Travel

I was supposed to start classes for my new semester this Tuesday. Then my bus broke down, so I had to leave a day later and miss my first two lectures. Ahahahaha D8.

At least they refunded my ticket. Lesson learned--leave buffer days between travel destinations when it's important you be somewhere before a certain time. Anyway. This sort of traveling (as I write this I'm on a nearly-six-hour bus trip to Chicago, where I'll be hanging out for several hours at the train station because I don't want to run around the downtown area carrying my plastic bag full of dirty clothes with me and I don't have money to spend on a locker, then taking a night bus to Minneapolis) has started to feel routine to me. I'm starting to like this. I'm comfortable enough with it to be able to concentrate on writing this post while on a crowded bus.

It's interesting in that it's sort of as predicted, sort of not. Traveling widely became a priority for me while I was in my late teens, and now it's started to come true, although so far most of it's been because of studying abroad in Europe (and therefore taking all the chances to travel that I could in case they didn't come around again) and being in a relationship with people two states away from me. Still, I'm starting to learn how to make this more cost-effective and getting used to fun little screw-ups like transport breakdowns and other delays. I've still got stuff to learn (I'm thinking I'll need to start looking into sub-letting apartments and couchsurfing once I'm closer to finishing my degree), but even so, I'm getting pretty comfortable with running around a lot like this.

Staying in one place wasn't very appealing in my late teens, and it becomes even less so the more I do it. Right now I'm hoping to find enough short-term or portable work to be able to switch places every few months after I graduate. I'm thinking I'd do a lot of switching between Minneapolis, Chicago, and possibly St. Louis. I also want to spend some time in New York City, but I'd have to get there to see how long I'd actually want to be there or how often I'd want to go back, if at all. It looks like a fascinating place, at any rate.

In order to do this, I'm thinking I'll have to get better at finding jobs (I'm starting to get to the bottom of stuff I can sell on eBay in order to make travel money fast) and get rid of more stuff. But I feel like I've got a much better idea of what I want to do after I graduate now than I did a year or two ago, even if my goals haven't changed that much. Hooray, personal progress?