Well that was longer than expected

  Hi friends!  Looks like my goal of starting this blog lasted all of two days!  bahahaha

Well, here we are one year later and it's interesting to check out the vision I had cast last year.  Let's see what I did or didn't manifest, shall we?

I did add more artwork to the walls of my home, but we did not take a trip back to Japan. 
I did get more involved in my local church by becoming a group leader for women's Bible study, but I did not cut back much on my Instagram scrolling.
I did heal a lot of my eczema, but I did not lose 30 pounds.
I did clear out my closet more, but I did not put much of it on Poshmark.
I did have a better work/life balance, but I did not get a paid VO gig.

Not too bad, I guess.  I mean when I look back on the year as a whole, I am generally happy with what I did and where I went.  However I am also generally upset with myself for not taking advantage more of the hours in each day that I am given. The sleeping in isn't necessarily the problem, but it's wasted HOURS EVERY DAY on Instagram, and to a lesser degree Facebook, that I could use to be productive.  Make money.  Work out.  Clean the house.  Watch the myriad of things that I have paid for and haven't watched yet (webinars about work, relationships, health, and more).

That's actually my New Year's Resolution. I decided today.  To MAKE TIME to ingest all the knowledge I've already paid for and want to learn.  And it's not even about finding time, but making it.  I've got it.  I see and feel myself waste it away all day online, doing nothing, gaining no knowledge, making my eyes hurt, tiring me out...  What. A. WASTE.  This needs to change.  If I end up not writing in here for another year, I really really truly hope I can at least look back and see I spent less time scrolling mindlessly on Instagram and actually DID SOMETHING with my life.  *sigh*

Well, that's all for now.  Thanks for reading!

See you tomorrow...or a year from now.  lol

Well here we go, here we go again

 eah here we go again!  ba duh ba duh bum bah!

Welcome one, welcome all to my latest, greatest blog!

I used to blog multiple times a week from around 2000 until 2004 when Facebook came to my college. Then Facebook officially took over my life in a way that Myspace never could. I literally became obssesed, had a bad case of FOMO before I even knew what it was, and even talked about it the speech I gave as a senior to the formal-wear dressed crowd at my last sorority dance. (I was honored to be selected to speak.)

I talked about how you can't live your life online wishing you were with all the people that looked like they were having more fun than you, but you weren't invited.  You had to get your head out of the computer (this was before iPhones) and notice that your own life was already amazing and you were already doing fun things, you just weren't posting about them online all the time.

CUT TO PRESENT DAY -
SCENE: Rachel sits at her preowned MacBook writing in a new blog because she hasn't touched her old one for nearly 20 years. Her mindset finding itself in the same funk she succumbed to when she wrote that speech so many moons ago.
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Well, here I am, missing journaling, missing writing out my thoughts and feelings. Feeling like I'm missing out, but I'm not!  We just enjoyed a great weekend in the Hill Country and I took lots of photos, but because I didn't post any of them, no one knows we even went there or traveled and drank great wine except for the people we saw face to face while on the quick vacation weekend.

So once again I want a space to think.  To type. To share.  Even if no one reads, it feels good to get things down onto paper (pixels) and let it all go.  

I may keep this up for a day.  I may keep this up for a month. I may keep this up for 4-5 years like I did my first blog (which is now deleted, omg I reread the whole thing recently and it was CRINGE AF---DELETED).

But if you're here, thanks for joining me on this journey.  And now let's see if I remember any HTML from my early days so I can code this site to be exactly what I want, while paying nothing for it.  lol

Peace out!

Days 44-45, Bangkok, Thailand

 

Days 42-43 - Phuket, Thailand

We headed out early Wednesday morning to the airport to head to Phuket, Thailand with a scheduled personal van shuttle straight to our hotel.  Out of the Singapore, KL, Phuket, Bangkok tour we did, this was our favorite stop. The people and the beach were wonderful.

 We took the hotel taxi around to the Big Buddha and famous temples in the area.  The view from the top was incredible.

Random cat placed itself RIGHT in the middle of the temple entrance.  The cuteness!

We headed to the beach and swam in the perfect water.  We saw a ton of jellyfish tops on the beach but didn't encounter any in the water.  The waves here were body-surfable so we did that for a while until they started getting really rough and I took a few tumbles underwater and ended up entangled in someone else's arms and legs, didn't know who until the wave took us pretty much all the way to the beach and it was one of the TI guys.  Funny/awkward.  Sand in places it shouldn't be...  So we got out and ate at the beach restaurant.  It was really cloudy that day so we didn't catch the sunset, but here is the sunset from the next day after we went kayaking around a lot of islands nearby.  I'll try to get some photos the others took of us in the kayak, but I didn't have my phone with me.  We had paid for a boat tour/self kayaking experience with lunch included on the boat, and it was so perfect.  Some of the tunnels we went into you had to lie back in the kayak in order to fit, and they took you into beautiful lagoons with monkeys and other wild life.  It was a wonderful day, topped off with a gorgeous sunset.

It started raining so I ran for cover to the nearest umbrella and then got all artsy with the sunset.  :)

I loved walking along the beach seeing all the tiny crabs scatter and crawl into holes.  I watched the last bit of the sunset with my new crab friend (I put him back after this photo).  Tomorrow we head off to Bangkok for the city life again.  But I could get used to this beach thing...