The Raw Me • 6th November 2023

Georgia, The Country

Georgia. I did a lot of research before going here. My original intent was to move to this small country of four million people, mainly because I could stay for one year without going through the hassle of obtaining a special visa. Obviously, this country has figured out the benefit of foreign money. What I read told me: there were a lot of Expats in the capital, 85% of the population speaks English, the people were very friendly, and the food was delicious, even for people with dietary restrict

The Raw Me • 22nd October 2023

Plan B Makes A U-Turn

Number 9 of 9, this is the final issue in the series! Happy reading! If you’re just joining us, start with the first one here: https://wordsworthywriting.wordpress.com/2023/08/28/how-it-began-my-journey-to-make-my-dreams-a-reality/ About a year-and-a-half ago I’d found a house that I wanted to buy but I needed a job locally. Unfortunately, this town of 40,000 people didn’t really have any high-paying businesses. Top dollar for most people was $17-18/hour. There was no way I could get a loan liv

The Raw Me • 16th October 2023

Plan B

This is the eighth of nine installments in the series about my journey to France to make my dreams come true. You can read the first one here or follow this to see past posts. https://wordsworthywriting.wordpress.com/2023/08/28/how-it-began-my-journey-to-make-my-dreams-a-reality/ People called me brave when I announced my plans. What I think they really meant was stupid. In hindsight, that’s exactly what I was. Without having all my ducks in a row, I left the US. I got rid of 85% of my belongin

The Raw Me • 9th October 2023

French Bureaucracy

This is the seventh installment of the series about my journey to France to make my dreams come true. You can read the first one here or follow this to see past posts. https://wordsworthywriting.wordpress.com/2023/08/28/how-it-began-my-journey-to-make-my-dreams-a-reality/ When one contemplates moving to France and begins the research process, the word that keeps recurring is “bureaucracy.” But what exactly does that mean? A lot of papers to fill out? Documents that you’ll need to carry around?

The Raw Me • 2nd October 2023

Riberac: Dream vs Reality

This is the sixth installment of the series about my journey to France to make my dreams come true. You can read the first one here or follow this to see past posts. https://wordsworthywriting.wordpress.com/2023/08/28/how-it-began-my-journey-to-make-my-dreams-a-reality/ Through my realtor I made an appointment to see the house with the sellers to try to rent it until a loan was secured. Their English was minimal and my French dismal but we made it work. To be honest, my first impressions of the

The Raw Me • 26th September 2023

The Car Saga Continues…

This is the fifth in the series about the pursuit of my dreams. Check out the previous ones here: I slept until 9:30on Saturday, which is unheard of! I’m an ‘up with the sun’ kind of person. It felt good to sleep in a bed for the first time in two days. I got up and took a much needed shower. I’d been wearing the same clothes since Tuesday and it felt good to peel them off and get clean. Feeling completely refreshed, I went to the kitchen where the breakfast was laid out for me. I had a big bow

The Raw Me • 18th September 2023

It’s Electric!

This is the fourth in the series about the pursuit of my dreams. Check out the previous ones here: I arrived in Paris at 12:30 on July 27th. It was unseasonably cold and wet. Little did I know that these grey skies were an omen of the adversities I’d experience in the weeks to come. But I paid no attention to the weather and proceeded to baggage claim to collect my checked luggage and oversized bike box before heading to the car rental office. I made a special note that the luggage carts were f

The Raw Me • 12th September 2023

Everything Goes South

The third in the series about the pursuit of my dreams. Check out the first and second ones here: Keep in mind that there is a nine-hour time difference between Oregon and France. They are ahead so their work day finished as mine began. But I’m an early riser and would often wake at 03:00, unable to return to sleep, and check my email in case there was something from the realtor or broker needing some documents or information. Rarely was there anything. In fact, during the whole process, I foun

