In my early teenage years, I went from being an outdoor-summer-camp Girl Scout to totally shying away from everything related to being outside. I fell out of touch with nature and somehow convinced myself that exploring places other than home was totally pointless.

As a healthcare worker during The Pandemic, I felt trapped within the stress of that environment for years and it changed my perspective on a lot of things – travel, the outdoors, general curiosity about life and the world…

So, for my birthday a few years ago, I planned a trip to Mexico. It was so many firsts: the first real vacation I’d planned and paid for on my own, first time flying internationally without my parents, our first time leaving the country together, and so much more. I was *stressed*, but also felt like – if I don’t do this for myself, who will?

When everything worked out and we had a great time, I realized that all of my beliefs about travel were self-limiting and based in nothing but unfounded anxiety.

After that, I planned a 10 day road-trip through California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah where we lived out of mini van and drove ~1500 miles. It also went great and I began to feel restored in my connection to the outdoors and all the comes with it.

So, yeah… it’s allllll snowballed from there.

Other than the outdoorsy/travel stuff, I love houseplants. At one point, we had hundreds and my main hobby was documenting all of that on social media. Now it’s more like a hundred-ish but we still have a designated plant room in our house that has a humidifier going 24/7.

I’m a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW-C) and spent my post-high school to pre-30’s life focused on carving out a place for myself in the mental health treatment world within my community.

I started out post-Master’s at an inpatient drug rehab program, then worked for a few years with people living with HIV, and I just passed my 4th anniversary at an inpatient psychiatric hospital.

And yeah, obviously the work is rewarding, but it’s doubly as draining… I’ve found that exploring new places – getting totally out of that environment – does wonders to slow my brain alllllll the way down and makes it so much easier to keep bouncing back.

Anyway. Hi. Thanks for letting me ramble, thanks for being here.

US National Parks: 19/63