I am taking this time to reflect on this trip. I feel like this whole trip, from the day I left to the day I came back home, really impacted me in different ways from the previous trip to OH.

• I did not have to deal with a major issue like another car distracting me from simply enjoying my family in the little time we had. I was a lot less stressed as well.


• I had friends and people I met lose their homes in the Bastrop fires. Some even lost their animals in the fires. I was very concerned for everyone, including Sherwood Forest and Texas Renaissance Festival. The people of Sherwood Forest have shown themselves to be a real community. They helped one another in many ways, like offering money, food, clothes, places of refuge, and some in turn had their home threatened by fire as the days went on. It was a fire zone!


• I don't handle the heat like I used to. At Sherwood, it was impossible to sleep at night until about 3 AM, when the temperature would drop enough to be comfortable. The first night was hard. The second night was hard as well with the addition of the temperature getting a bit chilly for me at about 4 30 AM. During the day, I was miserable and couldn't enjoy the day there. I might be looking at a change in my life. What that entails, I have no clue at this point. I just know that Texas is not enjoyable much of the time, because it's either too hot, or it's too cold. I'm stuck indoors, and I want to change that.


• I got to know my Jeep a lot better after having a bad battery terminal and the vacuum leak fixed. It was GREAT to have the support of Jeep forums to guide me in troubleshooting and repairs. Today, I feel a lot more confident about the Jeep purchase after this 3,200-mile trip.


• I was challenged during my day as an "honorary" grandparent to play with the kids and my second cousin, Sophie. I just have not played with kids very much because of the communication difficulties, as well as having grown up and lived as a serious person much of the time (well, I still do, but I'm trying to break that as time goes on). I had an emotionally hard childhood. I wanted to grow up so fast once I hit puberty. It's time to tear these walls down. A good way to start is with children who come with their parents into the store I work at.


• I did some serious inner work on this trip, namely my priorities in my life. I still have more to do. At this time, Houston represents unresolved emotional and social issues in my life. The moment I arrived in my home county, I cried and really wanted to gas up at my gas station and just keep going past Houston. I am working on what it is I want to do and where to go next. I have no clue what that is at this time. Little did I know back in Austin that I would be living here in Houston, so over the years, I learned not to say never when it comes to the directions life takes you sometimes. One thing I have been struggling with has been finding people with similar interests (mainly healthy lifestyles) who actually have some time to socialize outside of very structured events. You know, just hang out on a sofa or spend the day together somewhere.


• It really is time to redirect life into the outdoors and see what else I want to do with my life in my free time. During the trip, I had started saying bye-bye to my financial sources in a bid to reduce my participation in the underground financial research after nearly seven years. After I got home and settled in a few days later, I closed down a bunch of forum/news tabs that I used to read daily. It got to be too much for me, the part about who is doing what to whom behind whose back for what reason, how, why, when, and where. I had enough. The information I was receiving daily no longer served its purpose, that of educating me to what I didn't know before. I know enough and kept the contacts who will keep me in the loop for relevant and personally-important bits of information. My e-mail volume is MUCH smaller now. At this point, I have all the sources on one hand instead of multiple hands, and I only read to guide my personal financial decisions, nothing more. This frees up time for fun things. That could mean playing music more, getting outside more, becoming more involved in local activities, etc.


• I also did some personal growth that I'm still doing (and probably will for a long time), and I felt completely out of place when I came back home last Monday. I just know that I was not happy coming back home, and I was still living off my phone for several days after arriving. I couldn't even turn on the computer for a full day, and that was only to pay bills online that had to be done, and then I went back to my phone, writing out my journal. The next morning, I turned on the computer to research a Conservatory I was at on my last day in Ohio. It really took me a few days to start getting back into my life here, which is no longer the same.


• I came back on a Monday afternoon. My next work shift was a Friday, and it was that day, two minutes after I clocked on, when I found out that a dear friend and former coworker had committed suicide. He died two days before my whole trip started, and I didn't know he wasn't there to receive my trip journal e-mails in person. I was crushed. Without his death, I was already on dicey grounds, emotionally-speaking, about coming back to work from vacation. I mean, I didn't know how I was going to relate to coworkers and customers, what I was going to think or say. I've given my company nearly 9 years, and I was nervous, a little lost. I've never experienced this before. It was like, "I live here? I work here?" Like I was looking at a different person. To have my friend's death on top of this was like rushing it through the meat grinder. It just shattered with a big "pow." I'm ready for a change. I just don't know what that is yet...


• There are other parts of my life that this trip impacted, which I don't fully understand at the moment. I suppose that will become more evident as time goes by. I just know that at the very moment I saw the Houston skyline, I felt a clash inside, an upsetting or awakening to something that gave me the feeling that something wasn't the same anymore, followed by the shocking realization a couple of moments later.