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Chocolate, Yoga, and 13 Countries: The Past Five Months in Interview Form

posted 29th January 2012    Written by: Kat    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kat, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 5, Travel, Travel/Adventure

The past five months have gone by entirely too quickly! It’s still a little mind-blowing to me that I’ve been on the road for nearly four of those five. A lot has happened during that time, and while the big things are obvious, I think the smaller changes are going to take another five months to process. And that’s okay! I want to keep growing and transforming as I continue working through my QLC and settling into my new life. I’m still so honored that I’ve been able to share this journey with all of you!

What are you obsessed with at this exact moment?

Zotter chocolate, yoga, mochas, getting my etsy shop up and running, visiting my OddDaughter in England, my impending gluten detox. (I’m gluten-intolerant, and I have not been careful during my travels.)

You can time travel but only to the past! What time period/ historical event do you go and experience?

This is an easy one! Every time I talk about Coney Island, I tell people that I want to go there during the early 1900s, when it was “America’s Playground”. Coney Island is literally one of my favorite places on the entire planet, and I’d love the opportunity to experience Luna Park, Steeplechase Park, and Dreamland in their heyday.

If you could be any animal, which animal would you be and why?

A tiger. I find them mesmerizing; they’re so strong, and yet still graceful.

Any person dead or alive, who would you have dinner with?

David Lynch. I think he’d be an utterly fascinating dinner companion, and boy, do I have some questions for him!

What is on your life’s soundtrack?

I planned my final yoga class at my old studio around the theme of overcoming fear. This was the playlist for the class, and I think it’s a pretty accurate soundtrack for my life as well:

In addition to that playlist, I’d add these songs that I can’t live without:

I’ve linked to as many of the songs as I could, so hopefully you’ll go forth and enjoy some new music – and if you like it, support the artists!

If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?

If I could clone myself and simultaneously be with my friends in NYC, Seattle, Minneapolis, Raleigh, St. Augustine, San Francisco, Vancouver, Edmonton, Oxford, Graz, Vienna, Rabat, Melbourne, Sydney, and Okinawa – well, I’d do that. Since that’s not going to happen, I think I’ll stick with wanting to be where I as I’m writing this: Barcelona!

Who has been your biggest inspiration throughout your QLC?

My yoga kula (community): the ladies who completed teacher training with me and several other friends/mentors. They inspire me every day with their passion, bravery, and love.

If money, education, time, or location were not an issue, what would you be doing for work in life?

It feels pretty awesome to say this: I’d be doing exactly what I’m doing now/about to be doing (teaching yoga, writing, taking photographs, traveling)! I just wouldn’t need to worry about my bank account so much in the process. :)

What was the biggest mental shift you’ve made from 5 months ago to now?

Over the course of my last few weeks in New York, I was seriously doubting my decision to leave and my ability to keep myself afloat financially and emotionally without a 9-to-5 job. Now I feel certain that I did the right thing, and that I can make this all work.

What’s changed? List 10 little sweet things.

  1. I gave up my cozy Brooklyn apartment for a transient lifestyle.
  2. I don’t really mind wearing the same clothes four months in a row.
  3. I’ve developed and renewed so many amazing friendships.
  4. I miss good tacos and bbq.
  5. I’ve learned, once and for all, that my yoga practice – the reading, the āsana, the meditation – is crucial to my well-being.
  6. I drink coffee!
  7. I’ve visited 13 countries (six new ones and seven return trips).
  8. I’m learning to be less afraid of making mistakes.
  9. I’m a pro at navigating new European cities where I don’t speak the language.
  10. I don’t think I ever want to go back to the 9-5 world.

What’s one thing that you’ve learned – in general or about yourself – over the past five months?

I’ve (re)learned just how important it is for me to have a community. I am fortunate to have amazing friends scattered around the globe, but what makes a place feel like home for me is having some of my people nearby.

What would you have done differently on your Stratejoy journey if you were starting today?

I wish I’d put more time into soul-searching (writing morning pages, completing The Joy Equation, etc.) at the beginning. I feel like I’m only now beginning to tackle some of the really big, deep stuff! At the same time, I think that I needed space to get there, so maybe it’s all worked out for the best.

What song(s) will remind you of the past five months?

What is your favorite thing about YOU?

I am so proud of myself for doing things – from minor items to major life changes – even when they absolutely terrify me.

Name 3 things you absolutely love about yourself.

