Where have I been? So many places.

A photo posted by Amanda (@mandalyn93) on Jun 13, 2016 at 4:25pm PDT

As I sit writing this, I'm in Dallas sipping a hot cup of coffee and listening to David Ramirez. I've been a lot of places in the past month and a half. Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, Louisville, Phoenix, Ecuador, Prescott...and soon I'll be trading Dallas, Texas for Tulsa, Oklahoma.

It's been a whirlwind of a summer thus far, and everyone has been asking me "how do you travel so much?" or "wow! Why so much traveling?"

Sky Harbor feels like home.

Only one of these trips was in my plans before April 25th, and that plan was Ecuador. Even then, I only ended up on the Ecuador mission trip I just returned from because I was unable to go last August. All of these trips have otherwise been planned in the past month and a half.

When I found out I was accepted to Teach for America, I made plans to go to Chicago to help Jackie move home from Phoenix before moving to NYC. I had money saved up to go to Iceland in the fall, but as a teacher, I won't have the ability to take two weeks off of work to go and do that.

So I chose to help a friend move, and then I took advantage of the fact that I was on the opposite side of the country (Illinois) and decided to use that trip to spend some time on a train and some time visiting a few other friends who had offered to host me.

To Denver

I had plans to return to Phoenix after Denver and Salt Lake City, but I found out my great uncle had metastasized cancer while in Denver. My parents made plans to drive to Kentucky to say their goodbyes, and I changed my end-of-trip flight from Phoenix to Louisville.

I stayed in Louisville for about a week with my parents, and we spent most of it with my great aunt and great uncle, sitting, talking, and watching tv game shows.

While I was road-weary and just wanted to be home, I'm glad I took the time to go to Kentucky and visit him because he passed away while I was in Ecuador.

I'm sad that he passed away--he was like a grandfather to me--but I know his death was painless and clouded in elderly dementia. He had forgotten he had cancer, and often times would forget within the same day that we had visited him earlier in the day. He lived a long life, passed away peacefully in his sleep, and I'm grateful I was able to see him one last time.

Soon after returning from Kentucky, I turned around and went to Ecuador on a mission trip (I'm talking more about that in a travel blog post). After Ecuador, I was in Phoenix for a whopping four days and then I boarded a plane to Dallas, where I currently am.

Dallas is my last chance to experience a bit of peace and rest before I start an intense five week training program with Teach for America in Tulsa, so I'm reveling in this last bit of real vacation. If you need me, you can find me by the pool or eating tacos with Hannah.

And there you have it--I've traveled some 15,000 miles in the past five weeks or so. While I love traveling and visiting my friends, I'm eagerly awaiting July 23 when I return to Phoenix (for good) so I can spend more than four days with my cat, cousin, parents, friends and favorite coffee shops. For now, I've got five weeks of living in a brand new city up ahead of me.

March Forth

Photo by Jackie Cotton

Today is the last day of March.

2016 is already 1/4 of the way over.

I'll be 23 in three short months.

With all this looking ahead, I need to stop, take stock, and be thankful where I am.

I'm functioning perfectly fine as an adult. I'm paying my bills on time, I'm devoting attention to my closest friends, and I'm balancing a need for peace and quiet with my desire to be out and about with people all the time.

The ambivert struggle is real, y'all.

I'm exploring exciting opportunities for the future (can you say "grad school?") and thoughtfully and intentionally trying to decide what path is the wisest. Meanwhile, I'm blessed with a job that pays me enough to live comfortably while saving up for the future.

But let's be real: I have a hard time being thankful for those things. When things are good on the homefront, I get an urge to gooooooo somewhere. Not long term, of course. Just a vacation.

The day-to-day adult life gets very boring, very quickly. I enjoy having a routine, but I like to be able to change that routine up on a dime, and a desk job really doesn't give you room to do that. Without the ability to say "nah, I'm going to work on this from 8-11 pm instead of this morning," I lose a bit of freedom. And day after day of losing that freedom feels very constraining and makes me want to swing the pendulum from being stuck in an office all day to doing some extreme travel.

I'm dreaming about taking a 4,000 mile road trip looping through the southwest and northwest, touching ten different states and finally getting to go to Canada. It'd be by myself because I'm craving a lot of alone time right now.

I don't know if it will actually happen, though. I'd also really like to go to Chicago/New York with my friend Jackie when she goes back home after graduation and then moves to NYC.

I also really want to go on a cruise to Cuba, but gosh--that's a really expensive dream.

There's a lot I want to do, and I know I can't do it all. I'm incredibly grateful for where I am and what I'm doing, but being cooped up in an office is grating on my soul and I really just want to go.

Texas and moving time.

You may (or may not) have noticed I didn't post a #tuesdayblogday last week.

It's because Tuesday was my Monday and the week was CRAY CRAY. I spent the preceding weekend in Texas with my best friend, Hannah.

We made it 💕 #HJtakesTX

A photo posted by 🌵 A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Jan 9, 2016 at 9:41am PST

Together we embarked on a 14-16 hour drive that left her in Texas and left me bawling my eyes out at the airport.

She accepted a job with Geico which meant she needed to move from Arizona to Texas, the land of the oil fields and smelly flatlands.

I was (obviously) super bummed to be leaving her in a different state. She's my oldest and closest friend, and also the fifth or sixth of my friends to move out of state in the past two years. Arizona is starting to feel pretty lonely.

But, on the flip side of the loneliness, it was really cool to help her move and be a part of that life event. She even let me decorate her wall <3

Helping Hannah move made me even more excited to move. I got to think about how I'll decorate my room and get an idea of how little stuff I actually need in my new apartment (hello, minimal chic?) It was definitely a bummer leaving her in Texas (even the TSA agent sympathized with me while I was bawling at the security checkpoint) but I got a sweet, simple taste of moving.

Adventure is out there.

The last major trip I got to go on was to Michigan. I drove across the country, from Arizona to Michigan, in about 30 hours' time. I woke up on Route 66, I ate a sub for breakfast while looking over the freeway somewhere near Missouri (I think.) It was a whirlwind of a trip, but I don't regret it. It was an adventure--not a vacation.

I don't want to write too much about vacation travel right here (I have a whole blog dedicated to that) but I do want to write about adventure. The trouble is, I'm not sure how to define it.

It's the feeling I get when I set foot in an airport, backpack strapped around my chest. The pit of my stomach lifts like I'm on a roller coaster as I hear the hustle and bustle of people on the move. My senses tense up and relax; my anxieties disappear.

It's how my heart beats when I'm somewhere risky. Exploring an abandoned building, following a protest with my camera, biking somewhere at night. I know I could very well be in harm's way, but I also know I'll be fine.

It's the voice of a stranger with whom I've struck up a conversation. Discussing things like we've known each other for years, listening to the words hanging between us as the train rumbles onward, the plane slices through air, or the cars pass on the sidewalk.

Adventure is the assurance of a large world to be explored as well as the small place I have been given to occupy.