Featured, Life, Pattaya, Popular, Thailand, Travel

The Journeys We Don’t Plan…

9 July

The sense of deja vu is overwhelming. It’s been almost fourteen months to the day that I was sitting at a quaint restaurant in the alleyways of El Born, Barcelona, on a warm, sunny, Sunday afternoon, where I was writing the very first “life” blog post that marked the start of this grand adventure. Today, on another warm, sunny, Sunday afternoon, I’m sitting in a quaint coffee shop in Jomtien, overlooking the Gulf of Thailand, writing my first non-travel-related “life” blog after an extended hiatus.

While the menu is decidely different (non-frozen pina coladas and tapas vs. frozen coffee and fresh mango ice cream), the sense of malaise and reflection is the same. Last year, I arrived in Barcelona seeking an escape from responsibilities, past choices, and the chaos that has become the perpetual byproduct of life in the United States. Over a year later I find myself back in the same mental space, looking at the world around me and wondering WHAT THE FUCK is really going on.

Barcelona: Where the Pina Coladas aren’t frozen, but the streets are full of life…

And my international talks on politics and social dynamics started.

I arrived in Jomtien (a small town just to the south of more well-known Pattaya, Thailand) a week ago, and until today, I’ve only ventured out of my apartment once or twice to grab coffee and go to the gym. I came here on the heels of what was supposed to be a visa run and mental reset in Cambodia, a goal I’ve since had to reframe for the almost two months that I’ll be in this part of Thailand.

Despite not everything going according to plan (if there ever really was a plan?), a few things have changed for the better since last April. Perhaps most important of these, however, is that the fear I once had in speaking my mind, in voicing my opinions, in FINALLY putting myself out there and attempting to live my life as authentically as possible, has been slowly, yet deliberately, leaving my being.

For decades, be it because of trauma, negative experiences, or simply being told my voice doesn’t matter, I’ve stayed relatively silent on a lot of things, both in my life and in the world. Maybe it’s the fact that I turned 40, maybe its because of the circumstances of the people I love, or maybe its just because I really don’t give a fuck anymore. Whatever the core reason, I no longer have the sense that my voice should remain silent.

For the first time in my existence, I feel like I am starting to embrace all that is me, good, bad and debatable, and beginning to live and build a truly authentic life. And I think that acknowledgment is what sparked my recent reflective state.

While Morocco hasn’t been a part of this journey, its impact remains.

Art speaks what words can’t at the MoCo Museum in Barcelona.

In my first post, I lamented on growing up an #OGMillennial, as a generation raised on promises of stability and success, only to inherit a world unraveling beneath our feet.

We’re the generation told we could do and be anything, if we just went to school, got a good job, and worked hard. Instead, we’ve lived through the lows of multiple economic recessions and the devastating effects and denial of climate change, alongside the highs of the election of the first Black president and first female vice president.

We survived a global pandemic and a Trump presidency, which ended in the first-ever insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. We’ve witnessed real-time deaths at the hands of terrorists, both foreign and domestic, mass shooters, and those sworn to protect us, sparking historic but often unanswered demands for justice.

We’ve seen rights granted and taken away. As women, we’ve lost autonomy over our bodies. And with inflation and the cost of basic survival rising, many of us may never own homes or even have children.

And looking at it now, a year removed from everyday life in the US, it’s heartbreaking to see how much more has been taken by the empty promises of generations past.

WanderLOST on the streets of Pyeontaek, South Korea.

And with two of my favorite people in the Songtan Entertainment District.

Trump was somehow re-elected and there have been almost 700 Mass shootings¹ on American soil since I wrote that post.

Thousands of innocent people, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, have been detained, or worse, ripped from their families and disappeared to other countries², simply for having the audacity of wanting to WORK for a better life.

The National Guard and U.S. Marines were weaponized against Americans who were peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. Peaceful protestors, including military veterans, have been arrested.

Mentions of black, brown and queer heroes have been deliberately stripped from history books and websites, military and government buildings and even schools.

Rightly-elected politicians have been detained simply for doing their jobs, and even targeted and assassinated in a deliberate and targeted act of domestic terrorism.

Dangerous and restrictive abortion bans have continued to harm the women and children they’ve falsely claimed to protect ³. LGBTQIA+ lives and rights have come under increasing attacks and setbacks.

The record-breaking “No Kings” peaceful protests dwarfed the $45 million⁴ birthday parade of a weak, destructive, and self-aggrandizing would-be king.

Flooding tragically killed over 100 in Texas, including dozens of young girls at Camp Mystic, with little response from state and federal governments. Yet California, Mexico, HEB, and Jose Andreas’ World Kitchen have been working on the front lines to provide whatever assistance they can.

The American government is in shambles. Grocery prices remain excessively high. DOGE and Elon wrecked havoc. Harvey Weinstein and Derek Chauvin are still guilty. Diddy somehow is not. The Epstein Files “no longer exist”. The US bombed Iran. The List Goes On.

Art has been a common theme and draw on this journey… even on the streets of Third Ward, Houston.

Properly frozen Pina Coladas on the beach in Barbados at sunset. This is Life.

Outside US Borders, tens of thousands have died in the Israel-Hamas War, with over two-thirds of the casualties being women and children⁵. Israel continues to block aid into Gaza, causing widespread famine, and also attacked Iran, resulting in the two countries now trading attacks and continuing to escalate tensions in an already volatile and hurting region.

The civil wars in Sudan and Syria are only worsening. Myanmar is still feeling the effects of civil war and the recent earthquake. Tensions continue to rise between the Thai and Cambodian governments. Again, the list goes on.

In my travels, I’ve come across many nomads, expats, and emigrants escaping the atrocities (or even just minor inconveniences) of their own countries, Americans, like myself, included. I left the States to escape many realities, never thinking we would repeat the election cycle of 2016 and the dangerous hypocrisy and policies that followed.

Packing up the last of my apartment and creating my Storage Closet in Dallas.

Melting ice castles and broken dreams in Colorado.

Every morning I wake up to check the news or log into Threads, and every morning I’m reminded that for 95% of the world’s population, it’s impossible to escape these realities. We are the prisoners of an unjust system. A system that is working exactly as designed: to benefit the few and exploit the rest. A system that was flawed from its inception and seemingly refuses to relinquish its death grip on the status quo.

I didn’t leave the States looking for some grand epiphany or answers, but somewhere along the way, I stopped pretending the questions didn’t matter. In the unraveling of systems, I started to see the threads in myself: the silences I kept, the stories I swallowed, the ways I tried to contort my life to fit expectations that were never meant for me. And, if I’m honest with myself, I only pursued because a flawed society demanded as much.

The status quo of my own life over the last 16 months on the road… Work… Gym… Repeat.

And seeking out unique perspectives.

And I’m not the only one. Everywhere I’ve been, on dusty Cambodian roads, in crowded Barcelona cafés, on the remote, sandy beaches of Barbados, through conversations with strangers also running toward or away from something, I’ve felt it. We’re grieving the same myths. We’re reckoning with the same betrayals. And yet, in that reckoning, something else is forming… messy, defiant, and entirely unfinished.

We can’t fix it all. That’s the very cruel, very inescapable reality of life in general. But we can bear witness. We can speak out. We can keep showing up for one another, and for the version of the world we have not yet given up on. Even if in our own little corner of the world, that act in and of itself can permanently alter the rules, break the systems, and forever entwine our fates.