Seven Day Weekender

It's easy when moving to a new place to forget who you are. You get caught up in the lifestyle of your current location and start to make other things a priority, over the activities that used to truly make you happy. 

Before moving to New York it was common for me to meet up with friends on the weekend to hike in LA, or drive down to Orange County to get lost in the beach and the hills in Laguna Canyon. Then I relocated to The Big Apple. Yes, in 2013 moving to New York was the dream. But that dream was only lasted for a couple of years. I spent hours upon hours in the grind of the competitive corporate world of New York, and the only way to let loose was to meet up with friends for happy hour or for boozy (and I mean BOOZY) brunch on the weekend. It was stressful. It was expensive. In the long run it never satisfied me, and before I knew it I resented being in New York. The problem was I never took the leap. I just waited around making excuses....I'll wait until I get a different job somewhere else. I'll wait until I get a job I actually like and then I'll save enough money to move. Or the most common reason...I don't know where to move after being in New York. 

The thing is, my leap didn't happen by choice. In the Fall of 2017 I was laid off from my job in a series of layoffs happening throughout the company. A job I had (pardon my french) worked my ass off at — coming in early, staying up late, doing the job of two people more than I should have and never feeling like I was heard.

Sure it was a blessing in disguise that I got laid off, but the path afterwards has been a long and hard one, and the journey still continues.

The one thing that has remained constant is my love of exploring, my love of photography and my love of content creation. I definitely don't have everything figure out, and many times I am scared as heck at the stress of the unknown. But throughout this journey in the unknown a couple of people have come back into my life in a more prevalent way and it's because of them that I have started to remember who I was before my stint on the East Coast — and above all what is important to me.  

It's been through my recent outdoor adventures that I begin to feel little pieces of who I truly am coming back to me. When I'm wandering down a path into a moss covered forest, when I'm swimming in a lake, when I'm pulling myself up a rope on steep a lookout point, when I look into the distance and see a mountain pass by me...these are the moments when life's stress and distractions disappear.  I don't get this feeling when I'm walking around crowded cities looking at tourist traps. And this is where I'm happy. 

I want to be happy. I want to look back on my journey and smile. I want these moments to be shared with all of you.