Sometimes the destination is a mystery, even when the direction is positivity…
The return after so long on the road to a place where others come from so far to get to is quite a mind trip. Before setting off to live, work, and volunteer in New Orleans for almost two years, then travel and volunteer through the Americas for three years, Miami Beach was where I had an apartment on West Avenue, an awesome part Ridgeback named Maximus, and a general idea that I had no idea what I was doing with my life. Miami Beach, specifically South Beach, was the backdrop of a transformation into a mindset of total release: I stopped drinking, stopped cutting my hair, stopped drinking alcohol, and went vegan, and then a few couple months later had sold or given away most of my possessions, broken my lease to my apartment, and had allowed an idea to take hold in my mind: I huge change was needed, and that included moving, for many reasons, most of which I can’t remember, to New Orleans. With no job, not much money, no apartment waiting for me, and probably very confused friends and family, I packed up a rental car and my dog and basically, moved from one tourism mecca to another; I set out to north Florida to spend time with family I hadn’t seen in a while, and then on to probably the strangest and most high energy city in the country, where the Mississippi river spills out into the Gulf of Mexico, where the the craziest annual party of the year happens every February, where the worst natural disaster and environmental disasters to ever hit the United States swept through, the place they call the Big Easy.
There’s something unique to living in a place where people come from all over the world to spend time in their idea of a vacation from their daily routine. Where you work and live and create your daily routine is the stage for someone else’s escape from theirs. West Avenue on South Beach definitely provided a more relaxed setting compared to the wildness that can be found on any given day on “the Beach”, but it was still a very unreal place to live in relation to the rest of the country. As many times as I’ve been able to jog on the beach, or just take a few minutes to reflect on life while looking out into the ocean, it was very surreal to return after the wave of life adventures and lessons gained during an epic three year journey through 11 countries of the Americas by land and sea (more on that later 🙂 )
Now, after some time to reflect on where, and who, I’ve been, and the direction in which I can hope to go, I see a path often traveled can be a source of not just many lessons learned, but an opportunity to take a real look at the place that helped shape the mindset to set off on the path in the first place.
