Hello Friends!
Welcome to my second blog post! Narrowing down how I wanted to share my travel experience and journey has been harder than I thought. There's so much to share with you that I have found myself wondering what to share first! I finally decided that I would let my community learn a little more about me and why I decided to spend all my time creating this.
Flash back to two years ago, I was an extremely motivative student starting her MBA to one day become a CEO. Then I became really sick. I spent six days in the ICU on a ventilator during the Covid pandemic. To answer your first question. No. I did not have Covid. I was lucky enough to have a ruptured appendix. After waking up, I fought some of the toughest battles I will have ever faced in my whole life. I spent the next 16 days alone looking up at the ceiling, not even being able to get up to use the bathroom. My stomach was wide open in front of my eyes and all I could do was let the Drs and RNs care for me (which they did such a fantastic job at, I could not thank them enough for all they did). I spent a lot of my time worrying about finishing my classes. I of course got sick during the days of my finals and could not even think about when I could walk again, let alone when I could take a test. I finally made it home on Christmas day, but then had to be readmitted for blood transfusions. To make a really long story short, I won all of my battles, and was ready to get back to school and put this behind me.
You think this would be when I decided that I wanted to take my time to find my passion, landing at travel. Wrong. I actually ended up having two more hard stomach surgeries, the first one was to fix the huge scar and nonexistent bellybutton that I was left with after I healed from my appendix surgery. The next one was more of an eye opener.
A little over a year after my whole appendix emergency, I was feeling really good. I was working out, getting stronger and really had no pain. I was going about my life getting back to normal even more than I thought previously, with doing things like playing my favorite sport. I went to my Drs for a normal checkup and showed him this one spot where sometimes I have a little lingering pain, but thought it was being sore from working out. So, we decided to get it checked out just as a caution with all the other things that went on. I went for an ultrasound and they found I had another major issue called intussusception (I still cannot even pronounce it!!) and like everything else in my life, I had to do it in style.
To fix this issue I had to have another hard surgery (not as bad as the first one) spending another week in my favorite hotel....the hospital. Thankfully the same surgeon who did my first surgery was able to help me again and did another fantastic job making everything better. This time I was able to be closed up and had a much easier time with the recovery process. I am so grateful to be able to say I feel amazing today, stronger than ever, and then the only thing I have left from these tales is some scars on my stomach that will fade with time.
During all of this, I got my MBA and was a nanny to some of the most adorable kids. I was working really hard even when I knew I should have been recovering, all because that's what we are supposed to do. I consider myself the luckiest person alive, not because I died and was given the gift to come back, but for the fact that I can wake up everyday and simply can walk. On my journey I met so many people who had it so much worse than me. People who never woke up from the same thing I had, people who will never leave the hospital again or who have been there for months and months, people who even when they go home will never get off IV meds or lose their PICs. It was really an eye opener into how lucky I was, even when I was feeling terrible, and it showed me how fast things can change when the thing you're fighting for is your life.
I looked around at my life and felt like I was focusing on all the wrong things. I cared more about my GPA than going to the hospital on time for this to have been not so bad. I cared more about the friends who never came to see me or call me when I was sick and dying then the family who dropped everything to save my life. I cared more about rushing my life, doing what you're supposed to do and not appreciating it then being grateful and building a life full of things I loved. I decided that I would no longer do those things and I would build a life that I love even if it was not what we are supposed to do.
So I decided to make some changes. The first with how I was operating my life. I was giving myself to the wrong people who did not appreciate me or make me feel good when I was around them, so honestly I cut them off. I stopped texting back right away and would wait a day to see if they would answer, All of them never reached out again. I stopped texting first and doing things that people would not do for me. It freed up so much time and money! I now had funds to do what I wanted and more time to!
Next I decided that I needed to make changes with how intense I was doing life. I graduated from an honors college program in 3 years and got my MBA in 2 years all while dealing with the above, working for 4 families and having friends. Now this might sound great but I honestly killed myself. I was not taking care of my body like I should have, spreading myself too thin, not doing the real things that brought me joy. So after I finished grad school instead of doing the normal thing and looking for my big girl job, I took time for myself and decided I was going to travel alone for the first time.
Yes, I still work, just not as much and I am going to be getting my big girl job soon, but I will never be able to be as intense as I was before. I will forever make sure my happiness comes first because who knows what tomorrow will look like and it's not guaranteed. I basically have the whole "live your life like there's no tomorrow" attitude with a splash for gratefulness thrown in there.
So I do not think this will turn into my full time job, but it is a way for me to show and share with people how I plan to schedule enjoyment and happiness in my life. Maybe inspiring a few people along the way to change the intensity of how they live their life. My goal is to help others find enjoyment in the little things along the way and not lose ourselves so much in the way we are supposed to do things.
I promise my other posts will not be so sad because this is a happy place, but it is important to understand why I came to my conclusions in life. Most people think I'm crazy for my change in thinking, but my goals are just different now and the things I find important are different too.
Thanks for reading!
G
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