Day 27: Dreams, realizations, and truth-telling

Do you know how many countries there are in the world? Take a guess.

500? 400? 300? 

I heard someone on a podcast the other day – which I won’t name – say that their products were offered in over 300 countries.

300!! Wow, right?!

At this present time, the total of countries is less than 200. 193 to be exact. Crazy, right?

Personally, I did think there were more countries. Comment below how many you thought there were! I thought there were easily 350 countries. Ha!

I say that to share a little ambition that sparked this morning. What if I were to visit them all? I wonder how long it would take. A couple years? 5 years? 10 years? Let’s say I spent 2 weeks in every country. I could visit 25 countries a year. At that rate, it would take me 7.7 years to see them all. Ha! Just in time to come home and settle down have a family yada yada……maybe! I

It was a thought. But currently, I’m up to 18 countries and I’m 27. However, I will say, being a nomad should make seeing more countries more accessible.

Anyways….that’s the “dreams” portion for today.

The “realization” part has to do with figuring myself out and learning myself better. In recent years, I have felt robotic in my actions. Thrown myself into things and figuring them out, quitting drinking and sticking with it at all costs. I also wouldn’t have been successful with a career change and remaining sober if I weren’t so robotic. By robotic, I mean throwing myself into something without really considering my needs.

To explain a little further, humans by nature are super emotional. Being robotic requires removing the “but I’m scared, I don’t wanna” out of the situation and I just force myself to do it anyways. In a way, it helps me surpass fear by doing things far outside my comfort zone. This could be because I didn’t learn very well how to display emotions as a child, so I figured out how to muster through it. It’s my hot take and it’s made me to who I am today.

So anyways, back to what I was saying, which is that I am learning to identify my needs better, so that I can set myself up for better success in the future which might allow me to be a little less robotic.

I’ll give you an example of one I have identified while here. When I set out to come to St. Croix I told my aunt and my family that before booking my second Workaway, I wanted to see how I liked the layout of this one. The number of other Workawayers, working time of day, proximity to town, work type. I love the work type I’m really enjoying but I have identified that my best time of day for writing is first thing in the morning. Afternoons and evenings I just can’t produce the same as I would in the mornings. And being important as it is to me, writing, I can communicate with future hosts and see if they are flexible on working time of day.

Thirdly, “truth-telling” – back home I caked on makeup, I shaved my legs, did my hair (usually). But here, I feel free. I don’t required to do all those things.

In fact, I haven’t worn makeup once since arriving. Nor do I feel the need to put it on at all. It’s just gonna sweat off anyways. And shaving? Pst, I’ll go to work with stubbly legs now and could care less. This is far from the feminine image I’ve been taught to maintain. So it almost feels like rebelling and you know I am a rebel at heart.

Anyways, I anticipated the makeup thing, but not the shaving thing. I do shave my legs, but just less often, in case you were wondering. I noticed a couple of the other women here don’t seem to shave every 3 days either. It’s freeing! And I have to say it’s a bit of a relief and it feels kinda sexy too.

Anyways, that’s my hot take today and a glimpse inside my head. Ciao!