version of themselves.
It seems that every day that passes nothing appears to change; yet looking back, nothing is the same.
Trying to recollect the steps down memory lane,
wondering if my futile attempts are in vain.
One would think,
without ink.
The past would remain,
to drive one insane.
Was it this way or that?
Changing by the tip of a hat.
Within a moment of time,
one would look at a line.
Forever lost,
within a rhyme.
So that’s it, right? Finished the drive over to New York. Enjoyed visiting family in between Seattle and Albany (some for a second time). Picked up the car. We’re done, right? I guess we should just go home from there.
But we didn’t.
Stopped to see friends in Baltimore. Stayed in North Carolina. Thawed out in Jacksonville. Since we had gone so far, we might as well finish the drive down to Miami, right? Maybe even chase a sunset to the Keys!
So we did that too.
Stayed over in the Orlando area, and enjoyed family there. Since this has been quite the adventure, we thought it might be wise to have a vacation from the adventure before we headed back to work.
Cedar Key was recommended as our layover spot, and it was perfect! We stayed at the beautiful Cedar Key Bed and Breakfast. Rode around on a tandem bicycle. Just had a good, restful night.
Our drive was going to take us right by Adrian’s dad’s house. So we decided to stay one night there. On the way there we passed a guy pushing a giant globe! So we had to ask him what he was doing! (www.worldguy.org)
Got to Baker, had a great time. Told them about our adventure.
Then we locked keys in car.
Again.
A friend drove up to unlock our car. There was just one problem – we couldn’t find the keys. So we were stranded in Baker, but at least we had good company. It took us three days, but we finally found the keys we drove home.
Home is where ever I am with you.
Don’t count the days. Make the days count.
The Great Race West East began. We had 5 days to get from Seattle to New York. Luckily our friend wanted to make his way to Montana too, and so he drove the whole there. We had to stop and put chains on our car to get over the Great Divide… but aside from that terrifying drive it wasn’t as bad as expected. The expected being that we wouldn’t be able to drive on hwy 90 at all in a compact car, all attempts would be fatal. The whole drive to Montana the boys talked in a Canadian accent. As a matter of fact, Adrian kept the Canadian accent for the rest of the trip through the Northwest, and every time he called a hotel he spoke in said accent.
To pass time we played yahztee in the car (yes, imagine this). We found gas at the cheapest price (2.69) in South Dakota. I was really excited that we were going to get to see Mount Rushmore, after all; something I’ve dreamed of doing since I was a child. Still a little sad that we had to miss the Grand Canyon, the Redwood forest, tons of things in San Francisco, Adrian’s skiing in Colorado just because we had to get back in time to pick up the car. I didn’t even get to spend as much time as I would have liked admiring the sculpted President’s. It just means we will have to take a more detailed Northwest Adventure trip in the future ; )
As we left Mount Rushmore, Adrian laid his seat back to take a nap. I entered highway 90. Cruise control set on 69mph in a 65mph zone. I passed a police officer in the fast lane, out of respect I turned my cruise control off and dropped to the legal speed limit. Other cars around me are going much faster, a white car in front of me was speeding much faster than I as we got closer to a 75mph zone (which only a local would know was up ahead). Then the police officer pulls out. Typical of my nature I panic, which I do every time a cop pulls out. I wake Adrian and he asks if I was speeding? Well, 4mph over. Then he’s not going to pull you over.
The lights come on… I look behind me. I get over to let the cop pass. He pulls behind me.
Is he seriously pulling me over for 4mph over?
Moral of the story, don’t speed at all in South Dakota. They are bored. They will pull you over. I didn’t get a ticket, but I did waste 45 minutes of my time. You see, I get upset at just the thought of getting pulled over… so then I start talking a lot. About EVERY THING. That poor police officer didn’t know what he was getting into. I am shaking compulsively, talking his ear off… he knows my whole family history and every thing about the road trip.
Because we were pulled over and wasted so much of our time we decided to get a motel. We stopped at a place in MN… sketchy. I am not sure if it was a hotel or someones shed built onto a home. LOL.
You know it is a long trip when you are reminiscing about the trip you are still on.
I have found that the spiritually mature look nothing like the world’s typical adults who have lost their hopes, dreams, passion and vision and are looking to finish their days in quiet retirement. -Outrageous Courage
After staying at the shed we finished the trek to Albany. It was nice to see family, some for a second time on the trip.
Feb 17
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Ashlee Karin 