loveliness.

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  • Tag: life

    • on coming home

      Posted at 9:47 am by jasminedesirees, on December 8, 2014

      We’ve been back from our travels for about 2 weeks, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I haven’t seen my family yet, so I am still waiting ever so patiently (is it Christmas yet?) for that, but other than that we’ve seen a bunch of Derek’s family, and all of our friends in California, and made a road trip up to Oregon to see my best girl for Thanksgiving.

      I’ve drunk my twisted tea, I’ve got my scuffed up leather boots back on (it is probably not normal how much I missed them, I had dreams about them when we were gone), I’m sleeping and waking on a normal schedule again, I’m even back at work, as a temp in the city until we move to Phoenix in January. We’re officially and definitely back to reality.

      I am a little sad to be back, but I was worried that it was going to be more like this, and that I was going to be really depressed not to be traveling constantly, and sleeping in a new place every night. To be honest, I never got tired of that. I know some people would have, but I could live like that forever.

      The thing is, even though we are back to reality, we aren’t yet back to routine. We are basically homeless, we’ll be moving to a brand new city at the end of the month, and the time up until then is filled with friends and family and Christmas-ness. I am starting to look for a job in Phoenix, and I have some big goals for myself for 2015 as well.

      Even though we were gone for six months, now that we are home again, it kind of feels like the whole thing might have been a dream. I just want to hold on to all of the things I learned while we were away, and keep my priorities straight, remembering the things that are important, and the things that aren’t and never will be.

      Our trip was an amazing chapter in our lives (and I still have a ton of posts to share), but it’s not the last chapter. Instead of being sad to be home, I’m really just excited for what is coming up next, including starting to look ahead, and beginning to save for our next big adventure.

      Posted in thoughts, travel | 2 Comments | Tagged friends and family, homecoming, life, priorities, travel, writing
    • if money were no object

      Posted at 9:30 am by jasminedesirees, on September 25, 2014

      Love the message behind this. It seems like we’re told from a very young age that we can be anything we want to be, but then as we get older, as we get closer to actually being grown ups and trying to decide what we should be doing with our lives, we seem to be told instead that so many of our aspirations are childish, and that we need to grow up and get a “real job”.

      It’s true that not everyone can be painter, or a writer or spend all their time outside with horses, but certainly some people are able to. And if some people are able to, then if you dedicate yourself to being the best writer, painter or horse whisperer you can be, then who’s to say you can’t  be one of them?

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      You can find the original cartoon here.

      Posted in favourites, inspiration, life, loveliness, thoughts | 0 Comments | Tagged alan watts, dreams, favourites, jobs, life, money
    • crossroads

      Posted at 6:03 pm by jasminedesirees, on September 19, 2014

      As most of you probably know, we’ve been traveling for the last four months, through Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia, and then about 6 weeks ago we arrived in Australia.

      Our plan was to do some traveling around Australia, and hopefully find jobs so we could actually set up shop and live out here for the next few months.

      We started in Sydney, and drove all the way up to Cairns (stopping in lots of neat places along the way, tons of posts to come) but eventually we made our way back down to Byron Bay, just south of Brisbane, because we loved it here so much.

      Now we’re kind of facing a tough choice. Australia is really expensive, and it’s been a lot harder than we thought it would be to find jobs here. I guess that makes sense, because what employer wouldn’t rather have someone long term than someone that will only be around for a few months?

      Before we left for this trip, we were putting away money every month into a separate account for a really long time, so we had saved up enough for our trip, plus we figured we’d be making some money once we got to Australia.

      We have about half the money we saved up left, but we’re trying to figure out what we want to do now. It’s basically the age old question of choosing between being responsible and sticking to the plan you made, or taking off on a wild crazy adventure.

      We kind of have two choices. We can stick to our plan, keep trying to find jobs here, and we can spend the next few months working and hanging around in Byron Bay, hopefully making enough money to support ourselves and then spending a couple of weeks in New Zealand before we go home.

      In option A, if we find jobs, we hopefully wouldn’t really be spending anything else from our vacation fund, so we’d have it to put towards our next adventure.

      Or, we can say screw it, catch the next flight back to Indonesia, and spend the next month diving and traveling around Bali, Gili and Lombok, then fly to New Zealand for a week or so and then fly home earlier than we’d planned, maybe sometime in early November.

      In option B, we would basically be spending everything we have left in our travel fund, and we’d be home earlier than we’d planned, but we’d be doing a lot more, and having a lot more fun, which is basically the reason we spent all that time saving money, amiright?

      Sooooo….. decisions, decisions.

      Nobody knows what to do.

      Posted in Australia, Indonesia, travel | 5 Comments | Tagged Australia, byron bay, Indonesia, jobs, life, travel, traveling around Australia
    • cambodia- part 1

      Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on August 7, 2014

      I wanted to share a few extra pictures from Cambodia that didn’t really fit in anywhere else (I only took about 6000 photos). It’s such a beautiful country, and the people there are so wonderful and friendly. I felt truly lucky to have had the opportunity to visit.

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      Posted in Cambodia, travel | 0 Comments | Tagged Cambodia, life, photography, travel
    • loveliness

      Posted at 5:39 am by jasminedesirees, on July 16, 2014

      A few lovely things for a very rainy night in Cambodia.


