Break on through

I feel like I've really broken through to something, that the suffering of the past month or so especially has led me to a mental place I never saw myself in.

It all started with this website. The Art of Nonconformity. God, it just sounds right don't it?

All of my life I believe I have struggled with conformity. Sometimes, I love it. I'm a simple girl who likes reality tv and cheeseburgers, the ultimate middle mind. But since I was little and my parents were "artistic" and "brilliant" and "creative," I had a lot of choice on how to live. But I was confused, so I went to college...I hated college. I even left college for a year (to be nonconformist) and went back to the SAME college one year later, then dropped out again and moved to Boulder. Big struggle right? I feel like a lot of my life has been battling one or the other, never sure which side I fell on. Not that I have to fall on one side or another, but I think I appreciated my non-conformist side but didn't really know what to do with it or how to embrace it.

After traveling to Southeast Asia about 10 years ago for 3 months, I think I learned a little more about not conforming, but I was still young and had to come back and make money and that's when I ended up in the system. Admin. Once you call yourself an Admin, it's hard to get away from it. And then I started improv and that held me for awhile, then I met John and that held me and then we started making money...oh the lure of it...then we got married and well...you know the rest.

But this website, with such articles as How to be Awesome and Why You Should Quit Your Job And Travel Around The World, has got me thinking so much. Gullibeau travels all the time, he's a writer and he's so fucking capable. He makes it sounds so easy but stresses the amount of work and passion you have to have to live a non-conformist life.

I want this life. I really do. Now I know. And as I read about how to be awesome, I find that there is a lot inside of me I didn't really see. I think I'm actually quite goal-driven. Never thought I was before, but now I need it, desperately. What exactly is it that John and I are struggling for? And if we can make a decision about that, that gives it all some kind of meaning. If my goal is to travel for 3 months every year, then all this work pays off you see? If our goal is to make as much money as possible, then I should stop the jobs I am doing and do something different...

But see, I don't want to. I want it all on my plate. I want to travel to every country in the world. I want to be awesome. I don't want to be mediocre. I don't want to travel to the same old places. I don't want to live for money.

As I practice more of what this website preaches, the more excited I get, the more it makes sense to me and honestly, for the past few weeks I've been working and thinking all the time, my creativity is through the roof and I'm excited to really lay down some goals and start working torwards something instead of just working. And in all truth, what I want to work for is not a house or a baby or a fancy 401K...I want to work to travel, to give tours, to ride my bike, to write in my blog, to make webisodes where I get to be funny, to exercise, to laugh...

we saw this quote a few times when we were in Thailand, it wasn't until I read Lord of the Rings that I realized it was Tolkien:

Not all who wander are lost

I know it now, I want to wander.