Category: nonfiction

Ramblings from your favorite three-dollar bill

Laura Wild1 Comment

One of the less encouraging things that happened to me this year was when I got fired from my first writing internship. It had been an unpaid internship, and I’m not sure if that fact made my dismissal more painful or less. The position was at a quirky little agency in Portland where I was tasked with sourcing content for a new literary database, the eventual use for which I am still unclear. Naturally I was about as gung ho as any intern could be; I was stoked about shadowing an author of such apparent caliber, and every time I heard my then-boss drop a big name in the business I became more convinced that he was not a human, but a literary deity. Unfortunately, as I have found to be true before, my first impression was misguided. I held the position for about three weeks, for which I had uprooted my entire life, until suddenly one morning I was called into my superior’s office (a sick treehouse-like writing oasis) and sent on my way with an obviously repurposed Starbucks gift card.

 

This, of course, was shortly after I had begun working as a barista. In all fairness I had already come to terms with the fact that my position was not very rewarding for me anyway, and I guess my boss agreed that it was unfair to keep me on any longer. That I respected, but he also told me that if I had only had about ten years’ experience under my belt I would have been much more useful to the agency. I’m sure I don’t need to detail the irony of that statement. Alas, since I was in the fragile position of being a lone sojourner in a new city I had no choice but to look at the positive. I was happy that this internship had at least brought me to Portland, where for the first time I felt like I was more or less home.

 

I lived in the attic of a house that I shared with several other dudes in Alberta Arts district. I loved the area and rent was cheap, so I went for it without giving it too much thought. I spent my first Christmas away from home exchanging white elephant gifts with my roommates, and everything was just dandy until the perpetual rains of the Northwest produced a multitude of insect refugees that decided to hunker down in my attic. At first it was just an ant here or there, but little did I know my abode was soon to become a winter wonderland for microscopic squatters that would leave the scent of citronella ant guts lingering in my nose for months to come.

 

By March I had ants sharing my bed with me. From the windows to the wall, they could be found in every nook and cranny of my room. Ants manifested two of my space heaters to the point that they no longer worked. The worst part of it all was that my very lifestyle enabled their presence, and though I wasn’t opposed to using traps and poison to get rid of them, I was simply up against too many. Seasonal affective disorder had never felt like such a tangible illness and soon enough the madness had me tearing off the plastic around my draftiest window, the one with tiny cracks all around the edges, just to let a little light in. I think this was a turning point for the ants; were they really living in my room or in my head? I still can’t say for sure.

 

Luckily cannabis is legal in Oregon, and it can’t be surprising that a river rat like myself has been known to indulge in the substance from time to time. But was it coincidence that these six-legged fiends somehow seemed to show up every time I opened my window to cheef a quick bowl? I think not. I became convinced that those little fuckers were drawn to the aroma of a good dank herb just as much as anybody. They knew that a rainy day off for me meant a time of rich abundance for their colony, and so they eagerly awaited the mass of crumbs that fell from my bed like a feast every time they got a whiff of that botanical kryptonite. It was a vicious cycle; my frequent binges were their greatest and most reliable source of food.

 

A saga that is so comical in hindsight was at the time a small devastation to the fantasy I had envisioned for myself in the City of Roses. I had landed in Oregon during one of the coldest and rainiest winters in years, failed at a job that I considered to be a shoe-in to the NW writing scene and was subsequently displaced from my home by an army of tiny vermin. Always a sucker for drama, I can’t say I don’t at least appreciate the poetic value of my misfortune, but it’s taken me a while to get to this point. Ten months ago I made my last blog post, and since that time I have been struggling to find my way through this enduring creative dry spell. Last month my neglected website descended into domain purgatory and I nearly lost all of its content. I am beyond happy to have it back in working order, and though my stories may be less compelling than I had hoped, I feel lucky that I still have the opportunity to release them into the wild. The fact that my closest friends and family take the time to keep up with me on my journey makes me feel as validated as any readership could, and I’m just so thankful for you.