  1. I love that I’m my quirky self; I rock diverse interests that range from the badass to the absurd, and everything in between.
  2. I love that I’m not afraid to cry.
  3. I love that I don’t need a lot of stuff to survive and thrive.

How are you living life on your own terms?

I quit a steady job to travel the world and move to a new country to start a less traditional career path. Despite the concerns of my family and my slowly dwindling bank account – which will be pleased when I arrive in Sydney and also begin selling my photos – I am overall the happiest I’ve been in my life. Even when I get scared (and it definitely happens), I feel like I made exactly the right choice for me, and I love that I’m listening deeply and following my heart.

[photo credit: me!]

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Breaking Free of Poverty Mindset – Here’s to My New Money Shoes

posted 1st December 2011    Written by: Dusti    CATEGORY: All Posts, Dusti, Job/Career/Work, Money, Season 5, Tips & Tools

“What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.” – Julia Cameron

Money hasn’t been an easy subject for me for a long time. When I was a kid, I was a saver. But my mom would “borrow” my money, so I learned to spend it when I had it.

Now, I owe $30,000 in student loan debt, due to start being paid back in June. And a baby due February 29th. As you can imagine, “I got my mind on the money, and the money on my mind.”

I even had this (stupid, stupid) idea that would have allowed me to spend the year justifying making a limited amount of income. If that isn’t self-sabotage, I don’t know what is.

Earlier this year, I was talking to a couple of friends who had already broken the 6-figure boundary the year before. It was crazy to thin they were doing things not so different than what I was doing – they were just doing them on a bigger, more frequent scale. They were pursuing their dreams – but they knew their dreams had dollar amounts attached to them. But it all seemed so far out of reach. I couldn’t imagine $30K a year, let alone adding an extra zero.

As a would-be entrepreneur, I knew I had to do better if I wanted to make a living doing what I loved. But how? Where the heck do you even start when your perception of money is so warped? A friend said it best – “Your people like you. They want to see you succeed.”

Talking with Molly cemented it. She recommended Overcoming Underearning and I Will Teach You To Be Rich – and I pass that recommendation on to you! Ramit’s tips are solid gold. (Heh.) And Barbara’s are great, too – especially if your problems with money stems from a fear of failure (or success).

My financial goals for next year are ambitious and exciting. Now, I know I deserve to earn more than minimum wage. I’ve got skills! Even more than that, I have the confidence to know I’m worth more.

Danielle LaPorte talks about your money shoes – you can only earn what you’re comfortable with. And $50,000 is a very comfortable starting point for me these days. My goal for my business next year: Breaking the big $100K.

One hundred thousand dollars. $100,000. A hundred G’s.

When I imagine my life, I think about how exciting it will be to pay off my student loans. Zero debt. Automating my bills and savings. Having savings. Starting a retirement fund. Donating to causes I believe in! Visiting France. Ooh la la!

When I close my eyes, I can picture myself doing each one of these things with elegance and joy.

This past year, my business made more than I’ve ever made in a year before. And I’ve only been in business – really – since June. That feels sooo good. To know that I can do what I love, make an amount of money I’m comfortable with, and not be afraid of wealth anymore – those are some pretty sexy money shoes.

What about you? How is your perception of money treating you?

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Dollars vs. Dreams

posted 23rd October 2011    Written by: Kat    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kat, Money, Season 5, Travel, Travel/Adventure

Money’s been on my mind a lot lately. Long-term travel plans will do that to you, I suppose. I’ve got a variety of fears related to this trip, but the one that’s most consistently present is the fear of running out of cash. I touched on that in my post about my travel/moving plans, but I think it’s worth a closer look. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here, and I suspect this fear is what stops some people from following their dreams of traveling, opening a business, and more.

My parents raised me to make very practical choices about money. My family is solidly middle class–perhaps even upper middle class in the economically-depressed area where I grew up–and they taught me from a young age to save. I’ve never been the type of person to accumulate a large sum of credit card debt, and while I was employed, I was putting money into a retirement account. I decided to leave my job in Seattle to do AmeriCorps partly because the paychecks were sometimes uncertain. Even though I wasn’t going to earn a lot of money during my AmeriCorps year, at least I was able to plan for that.

Point being: my nature is to make reasonably intelligent financial decisions and save money.

What the fuck was I thinking when I quit my job?!