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      Posted in art, inspiration, loveliness, photography, poetry, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged art, bukowski, life, love, loveliness, quotes
    • waiting

      Posted at 3:27 pm by jasminedesirees, on April 3, 2014

      I am sitting at work waiting everrrr sooooo patientlyyyy for 5 o’ clock to get here. My sister is coming to spend the weekend with me and I’m so excited.

      She’s never really been here before, she came out to do the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer with me in September, but we were pretty much walking and suffering the entire time so it wasn’t an all around fun experience.

      I’m taking her to AsiaSF for supper tonight, I’ve been wanting to go there for ages but the boy is not keen on the idea, I can’t imagine why.

      We have lots of big plans, and the weather is supposed to be nice, plus I’m taking the day off to cavort around the bay with her tomorrow.

      I’m lucky because even though we live far apart I get to see her pretty often, but it’s usually with my whole family all together.

      I was thinking about it, and I’m pretty sure the last time we did something just the two of us was when I flew to Calgary to hang out with her for my 18th birthday, so this is long overdue.

      So now I just have to make it to 5 o’ clock. Did I mention I was waiting patiently?

      Posted in family, life, San Francisco | 0 Comments | Tagged Asia SF, avon walk for breast cancer, family, life, San Francisco, sisters, visit
    • 911

      Posted at 6:34 pm by jasminedesirees, on March 24, 2014

      Most of the things we did in New York were pretty surreal, I’ve wanted to go there all my life, and it was neat standing in front of places that I’ve seen millions of times in photos and movies.

      The most surreal thing was the 9/11 memorial. It’s such a beautiful, peaceful spot now with the water flowing and spraying in the wind, and people gathered silently around looking at the memorials and taking pictures. It’s very hard to picture it as the site of such a horrible thing.

      I really tried to just stand there quietly and take it all in, and tried to imagine how it must have felt to be there that day, going from feeling safe and secure, in a familiar place you go to every single day, to horrible pain, terror and uncertainty in a split second.

      I’m sure you can’t fully appreciate what it was truly like if you weren’t there, but I’m glad I was finally able to visit the site and see all of the names. Watching so much coverage of the attacks on the news, it almost felt like watching a movie, even though I knew it was actually happening. Being there in person reminds you that those were real people who died that day, somebody’s family, somebody’s friends. It could have been any of us.

      And seeing the pools in the shadow of the new World Trade Center 1 tower reminds you that people are resilient, and that even if  they’ll never forget, they will always rebuild.

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      Posted in life, New York, travel, USA | 0 Comments | Tagged 9/11, life, memorial, New York, rebuild, world trade center
    • central park

      Posted at 9:41 pm by jasminedesirees, on March 17, 2014

      We flew into NYC at 5:30 am last Friday. After a few hours of creeping around trying to figure out where we were supposed to be going, we found our hotel in Midtown, dropped off our bags, and set out to explore the city. The very first place we stopped was Central Park.

      It was a gorgeous day,  apparently it had been cold for weeks before we got there, so the park was full of people running, walking and playing hockey. It was amazing to see the huge, beautiful park surrounded on all sides by towering skyscrapers. We climbed up on top of one of the big boulders and just sat there people watching and sunning ourselves like lizards.

      One of the things I liked most about New York was how easy it was to get around everywhere, either on the subway or just walking. We walked about 10 miles a day every day we were in the city. If I lived there, I would have legs of steel.

      We visited Central Park several times on our trip, and just spent hours walking through and looking at all of the sites, including the Belvedere castle which I thought was in my imagination since we walked all over the park and couldn’t find it, but we eventually made it there on our last stroll.

      There were lots of great things about our time in New York, but those first few hours in Central Park were definitely one of my favourite things. It reminded me so much of spring time in Canada, when you finally feel the sun on your face after months of bitter cold, and even though there is still snow on the ground you can finally feel the end in site. Everything smells fresh and clean, and you just want to go play outside.

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      Posted in exploring, New York, travel, USA | 2 Comments | Tagged Alice in Wonderland, belvedere castle, Central Park, exploring, hockey, life, nyc, travel
    • if you’re not good enough…

      Posted at 8:03 pm by jasminedesirees, on March 3, 2014

      Love this. I feel this way all the time, one day I hope to close the gap.

      Posted in art, inspiration, life, loveliness | 0 Comments | Tagged art, improvement, life, work, writing
    • move on

      Posted at 5:39 pm by jasminedesirees, on February 28, 2014

      For someone who puts so much emphasis on forward motion, I’m really terrible at saying goodbye to the present.

      No matter how many times I tell myself it’s for the best, or at least you had the amount of time with that person that you did, or maybe you won’t see each other all the time but it’s not goodbye forever, it doesn’t seem to help.

      Because the truth is, you do make choices, whether you’d like to admit it or not, and those choices lead you towards new things, but also, away from other things.

      And that’s OK, it’s good even, because the alternative is being so terrified of what you might lose that you forfeit everything you stand to gain and that you stay in the same place forever and are always the one left behind.

      It’s normal to be sad, and to be scared that what’s to come won’t be as good as what came before.

      Just be grateful that you had the chance to experience something that was so hard to say goodbye to. Keep moving forward, because really, what choice do you have?

      Posted in life, thoughts, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged choices, life, moving on, thoughts
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