 

As I sit in my cozy gypsy caravan in the snow flecked foothills of Mt. Rainier, I feel more at peace than I have all year. I don’t know how I managed to score a life partner like the one who built this home with me, but every day that I wake up next to her I know I am doing A-okay. I am currently without a permanent residence, unemployed and unable to start school until next year. I am absolutely dripping in privilege, and the last thing I want to do is let these precious few months go to waste. Do I batten down the hatches and travel up and down the west coast? Write that novel that has been occupying the whole left side of my brain? Roll a few dubies down by the river? I only know what I’m definitely not going to do, and that is to let shame and insecurity get in the way of being my true self. In this time of corruption and uncertainty we can do nothing but assert our humanity, and I have found no feeling to be as liberating as giving in to my imperfections, hopefully finding the humor in them.

 

So much more easily said than done, the road to self-acceptance extends far beyond my vision and I’m sure I’ll be traveling it for some time. The past few months have been a whirlwind of both anticipation for the new life I am building and the reflection of the fast, fleeting summer I leave in my wake. I am no longer a lone sojourner in a new city but one half of a partnership that seems to grow stronger and more powerful by the day. It’s never been so easy to share everything that I have. Jenny possesses the same bold sweetness of that 12 year old girl I befriended ten years ago, but now holds in her presence a mysterious wisdom and poise that is both terrifying and electrifying. I did it, I got mushy and sentimental, but I’ve honestly never felt more entitled to it. Just the other day we were perched up on our rooftop patio in the prime real estate area of King’s Heights, where we were parked for the night above a city that seemed a hell of a lot smaller than it used to. It was one of the many times in my life that I became aware of the fact that I have everything in the world; that knowledge has so far been my best defense against the inevitable lows of adulthood.

Rejection: The unsurprising reality of being a teenage writer

Laura WildLeave a comment

When I was 13 I decided I wanted to write a novel, and over the course of a few years I did just that. At the time I was sure that the mere ambition I had to do such a thing made me extraordinary, and I expected my book would be made into a movie someday. I guess you could say I was an idealist… Needless to say, I was not nearly as special as I thought I was, and my ambitions were far from unique. As like any creative adolescent with a wild imagination, I just wanted my art to get the credit that I thought it deserved. Disappointment was almost inevitable.

Four years later I finished my first book, tried unsuccessfully to publish it, and subsequently began to let go of the dream that had consumed me for most of my youth. Countless rejections to brief queries and pieces of my manuscript left me feeling embarrassed and inadequate. When I was able to accept that my book wasn’t going to be the next best seller, I realized I was further from my dreams than I had ever imagined.

At a time in our lives when optimism and high aspirations seem to be at their peak, why is it that so many of us feel pressed for time? I don’t know about everyone else, but ever since I turned eighteen I have felt as though time has begun to pass faster than ever, and being told that I am in the prime of my life stresses me out more than anything. I am compelled to do as much as I can, as fast as I can. I don’t know if this makes me wise or naive… either way, the feeling certainly doesn’t seem to be fading.

At the same time, life has also never felt more ironic. Now, at nineteen, I have officially entered the realm of adulthood that prevents me from using my youthfulness to my advantage. Instead, it seems to be only a sign of my lack of experience. Any chance that I might have had to use my age as an asset is gone, and I have found myself without a platform or an edge. For writers, and especially writers who don’t know what the hell they’re doing, this is the worst possible position to be in. And yet here I am, just as devoted to my current project as I was my last. I have been working on Into the Wind, a memoir about my struggle with depression before and after my bike trip, since I returned home last November.

While my adventures in querying agents this time around have been much more encouraging, I still haven’t gotten close enough to finding representation to converse with any actual people on the phone. The little interest that I have gotten has kept me on the edge of my seat, and I have even prioritized prospective agents over people in my own life at times. The truth is that I have become, as much as I hate to admit it, madly and undeniably desperate for success. And I don’t think I am alone.

