To have a plan as a full-time solo traveler is to have no plan at all.
I started this year in Phuket, intending to apply for a long-term visa, either the DTV or an Education Visa, and stay in Thailand for the better part of the year. Within weeks of my arrival, it became clear for many reasons that wasn’t going to happen (more on that here), and by the end of February, just days after my 41st birthday, I was living in Da Nang, Vietnam.
I chose Da Nang for a single reason: As Thailand has grown in popularity, it’s become more expensive and harder to obtain a long-term visa, simultaneously allowing neighboring Vietnam, still relatively under the latest travel trends radar, to become a viable and affordable alternative.
Hanging with my girlie… Lady Buddha
Palm Trees fix everything.
Da Nang sits near the middle of the country and directly on the South China Sea. It offers the perfect mix of beaches, nature, and city living, coupled with low-key, slow-paced vibes and plenty of opportunities to turn up or down, whenever and however the mood moves you. The vibrant city also has a strong nomad/expat community that is seamlessly integrated with the local community and culture. It’s a great place to save money without sacrificing quality of life, and it also offers fewer distractions than Phuket or Bangkok, which allowed me to lock in on some immediate priorities.
I decided to live there for three months, then figure out my next move, even if that was simply leaving the country long enough to apply for another 90-day visa, then hopping right back in. However, as they so often do, my stateside life and responsibilities had other plans.
My days in Da Nang were filled with reading and swimming at My Khe Beach…
…and endless walks and selfie expeditions.
In the few months I’d been back overseas—after a quick visit home for the holidays—my son had his own dynamic life shifts. He got a new job, one he’s exceptionally good at, and has quickly risen in the ranks. That coincided with the breakdown of his three-year relationship and subsequent decision to move out of their shared apartment and closer to his job, which he hoped would also eliminate his 2+ hour daily commute.
At the same time, our oldest dog, Mason, started needing more care and hands-on attention (the man had to potty literally every two to three hours), and with Jae’s new work obligations, he was unable to care for Mason as he needed. The timing also lined up with my own need to renew my passport before I hit the dreaded six-month rule (most countries won’t allow entry if a passport has less than six months of validity), so instead of renewing it at the embassy in Ho Chi Minh City, I decided to head back to the States and help my son prepare for his new journey while also taking care of all the administrative duties my own lifestyle requires.
I returned in mid-May, and that first month back was consumed with helping Jae pack up his apartment, making him breakfast and meal-prepping his lunches for the week (his job kept him out of the house from about 6:30 AM to 10 PM, six days a week), caring for Mason and our other, younger dog, Diamond, and researching which countries would be the easiest for Mason and I to travel to together. I followed that up with knocking out design work at coffee shops and executing workouts at my favorite gym, then delivering Uber Eats in the afternoons before returning to the apartment to dig into whatever research and writing I could tackle or to meet up with friends to catch up over tacos and maybe one too many adult beverages.
Da Nang is magical at sunset…
…no matter your viewpoint.
If nothing else, I am a master at making my own life harder, and before returning to the States, I added one more complication to the mix by finally figuring out what I want to be when I grow up: a full-time writer and public speaker.
After spending all of 2025 rebuilding my design business from the ground up, since March, I’ve actively torn it down to the bare studs, taking on just enough work to survive, a feat much easier done overseas than in the States. For the first five months of the year, I barely averaged 4k in income, and while this is more than enough to survive in Da Nang, it left little room for an unplanned trip back to the States, and all the necessary airplane tickets, rental cars, increased food costs, gas prices, etc that come along with it. So for my month back in Dallas, I resumed the daily grind I’ve so earnestly tried to leave behind in an effort to offset some of those additional expenses and obstacles.
And while I’ve been consistently inconsistent with my published writing so far this year, I’ve been deliberately constructing a proper foundation to build this new chapter of my life. What started as an idea to knock out a quick and dirty paper on the realities of solo travel as a midlife woman has morphed into the larger task of writing a full book–part memoir, part guidebook, part travel lore–to be self-published on Amazon, and marketed and promoted through all the proper channels. I also spent the better part of two months sending at least 75 speaker applications to relevant conferences around the world in an effort to land my first professional speaking engagement. All this, before deciding to return to the States for the aforementioned unplanned Midsommar reset.
Coconut coffee… literally the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.
No Caption Needed.
And just a day before flying to Florida to spend time with someone else I hadn’t planned for, and a week before heading to Colorado to spend six-ish weeks visiting the rest of my family and waiting on my new passport—all with Mason along for the ride—the old man suffered a massive seizure. I had to make the heartbreaking decision to put him down that same day, just as I was ironing out the details for what was supposed to be our first international adventure together. It was devastating.
Despite being a single mom on a more than limited budget, Jaelon and I built our little family with three dogs (Mia, Mason, Diamond) and a cat (Moby), starting with Mia’s adoption in 2011. All of our fur babies were rescues or found their way to us through various distribution systems, and over the course of 15 years, it was just the 3–6 of us. Now Diamond, truly Jaelon’s dog, is the only one left. And just as our little pack grew smaller, Jaelon learned he’d been promoted and would need to move to North Carolina to help the company open a new office—with Diamond in tow, of course.
The end of an era. Time marches on.
The tan started tanning again…
Views of My Khe Beach and Lady Buddha from The Roof
It’s funny how life unfolds… it has to be in part, or the devastating periods would truly cripple us. Instead of heading to Mexico with Mason, I’ll be preparing to spend another couple of years completely solo, traveling around the world and rebuilding, once again, along the way. And when I do decide to make trips back to the States to visit friends and family, I’ll likely have to bypass Dallas, my beloved home for over four years, to make North Carolina my new Stateside home base and spend time with the one person who makes it all make sense.
I’ve started over more than once in my life, and this is simply another one of those seasons. The challenge now is finding balance—between design and writing, between working for today and building for tomorrow, between writing my book and keeping my blog and guest articles active. Those are the things that will hopefully lead to speaking engagements, podcast appearances, and new opportunities to share not only my own story but the stories of the people I meet along the way. And if I do it right, maybe it all becomes self-sustaining enough to fund the next chapter, and the one after that, however those may ultimately be written.
And as we move through the day-to-day, and its responsibilities, monotony, and unknowns, the next chapter begins writing itself. After several months of pitching, writing, connecting, and putting my work out into the world, I landed my first speaking gig at Colive Fukuoka in Japan this October. Just a month ago, I was planning an entirely different way to wrap up 2026—one that included chips & queso, a senior Chihuahua returning to his homeland (as my son so eloquently put it), and a slower pace of travel, centered around a helpless being that had added so much love, warmth—and pee—to the last fifteen years of my life.
He was the bestest boy…
Time to make it happen… back in the mean streets of Dallas…
The next chapter was planned for Mexico. There was none centered around Japan. Yet, that is the chapter I now find myself writing. And I think that really says it all. To have a plan as a full-time solo traveler is to have no plan at all. Because the people and pets we know and love have lives and plans of their own. Because the cities and countries we visit constantly evolve and react to the world around them. Because our wants, needs, and priorities shift, sometimes by choice, but more often by circumstance.
So, for now, the plan is Japan to successfully achieve my first public speaking event, then back to Da Nang, to finish the pages of my solo travel book and continue making progress in other areas. That is the plan.
I guess that means it’s time to start preparing for something else entirely. 🙂
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