All posts filed under: Travel + Place

Cheep story-time EARTH

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[Prologue: So this is the story I wanted to tell tonight at Story Story Night. I left a few crucial things out in the live telling, but that’s the nature of the beast. But, from what I’ve learned, the journey is the destination, anyway. So spin it however you want. I have abbreviated names to somewhat to protect the innocent, and the not so innocent.] This is a story about wildness, and wilderness, and about what really happens when you sow your wild oats, and are later forced to reap that sometimes bitter fruit. For me, the wild sowing really started when, at 20, I fell in the love for the first time with my first lover, perhaps the worst possible person to pair with my virginal, idealistic young soul. Let me explain. My upbringing was very sort of Dr. James Dobson Focus on the Family Christian. When time came for sex ed, it was abstinence-only all the way, baby. We used to have these sex ed books for young Christian teens. They were chose …

Cheep backgrounder

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Starting a public-facing blog begs self-examination. I think things like, “Seriously, who do you think you are? What do you know about any of this stuff? You think you’re a simulacrum of Tim Gunn and Padma Lakshmi and Anthony Bourdain and those Brits from Changing Rooms (the much better BBC precursor to Trading Spaces. And yes, I watch too much reality television) on a die-hard budget. But who are you really? A nobody.” Well that’s just it really. I am a nobody, and I felt like one nearly all my life. I wasn’t born with a 75% off Calvin Klein jumper on and a fabulous art-deco mobile over my vintage crib. I was a shy, utter depressive from the age of 11 to at least my mid-20s (RIP, soul-raking sadness). I dressed in rotations of cliché awfulness: like a hobo, like a punk, like a preppie conformist. I ate meat and potatoes and once-frozen vegetables for dinner nearly every night, along with all the processed crap that makes up the blighted American food landscape. I …