While not all young people want the same things that I do, I know that many of my peers feel a similar pressure to not only be successful, but to be young and successful. Most of us want to change the world, too, which I think is a really good thing for society, but sometimes a frustratingly difficult thing for us to achieve. At times my entire career as a writer can seem to hang on small bits of encouragement that I receive, even though those words are dwarfed by the numerous rejections that I find in my inbox every week. Being so restless by nature and eternally undecided I count on the advice from others to give me direction. When that advice is to follow my dreams and never give up, I can make myself feel powerful and unstoppable. However, when that advice is to be sensible and major in something that will undoubtedly make me financially independent, changing courses can seem tempting, too.

Could my real weakness be the fact that I am so impressionable?

In my plight to scavenge for anything in my repertoire that can make me stand out from the crowd, I have taken the words of one of my favorite writers very seriously. Lena Dunham is the perfect example of a writer who knows how to find beauty in her imperfections, and that is truly what makes her writing so appealing. By being slightly unpolished and painstakingly truthful I have told myself that I shouldn’t force beauty out of my writing, but try to let it come out on its own. This has to be my philosophy, because if I believed that all of my writing had to be literary gold as soon as it hit the paper, I would be totally screwed.

Right now I don’t feel like I could let myself give up if I wanted to, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared of the repercussions. Opening up has been such a freeing thing for me in so many ways, and equally binding. I can only hope that I become a better writer as I grow older, but I know that when that happens I will have to be careful not to pick apart old writing that I have shared. After all, if there’s anything I know for sure it’s that you have to start somewhere, and I have never been one to wait for the perfect timing.

Sharing things like this reduces so many insecurities that I have about the choices I make. I have used writing to dwell on my insufficiencies and ruminate over my regrets, but I have also used it to dilute my sadness and anxiety by opening up the area in which I keep it. Sometimes being publicly honest is the best remedy for pain and dissonance, and I have even felt relief in just reading other people’s version of the truth. I suppose my ultimate dream in publishing a memoir would be to affect people in a similar way; to free them of the pressure to conform parts of themselves that have yet seemed unjustified.

The Heaviness of Being Home-Free

Laura WildLeave a comment

November 4th, 2014; 50 miles from the coast:

I’ve spent almost sixty days looking for this final horizon; this is where I have envisioned my success. I will plow through the unblemished sand and be met by the incoming tide of the Atlantic ocean, where all of the saltiness of my being will be washed away by the saltiness of the water, and I will be a different person. A better person. Brand new.
Suddenly I feel heavy again. Up until now all of the weight that I have been shedding in the past two months has seemed to be lifted from my shoulders, and even as I hunch over the handlebars of my bike I feel taller, and slimmer. But the heaviness has crept up on me again, and every forward motion feels like I am already pedaling through that promised land sand. Because I don’t want to go home again. I haven’t found enlightenment yet.

By the time I got to Mississippi all I could think about was Florida. As I drew evermore eastward, transitioning through Alabama and landing in the gulf coast, I became consumed by the idea of it. If I squinted my eyes I could see the ocean cresting the horizon, and if I breathed deeply enough I could taste the Atlantic air. I thought about it to the point that I didn’t even pay much attention to where I was, until suddenly I was there. The foam of the St. Augustine sea was splashing through the spokes of my tires and the foam of much awaited champaign was splashing against my skin. In a moment, it was all over.

When I left on my trip a year ago today, I set off in the hopes of broadening my horizons. Little did I know that I was actually, literally just making them smaller. With the help of a couple different bikes I crushed the United States down to a size that had somehow been manageable to me, and with a moderate amount of physical strain I pedaled across it. America was tiny; but the kind of tiny that makes you feel tiny, too, not bigger in comparison. As I approached my final destination I finally began to feel like I was prepared for it; not for the end of my journey, but for the beginning of it.

