Here’s What I’m Not
- I’m not that adventurous.
- I’m not a foodie. (well, not an adventurous foodie)
- I’m not Australian.
- Or a backpacker.
- Or an Australian backpacker.
- I’m not in great shape.
- I’m not that young.
- I’m not that old.
Here’s What I Am
- I am curious with a passion for travel that won’t go away – even if it’s a bad time.
- I’m a writer and storyteller.
- I’m an eternal student who wants to learn more.
- I’m an overthinker with self-diagnosed OCD.
- I’m a carboholic who can’t pass by a good café – or any café – without stopping to look.
- I am a proud Wampanoag, Cape Verdean, Colombiana.
In Screenwriting, they’d call this…
–> the Backstory
I backpacked across Europe at 24 and had such an amazing experience, I moved to London six months later to work in theatre with the intention of living there for a few years. Things like visas, laws, and immigration policies didn’t strike me as anything important enough to worry about since my intentions to learn theatre from the birthplace of Shakespeare and hone my craft seemed pure at heart. Little did I know…
I took the shit jobs no one else wanted. I was a waitress at a dirty cafe in Oxford Circus, a clown handing out menus for a Chinese restaurant on Tottenham Court Road and worked a vegan stand at the Reading Festival. My most lucrative offer came in the form of a sleazy back alley deal for a Japanese escort service possibly affording me the chance to have been the world’s first black geisha. And be able to pay the rent. And maybe I would have even had a book deal by now because had I lived to tell, I think it would’ve been a good story. But I turned it down for a far less glamorous job cleaning the Mayfair mansion of a Kuwaiti diamond dealer and quite enjoyed it. That was a good gig. But not being able to obtain gainful employment due to visa restrictions, I quickly ran out of money. But I had a good time. A great time.
Knowing it was the end of the road, I gave up trying to work and spent the rest of my time in London pretending I was a tourist with a bank account. I went to tourist attractions, restaurants, bars, cafés and concerts until I maxed out my credit cards. If I wasn’t supposed to be working there, I certainly made up for it with the amount of money I injected into their tourism economy. Broke but happy, I flew home positive I’d be back on the road soon. Ever notice things seem easy and the world seems small and doable when you’re actually out there doing it? When I got home, the reality of low-wage jobs and high-interest debt on those credit cards kicked into high gear. That world that was once so close and a life that seemed so doable now felt impossibly far away.
Over the years, while I pursued practical goals like a Master’s in Screenwriting in Hollywood, teaching English in East LA and South Central to pay the rent while “writing in cafés in public”, working at soul-crushing corporate nonprofits, an architectural firm and a church, most of those friendships faded but my travel dreams didn’t. They may have shifted or changed form, but I never lost sight of them completely. That pesky little travel bug as my dad called it, was still biting at a piece of my soul.
Traveling is not something you’re good at. It’s something you do. Like breathing. You can’t work too much at it, or it feels like work. You have to surrender yourself to the chaos. To the accidents.
– Gayle Forman
Why wasn’t I walking in a straight line? Was I drunk?