I was thinking that I’d spent a few years automatically transferring 20-30% of my earnings into a savings account every month. I knew that someday I’d use that money to do something awesome, and that time had come. When it wasn’t in my checking account, I didn’t spend it. It was like magic when I looked at the savings balance later!

I was thinking that I was tired of earning my keep in a way that drained me. I was doing so many things on the side that I enjoyed–teaching yoga, blogging, taking photographs–and I wanted more time to explore those options as a potential sources of income.

I was thinking that life is short, and that I’ve never really bought into the idea that we should wait until we retire to follow our dreams. A former coworker once said to me: “It’s hard to dance when you have a walker, but it’s easy to sit at a desk and type.” I don’t want to wait my whole life to do something that I’m excited about now. I don’t want to spend my whole life saving for something that might never happen.

I’m not advocating racking up debt to fund crazy plans and diving into things with reckless abandon. That’s not my style. I am suggesting that if we want to do awesome things, we need to make those a priority. I was able to save the money for this trip by living what some people saw as a spartan lifestyle. I spent money on the things that mattered most–travel and food, including eating out with friends–and I was cautious about the rest. There were certainly times that I missed living alone, but I saved hundreds of dollars each month by having a roommate. I rarely bought things like clothes, books, and other random items because those weren’t in my budget.

My dad said to me a few years ago that he and my mom had a hard time understanding me because they saw my brother buying things (new tv, car stereo, etc.), and I wasn’t like that. I like to spend my money on experiences. That’s how I choose to live my life, and that includes the financial side of it.

All of that doesn’t take away the fear of running out of cash. You know what’s scarier to me, though? Planning around a someday that might never arrive and living a life that isn’t authentic.

Of course, I’ve still got a semi-meticulous travel budget. It’s not like I can get away from my upbringing that easily.

[photo credit: me!]

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From Barista to Writer: Building a Business out of Thin Air

posted 20th October 2011    Written by: Dusti    CATEGORY: All Posts, Dusti, Job/Career/Work, Season 5

I never had any intentions of being an entrepreneur. Really I didn’t.

I thought I was just starting blog. Harmless, really. Then, it was a month-long course on blogging. No biggie. Then, I made my first affiliate sale. Oooh, that was pretty exciting. Then, I was writing and marketing an ebook.

Okay, so it was a slippery slope.

Who am I kidding? I showed all of the telltale signs of the would-be entrepreneur.

The inability to stay at a job I couldn’t stand and couldn’t change. (Seriously, I’ve had 36 jobs.) I had to stop participating in student council, because I blew a fuse or ten when I realized all they did was fundraise for parties and dances. So much for wanting to get the curriculum updated and get the school more active in the community. That may have also been why I was voted most likely to be a politician… in 8th grade.

I joke about it, but honestly, stepping into this new role has changed my life in ways I struggle to describe.

Let’s jump back to the summer of 2010. I was working at a Starbucks, slinging coffee out a window to people more or less unhappy with their lives. (The only notable exception to this was Phil Knight and his wife, two of our regulars.) Life was okay. Except that I knew I was handing a false answer to their problems out the window.

When I wasn’t making coffee, I was online. I’d started blogging in my spare time, downsizing my life, and doing more of what I loved. And what did I love? Writing. Sharing. Even when only an hour of my day could be devoted to this secret passion, it lit me up like the 4th of July.

When I first got started, I did it all for the love of writing. All of these thoughts and ideas had been building up with nowhere to go, and when I started blogging, it was like the floodgates opened. My heart soared every time I penned something. Little pieces of me scattered online and throughout the world.

Now it’s October 2011, and I have built myself a job and the makings of a business. In the past year, I’ve written about half a million words. No exaggeration. Between college, writing for pleasure, and writing for business, the flow of words has been more akin to tsunami force than that of the steady river metaphor I had considered using there.

With no qualifications, I wrote ebooks that real people bought. I offered my services as a branding coach and a copywriter – and real people paid me with real money. Danielle LaPorte says the universe speaks in cashflow, and it certainly did to me. The whole thing still blows my mind.

It’s amazing on so many levels, but entrepreneurship is not easy, especially if you’ve got workaholic tendencies. It feels like your work is never done. There’s always this inner conflict going on. How should I be spending my time? How much time with my daughter is enough? How many hours a week should I work? How many would I like to work? How many do I actually have to work to pay my rent?

We take the structure a workplace provides for granted. The thing with being the one calling shots is just that – you’re the one calling the shots. There’s no one else to blame. It’s all on you. Every decision you make about your schedule, your rates, everything. I’m a fan of bootstrapping, but now I dream of the day I can hire my very own virtual assistant. (I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the heavens will open up and angels will sing.)