Unfortunately, making it to the finish line only meant that I would soon be returning home to the short winter days of South Dakota, where my stark tan lines would quickly fade and so would the sense of achievement that I had gained. The let down that followed lasted a lot longer than I expected, and as I’ve said before, I didn’t feel particularly enlightened in any sense of the word. I don’t know why I wanted it so badly to begin with; almost more than daily enjoyment, I wanted growth. But when my trip was over, the greatest feeling that I had toward it was that I was glad I had done it, and I wanted to do it again. I didn’t realize exactly why I was feeling that way until recently.

On the first day of my trip I made a journal entry about the Pacific ocean. I made some melodramatic metaphor about how the sea and I were similar, because we felt so strong but we were ultimately contained within ourselves; we were stuck. As I began to move through space I realized that wasn’t necessarily true for me anymore; in reality, I was as free as anybody could possibly be. I was graced with the lightness of the unknown, something that I have since come to value most about my experience. Looking back, I realize that I was closer to enlightenment on day one than on any other day of my trip, because I was brand new. I had nearly nothing to lose and that, matched with the exhilaration of not knowing what the hell I was doing, is the closest I have ever come to complete freedom.

When I finished something that was so pivotal in my transition to adulthood, I found it impossible to move on. The only way it stayed with me was if I continued to drag it around long after it was over. Though the memory of my experience on the Southern Tier is heavy with longing and nostalgia, I would never dream of letting go of it. Instead, I continue to reflect on it, motivated by my eternal desperation to write it all down. The only way I see that changing is if I replace it with a new, bigger adventure. But being a broke college student, that is easier said than done, and I spend more time than I would like to admit just fantasizing about what I might do next.

It is that anticipation that makes everything I do seem less risky, like settling down and going to school, because I know that there must be something in my future that will give me that same feeling of freedom again, and purpose. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was so lucky to have an adventure that was so rich in new experiences, hard lessons, and satisfying rewards. But those aren’t always the best stories to tell, and I feel compelled to find another story to write about, one that has to do with much more than just myself. Next time I set off for the great unknown (which will be as soon as I possibly can) I’m going to focus less on the destination, and more on the journey.

The act of moving on.

Laura WildLeave a comment

The day I met the Bike the US for MS cyclists was one of my favorite days of the whole trip. They were the most refreshing group of people- some of them were significantly older than I was, and some were my same age. Most of them had more experience than me, but there were a few who didn’t, and that was a big relief to me. To be honest, the fact that I was no longer the only female in my group was one of the biggest selling points. After one day of cycling with them I accepted my new change of plans without a second thought about what I was leaving behind, which was uncharacteristically easy for me to do.

We rode out of Tempe bright and early; the sun was coming up over the cactus-capped mountains, and everybody was feeling optimistic. Those were always the best days; when we were all collectively naïve as to what was in store, and we were able to not only convince ourselves, but each other that it was going to be an easy day. Needless to say those days were never easy; they always turned out to be mega hot vertical inclines with no shoulders and ample big-rig traffic, paired nicely with minimal passing zones and no places to pee. What made them great was how hilariously ironic it was. Also how pissed off everybody was about it, including myself.

Luckily it was easy to find humor in these situations; the false summits and angry truck drivers who didn’t want to share the road; because it was hard not to be happy when I was with such an incredible group of people. Cycling van-supported was just so much better than the first week of my trip. Though I still found ways to completely stress myself out, at least I never had to worry about food, water, and bike repairs. For a little while, anyway.

Unfortunately, one of the things that has always stunted my ability to go with the flow is my restlessness; I have always felt constantly pinched for time in every aspect of my life. This might explain why I felt like I needed to ride my bike across the country as soon as I was old enough to do it without my parent’s permission; it always seems more practical to jump the gun than to wait. This didn’t change on my bike trip; I often felt more anxious when I wasn’t on my bike than when I was on it, I suppose because I was continually anticipating the act of moving on. Because of this I never really let myself look back- if I had no time for rest then I hardly had time for eating, and that was undoubtedly my priority 99% of the time. Even to this day it is sometimes exhausting to reflect on what I left behind in such a rush, maybe that kind of eagerness to escape is rooted in fear also. If nothing else, the fear of never having any of those experiences again seems justified.

