Healing to the Third Power

I haven’t kept up with this blog since finishing my virtual Korte, but big changes are on the horizon for me.

Teaching during COVID nearly destroyed me. I had more bad mental health days than good ones. I didn’t take care of myself physically. I was afraid that I somehow hated teaching and I almost left the profession for good. Something had to give before I broke.

In March, April, and early May, I did a lot of self-reflection and soul searching about what I wanted out of my life. I boiled it down to one super “simple” but profound answer: I want happiness.

I am turning 30 in October (I know … I’m a youngin’) and this year has been a transitional period in my life. As I transition to a new decade, I want to transition towards a healthier me. I want to take care of myself. I want to challenge myself to do something that is new or scary every week. Starting this blog and focusing on training for my virtual Korte was a great first step, but now it is time to up the ante.

On Tuesday, I am leaving on a solo cross-country road trip with just me, my car, and my bike. I am not planning anything other than bringing adequate supplies, a backpack full of clothes, and a sleeping pad/sleeping bag and hammock to car camp or camp out somewhere. The only destination that I “planned” was to be in Zion National Park by that Thursday because my mom booked me a night stay at a cabin there. I have budgeted $650 for the trip and when the money runs out, I’ll come home, and while I’m abroad, I plan to hit up the local rail trails along the way.

My grandmother was a world-traveler and I’ve always had a bit of wanderlust in me. I was just too scared, or as I call “sensible,” to act on it. But that stops now. I need to go out on my own and just be alone and in nature. I need to hike and bike. I need to write. I need to heal.

My husband is such an awesome guy and supportive man. When I told him about my desires to travel alone, I thought he would feel left out or like I was ditching him. But he just looked at me and said, “Babe, if you need to do this then do it.”

As a depressive-brained person, finding happiness has been an ever illusive quest. I don’t think that this one excursion will be the answer to my problems, but I have to try. I am happiest when I can be in nature, whether that is fishing on the Chippewa Flowage or writing a blog post in a hammock that you attached to your old childhood swing set frame.

As Henry David Thoreau once said, “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms,”

Oh! And I did sign up for Korte #2. So stay tuned for my new and improved training plan.