Have you considered starting your own business? I’d love to hear about your ideas, and if you have any questions about how I made the transition, I’m happy to answer them! (Molly and Hannah, I want some input here from you guys, too!)

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Quo Vadimus- Where Are We Going?

posted 2nd October 2011    Written by: Kat    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kat, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 5, Travel, Travel/Adventure

I’ve come to expect any or all of the following questions when I tell people that I’m moving to Australia:

It’s not that I mind answering them; I’ve come to terms with the fact that they’re going to come up, and clearly, I like talking about myself. The catch is that I don’t really have answers to any of those questions…

…and I like it that way.

People don’t seem to know how to react to that. It’s not that I blame them; after all, I’ve had six months or so to come to terms with my decision and how I’ve (not) planned things. At first, their responses made me uncomfortable. I stopped wanting to talk about my travel plans for a while, because I didn’t want to deal with the shift in tone of voice or odd look when I didn’t have concrete answers. I’ve been learning to come to terms with the fact that I’m not crazy for doing this, and I’m making a valid choice and can have faith in my decision.

Here’s the thing: with the exception of my AmeriCorps year, I’ve spent the past eleven (!) years working in event planning in some way, shape, or form. I can research options, create schedules, manage logistics, and coordinate people with the best of them. I love a good to-do list, and for the most part, I don’t shy away from spreadsheets. (In fact, I’ve got quite a few of them to assist with some unavoidable moving and travel logistics.)

After planning out all of those details for so long, I just don’t want to do it anymore. After living by a relatively rigid schedule–elementary school, high school, college, 9-to-5 jobs–I want to step away from that for a while. I want to reclaim my time, explore, and see if there’s a better way to structure my life. I’ve created the opportunity for myself to do just that, and I’m going to run with it as best I can.

Since I’m really excited about my globetrotting and my move, though, I can tell you what I do know. I’m spending about three months traveling, with the intention of arriving in Australia shortly before Christmas. When I initially started planning this trip, I was going to take a week in Seattle and a week in England (or maybe a week in England and a week in Austria–who can keep track at this point?) before heading down under, and then somehow, the trip kept growing. Not that I’m complaining!

The next three months will be filled with new adventures, friends old and new, good food, and quality time with myself. I’m in Seattle now with one of my dearest friends, and then heading to Europe for a mix of solo travel and journeying with friends. I’ll volunteer on farms in Iceland and Italy and celebrate my OddDaughter’s first birthday at her home in England. I’ll take a solo train ride through France and Spain en route to meet up with friends from my knitting circles in Morocco. I’ll gather with another group of kamarádky for Thanksgiving in Prague; my heart starts to beat faster when I think about walking those familiar streets that captured my heart during my study abroad. I’ll head to Austria with some of my Prague travel companions to spend time visiting with them in their home. I’ve got a very loose schedule for the solo parts of the journey, and a little more structure when other people are involved.

It’s going to be awesome.

And then: Australia. That’s where I really don’t have answers. I’m planning on teaching yoga, yes. I have some job leads, yes. I have friends and family who are willing to house me, at least for a little while, so I won’t be homeless when I arrive. (And realistically, I could always stay in a hostel if I needed. I wouldn’t be without shelter.) And I’m okay with this.

I was going to say that I’m completely, 100% okay with this. That would be a lie. Of course there’s a part of me that’s terrified. I’m moving to a country halfway around the world, with a dream of teaching yoga full-time and a vague idea of where I’m going to live. Who wouldn’t feel some fear? In the end, though, I’m more afraid of being stuck where I’ve been.

These days, when people ask those questions, I give my nebulous answers. And every time, I remind myself of two things:

1. My dream has been to travel and move to Australia. I’m doing that. No matter what happens once I get there–even if I end up working odd jobs to pay the bills, or coming home after a few months–I’ve succeeded. I left my job to follow my dream, and it’s happening.

2. I have many homes, and I’m choosing not to live in them right now. One of my greatest fears is that I will end up running out of money with no place to live. That will never happen, because I have friends who will always, no matter what, let me spend weeks–or even months–on their couches or air mattresses or spare beds until I figure things out. I will always have a home–many homes–to return to.

Even though the answers aren’t always complete enough for most people, they’re perfect for me.

[photo credit: me!]

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