Moving on was not only difficult emotionally, but in the literal sense as well. A common occurrence in those early days with the new cyclists was facing the challenge of whether to navigate on my own or try to keep up with the rest of the group. I was usually pretty confident that I was capable of finding my own way, but it was more than just a hassle, it sometimes meant the difference between having a helping hand to change a flat tire with, or being completely on my own. The difference between having to outrun a whole pack of watch dogs, or just having to outrun my fellow cyclists. The difference between being able to zone out and stare at the rear tire of the bike in front of me, or actually having to pay attention to keep from going off the road. There were pros and cons to both, especially since trying to match somebody else’s pace could be exhausting regardless of if they were faster than me or slower. It was kind of like choosing the lesser of two evils.

For everybody else, moving on didn’t seem to be so much of an issue in the sense that they didn’t have to mentally prepare for it. Everything would be moving at such a slow, manageable pace until suddenly it seemed that everyone would run out of patience at once. I guess by the end of the trip I started to get this way too; just another way we cyclists can be overachievers. But the difficult part was the fact that this sudden urge to get up and get moving was just that- sudden.

When the time to be leisurely abruptly ended the act of cycling could kind of become a race, and that was something that stressed me out to no end. Some balance in the world would be ever so slightly off and before we knew what hit us even the slow riders would be pushing to maintain 20 miles per hour, into the wind or with it, it didn’t matter. I would be one of them, drafting as much as I could and struggling to shake off the early morning fatigue as fast as I could.

I never regretted it once I forced myself to get going; in the desert it made a lot of sense to get on the road as early as possible, because the mornings were always so much cooler than the evenings. There was also a lot less traffic, which always seemed to brighten everyone’s mood. I think my favorite thing about those early morning rides was how satisfying it was to break the stillness. When the world was at its quietest, it’s gentlest; we were at our most lively. We were on a mission to breathe in the coolest, freshest air of the day while there was a never ending supply of it. While the earth was still catching up to us, we were already prepared for the day. That was the best part about the mornings; the fact that they were so unblemished, and so promising.

The dawn can be like that a lot; almost everything I do starts off really well, which might explain why my intuition doesn’t tell me to give things a second thought. Luckily the rest of my trip was generally incredible, so that first day was a good example of what I could expect for the next 2,500 miles. There were still some tough times though, of course there were, and the next day was one of them. We were moving along just fine, and then everything changed when one of us got hurt.

How the first week of my trip became infamously terrible.

Laura WildLeave a comment

I spent a significant part of last summer preparing myself to get knocked on my ass, because I knew that I was not going to become a cyclist overnight. When the reality of what I really wanted sunk in, and I accepted the fact that I secretly craved hardship, I suppose I started trying to seek it out. I always knew that in the end, my efforts would not be wasted; I didn’t have to go very far to find it.

As a teenager on the quest for enlightenment it has always been easy to elaborate on the dark side of life. It has always been easy to get lost in carefully chosen words, or lost in the pages of a seldom used moleskin journal. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I guess in many ways I still don’t. I hadn’t been cycling for long and I hadn’t been writing for much longer. All I knew was that I wanted something from a particular piece of time, something that I did not intend to return. And I thought the only way I could capture that was through writing.

Getting lost in the daily motion of constant pedaling was just another way for me to stay in the moment, something that I not only highly valued but also found to be really tricky. The loneliness that I had been striving for kicked in as soon as I realized that I was doing something that most people didn’t even want to do. I was doing something that was going to be a lot harder than I expected, and I was going to be doing it by myself. So began the most difficult part of my bike trip- the summer leading up to it.

