Life as a Digital Nomad: How to Find Sponsors to Fund Your Travels
After the pandemic, working remotely while traveling the world is more popular than ever. In August 0f 2019, I put my regular life in storage in San Diego and committed to being functionally homeless for the next 12 months while I traveled the world on my "gap year at 60". While the pandemic interrupted my plans five months in, I still managed to maintain my four income streams (freelance editing, ghostwriting, Kindle eBooks, and grant writing) on the road. Now that health restrictions are easing--and I'm fully vaccinated--far-flung travel is back on my agenda.
Read full storyPre-Pandemic Traveling Solo Around the World
One blistering summer, long before Covid-19, I abandoned Chicago to spend a few weeks in cooler climes — eating, drinking and hiking my way through three countries (Paraguay, Chile and Argentina). My friends and family all urged caution--that it wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone, that I'd be called an "ugly" or "arrogant" American.
Read full storyFunny Thing Happened While I Was Saving the Planet
At a climate march, I remembered that we need young people far more than they need us. Four lanky teenagers, 2 boys and 2 girls, watched me approach the check-in table at one of the many Climate Change youth events. I mean, I knew I couldn’t meet the “youth” criteria, but hey — I can identify Kendrick Lamar in a lineup, can’t I? I was rockin’ my #RiseUp t-shirt; I’d left my Birkenstocks at the hotel; and my backpack was suitably ripped and dirty. Maybe my youth is long gone, but surely I could fake it enough to hang with the cool kids. Right?
Read full storyStop Waiting for Perfection. Step Out There.
On my second morning of walking the Camino de Santiago up the coast of Portugal, I was struck by how different it was than my daily life back home in Chicago. You can't wander around a big American city without being bombarded with caution lights, parking signs, danger signs, and rules and boundaries of every description.
Read full storyRunaway Mom
My teenager wasn't a flight risk. But I was. At age 55, I set out alone to hike the Camino de Santiago from Portugal to Spain. Like so many pilgrims, I came home both reflective and giddy, eager to share my experience about walking the sacred Way, and what it meant to me.
Read full storyThe Battle of the Take-Out Menus
In quarantine, you only get one shot at dinner. One cold night in 1987, I picked up the pistol from my nightstand and fired a shot at my husband, who was looming in the bedroom doorway. He flinched and fell to the floor so dramatically that, for a second, I thought he was hit. But no — he was whole and unbloodied and alive. (I have terrible aim without my contacts.) And while we didn’t divorce for another two years, it marked the last time he tried to come to my bed.
Read full storyIf You Want Girls to Succeed, Let Them Fail
After a week of cool but unusually sunny weather in southern Scotland, I arrived in Fort William, ready to tackle an easy trail on Ben Nevis. I needed to get my first lungful of Highland air, and stock supplies for the next 7 days of hiking the Great Glen Way.
Read full storyHow I Got Over My Decision Fatigue
Too many choices can lead to decision burnout. When I set out to travel around the world on my long-delayed "gap year" at 60, I carefully planned how I’d survive financially — I made budgets, organized my client commitments, and synched up my payment schedules. I downloaded maps and plotted courses across countries based on logic and likely weather and lodging costs (when you’re running your business from the road, a dollar saved is a euro earned).
Read full storyMy Millennial Kids Didn't Move Back Home. I Moved in with Them.
Even in a pandemic, I'm still a Boomer Hippie. Two of my three grown children are millennials, and despite the stereotypes running rampant on social media, neither is underemployed, drowning in debt, or trying to come back home. (They don’t seem to be lacking for sex either, but that’s probably a story for another day.)
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