I almost didn’t renew this blog.

But then I did.

I got an email a few months back saying my domain name for this blog was going to expire. I felt a little pang of sadness in my heart, but I deleted it.

Then I got another one.

And another one.

And a few weeks went by and this morning it tells me my domain is going to expire. And someone is going to buy it. And then my blog will be obsolete. Dead to the world. Dead to me.

There’s just something about the idea of it all that I couldn’t wrap my head around, even though I’m not traveling anymore. Not because I don’t want to. Not because I don’t dream about it all the time. It’s because I can’t afford it, and it just seems so distant from me now, like a part of myself that I’ve lived and loved, but now it’s gone, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back.

But what is it? What is lost to me?

After lots of thinking, lots of reading adventure blogs and travel books and pinning to dream vacation boards and watching my friends take off for long term travel, jet setting around the globe as I did, I’m realizing it’s that feeling of absolute freedom. Living rent free, eating Oreos for breakfast on a train, spending money on bungee jumping instead of utility bills.

I’m living a different life now, and it’s not bad. It’s actually really great. It’s just different.  I’m still on earth, I’m still quite happy, quite often. I’d actually say I’m happier than I was when I was traveling for one big reason:  I have a wonderful boyfriend who lights candles in our little house before I get home so it’s nice for me when I walk through to door and kisses me when I am snotty nosed crying and makes me tea all the time just because he knows I love it; and I have a little dog who snuggles me so hard at night I can barely move for fear of waking his little sleepy eyes to watch him crawl down to the foot of the bed, no longer my living hot water bottle. They make me feel so lucky, like nothing could ever really be that bad because I have them. Life is great, it’s just full of responsibilities.

All the time I’m writing check after check for bills I can barely pay thinking, “Who let me adult!? I can’t adult!”

But here I am. Being an adult. Paying bills. Doing my taxes tomorrow. Shit, man.

With my life as day-to-day as it is, not boring, but not as exciting to read as whirlwind around-the-world backpacking, why keep writing about it?

And I guess I don’t know why. Writing feeds my soul. I’ve always loved it. I love reading because I love writing. Reading passages that soothe my worried thoughts, bring joy to my heart, make me feel hopeful that someone I’ve never met could write something that I connect with so deeply is a gift. The written word is so special, whether on the tangible page or a webpage out in cyber space.

So I’m going to keep writing.

And I hope you’ll keep reading.

Life, no matter how you live it, is an adventure. Whether you’re reading by a fire in your home with your dog curled around your legs, writing frantically on a train careening through the Alps, stamping your passport at customs offices around the world, or just trying to pay your bills this month with a little extra thrown in for a bag of weed (ie me), it is a life- an experience- a human connection with people and places and things. And isn’t that what we are here to do? Connect to nature, to each other, to ourselves? I’ve started to loathe money, looking down my nose at it and making it just to get it all out of my life as fast as I can. I hate my dependence on it. I hate that it rules so many lives and oppresses and fills people with greed and hate and worry.

I haven’t been paid at my yoga teaching job since December. Not because they can’t afford to pay me, but because I keep forgetting to ask for my measly little paycheck that comes from guiding people through 90 minutes of yogic bliss. I claw for my paycheck at my retail job where I stress and cry and get angry and annoyed. I wait with baited breath for that money because I need it to just pay my basic needs. But it doesn’t make me happy. Money doesn’t make me happy. Selling people things they don’t need- trying to get people to consume and consume and consume so I can put food on my table with a commission check feels so awful to me. I’m horrified by the way people treat me at my job: like I don’t matter, like I have no feelings or wants or needs, like I am there to serve them and give them anything and everything they want because they PAID for it.

I’m looking for a new path. There has to be a better way. That seems to be my great journey right now and the journey of many twenty somethings like me. Why doesn’t anyone talk about how HARD your twenties are? Though I wake up in the same bed next to the same wonderful person every day (so amazing) instead of a hostel dorm bunk bed with my iPad under my pillow (v. uncomfortable) I am still on a perilous yet exciting and evolving journey in an attempt to better the path I am carving out for myself, and my little family in our little house in our big city.

I know it’s not as exciting as riding elephants and camping in the desert. But it’s just as important. And I love it more than I’ve ever loved anything else.

So I’m going to keep writing.

And I hope you’ll keep reading.