I thoroughly hated every minute of my daily bike rides at first, mostly because they were so repetitive. There is something surreal about moving through space at a steady 14 miles an hour, but for some reason I spent most of my summer taking full advantage of the ability it gave me to zone out. I used this same trick a lot when I was on the Southern Tier; when I wasn’t looking out at the emptiness before me, or squinting my eyes to catch a glimpse of the Atlantic coast, I was staring down at my front wheel and day dreaming.

What I was dreaming about last summer was making my escape. How was riding my bike across the country going to be beneficial to me? Mostly I just didn’t want to go to college; it wasn’t even Autumn yet and I was already terrified of getting caught in the cycle of post-highschool normality.

I have felt this self created pressure to swim upstream more and more as I have gotten older. As long as I have been encouraged to blaze my own trail, I have assumed that I have been doing the right thing by purposely being an outlier. I don’t know where my generation got this ability to follow our dreams without having to acknowledge their inevitable repercussions, but we’re lucky we do. The only thing that makes me different from everybody else is only the degree to which I enjoy the eventual downfall of my elaborate plans, because it is dramatic and, in it’s own way, weirdly exciting. I have chosen not to avoid intensity, partly because I like to learn the hard way and partly because it gives me something to write about.

The first week of my trip was intense as hell. The prospect of a 4,000 foot climb in elevation coupled with the fact that it was almost always over 100 degrees seemed daunting enough. What made it shittier yet was the fact that I got food poisoning in the middle of nowhere with three guys that were, at the time, mere acquaintances. By day five my cheap bike was already starting to fall apart under all the weight of my gear, I had changed upwards of a dozen flat tires, I had gotten poison ivy all over my body and I was holding the rest of my group back. Just before we got into Phoenix we were sidetracked by flash flooding and when we finally did get into town, I was left in a McDonald’s parking lot while the rest of my group went on without me.

Looking back it was one of the unluckiest and most uncomfortable weeks of my life, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t love every minute of it. It was so humid that our bodies were constantly dripping with sweat, our eyes constantly stinging from the salt. We used umbrellas as shade at some point; I hid from the sun under a conservative campaign sign that I had felt no guilt in plucking from the parched ground. It was crazy; the desert swallowed the road, and the never-ending road swallowed our motivation. The fire ants taunted us when we thought about sitting on the ground, and when we were thirsty all we had to drink was the hot water we were hauling in our panniers. The smell of the baking earth swarmed in on us and took our minds on some tired, hallucinogenic trip. We were lost, but we were together. At least until I got abandoned.

I had essentially failed because I hadn’t given up on myself, and therefore my cycling companions had to give up on me. I can’t say that I enjoyed being tired, hot, or hungry, but for whatever reason I felt prepared for it in those days. Because it wasn’t about overcoming all of the physical limitations that came my way, it was about learning how to navigate through the emotional complications that I expected. For that one week of my trip I was blessed with blissful naivety, and I didn’t realize what I was truly up against. When I was left in Phoenix I felt like I must have been fooling myself, because I had no idea that I was slowing the group down so much. I stayed in the city for ten days before I found a new group to ride with, all of which I spent laying in bed feeling sorry for myself. My bike was falling apart, and I knew that I could fix it, but my determination was falling apart too, and hiding under the covers in an air-conditioned hotel room was not putting it back together.

Why I biked the Southern Tier and why I’m writing about it.

Laura WildLeave a comment

I dipped my tires in the Pacific ocean on September 2nd, a Tuesday, and headed for the Atlantic. I was on a really cheap bike that I had purchased only months before on a whim, after I skipped my high school graduation to climb Devil’s Tower and was inspired by my climbing guide to bike the Southern Tier. I was not a cyclist, was out of shape, had little money, and had no idea what I was doing. But I was with three acquaintances from Colorado that seemed to know a thing or two about self-supported touring, so I got in line behind them and headed east.

What began as a way to fulfill a case of severe wanderlust quickly turned into a way for me to write another story. I wanted to suffer, I wanted to do crazy things, and I wanted to write about it. But a few days into my bike trip I found that I only had the energy to do three things: eat, sleep, and ride my bike. I didn’t actually get around to writing about it until I got home again in early November.

I wanted to blog about it then, but for whatever reason I am choosing now, several months after the fact, to tell my story. While a bunch of really shitty things happened to me during those two months that I was gone, and I definitely think some of them are worth sharing, the most interesting part of my story happened before and after I left. I tend to be totally devoted to everything I do, at least until I lose interest in it, and I think that’s pretty much what writing has been for me throughout my adolescence, as well as rock climbing, bike riding, and going to school.

I took a gap year this past year, which turned out to be a really good call. I was all signed up for classes and housing at Black Hills State University last fall, but I pulled out at the end of summer when I finally convinced my parents that I was serious about biking the Southern Tier.

I wanted to do it all by myself at first; I was freshly off of my most recent rereading of Walden and I was fit to embark on my own quest for enlightenment. This was partly because I had a completely naive do-it-yourself philosophy that I was devoted to, but also because I wanted to be really, really lonely so I could write about it. I just loved drama so much, I couldn’t get enough of it, or at least I didn’t think I could at the time. Unfortunately though, my female anatomy prevented me from being able to go it alone, simply because it would be unsafe.

Even though there was a period of time that I thought a good can of pepper spray would be a good enough companion for me, the reality of my situation was that I didn’t live in a world where I could do everything a guy could do, at least not in the same way. My parents drew the line at me taking off through the desert all by myself, and I don’t blame them. I mean, even with the help of the more experienced cyclists that I ended up riding with, I still got into some pretty precarious situations (more than a couple of times).

It was a good thing that I saw any type of adversity as a way to spice up my story-telling game. I was all for getting knocked down a time or two, and doing things the hard way, and even having a couple of ultra intense break downs in 110 degree heat. Those were the perfect conditions for a melodramatic coming-of-age memoir to be born, and the best part was I wouldn’t even have to stretch the truth. That’s what my current nonfiction project Into the Wind is about; in one sense, it’s about an 18 year old girl who rides her bike across the country. In another sense, however, it’s about a quest for enlightenment that went horribly wrong.

I didn’t find the meaning of life out there in the eerie emptiness of the deep South; I didn’t find it under the all consuming night skies of the Texas hill country and I didn’t find it in the rich, culture-saturated lowlands of Louisiana. In fact I still haven’t found it, but I feel closer than ever. When life altering things happen to you, like losing a loved one, everything can start to look a little bit more clear. When you realize what really matters to you more than anything, everything else starts to seem small and unimportant. Especially cross country bike trips.

The death of my dog has brought a lot of this on, but I don’t mean to go off on some rant about the important things in life. I don’t want to say that I have gotten wiser since I have had my best friend taken away from me; she was so much more than a way to grow and learn something about life. She was, and is, an ongoing relationship that is just as profound as all of the other ones I share. It’s just that I didn’t feel like I had changed very much after I went on my soul searching bike trip, but now all of a sudden I feel like a different person in just the past couple of weeks.

I guess I really just want to write about things that people can relate to, whether that is loss, depression, wanderlust, societal prejudice and discrimination, or anything else that accompanies the onset of adulthood, being female, or choosing to live one’s life unconventionally. I keep telling myself that nonconformity is becoming the new normal, and if that’s true then I know my story is relatable to a lot of people. I guess I would also like to think that my life is interesting enough to enjoy reading about, especially if I pull off the dark, dramatic style that is my favorite form of expression. I kicked it Thoreau style for a couple of months and now I’m ready to kick it Poe style, which is so much more fun. I’m going to be starting at the beginning, long before my bike trip, with the events that lead up to me feeling like I needed to run away in order to get my shit together.