The Raw Me • 4th September 2023

Dealing With the Reality of The Process

This is #2 in the series about making my dreams a reality. Last week was about how it all began, both the thought and physical processes. To see the first post go to: https://wordpress.com/post/wordsworthywriting.wordpress.com/1148 Change can be really hard for some people. For me, it seems to be uncommonly easy. I’m sure a large part of it is because I have nobody to keep me in one place. Perhaps it’s also because I don’t sit well. If I go to a party I’d rather help the host than sit around tr

The Raw Me • 28th August 2023

How It Began: My Journey to Make My Dreams a Reality

Six years after selling my townhouse in Maryland and spending half of my proceeds traveling around the world, I was eager to settle down and grow roots. A stray without a place to live, I put it up to the Universe. Bend, Oregon chose me. It was determined: I was going to my forever home. A place with mountains, rivers, lakes, and a quaint downtown. The whole town was five miles in diameter; it was my US utopia. I was excited to move to this small town. I arrived February 4th, 2020. Six weeks la

The Raw Me • 8th September 2022

Published in Bend Magazine!

Super excited to share my article that’s been published in Bend Magazine. I love this community-oriented publication and am proud to now be a part of it. It’s a super quick read so please take a moment and give it a once over. Tell me what you think! Writer, world traveler, volunteer, and a champion for the underdog I believe in one love, equality, doing the right thing no matter how difficult it seems, and the indisputable need to care for the planet and everything that lives on it. I'm trying

The Raw Me • 23rd May 2022

Lasts

Did you ever think that the last time you had sex would be the last time you had sex? I asked this of a male friend of mine who hadn’t had been intimate for six years. I knew someone else for whom it’d been eight years, probably nine now. For me, it’d been over two, and I was struggling with that reality. None of us were actively seeking celibacy but it seemed to be the way things played out. The worst part for me was that the last time wasn’t even good. Certainly not what I wanted to have as th

The Raw Me • 20th February 2022

Why I’ll Never Be Vegan

I was raised eating meat. Forced to eat it even though I mostly didn’t like it. Not because my mom was a bad cook, in fact, just the opposite. I just never liked meat, even as a small child. OK, bacon is tasty, but honestly, who doesn’t like bacon? And my mom’s Italian Beef was awesome, but mostly because of the loaf bread it lay on that was soaked with the savory gravy. When we had a roast, I only wanted the end piece; it was small and had all the seasoning on it. It’s the same reason I liked

The Raw Me • 14th March 2021

Is Your Stimulus Check Really Stimulating?

I’m not a spender. Growing up wearing hand me downs, being afraid to ask my mother for money, and having spent the majority of my life not being able to “keep up with the Jones’s” made me frugal. Having expensive taste but not the income to support it taught me to save for what I really wanted instead of wasting my money and settling for a cheaper, more disposable substitute. Age and travel altered my priorities. I prefer the freedom that comes with having good credit and no debt. Nowadays I rar

The Raw Me • 22nd February 2021

If Variety is Good Why is Diversity Bad?

Variety is the spice of life, or so the saying goes. It must be true. It’s why some people cheat on their partners, or why people get excited with new and fresh styles in all classifications of the arts. It’s why the arrival of yellow and purple carrots created quite a stir of delight in kitchens around the world. We seek it in our diets, fashion, and lives. Could you imagine if you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life? What if there was only one type of cheese, or everyone wo

The Raw Me • 19th February 2021

Community In Action

I’ve lived in a lot of states throughout the US; mostly in the suburbs of big cities where most people were all about themselves. Here, it’s 130 miles over the mountains and through the woods to the nearest big city. Until now, never had I experienced living someplace where there was a true sense of community. Not only do the residents consciously support locally owned businesses, but many go out of their way to avoid places and products that are sell-outs, like a local brewery that sold out to

The Raw Me • 14th May 2020

One Love

I’m tired of hearing about yet another senseless killing of an innocent black man. I’m dumbfounded that, as advanced as Americans are in science and technology, many are still psychologically stunted in the Jim Crow era. We know that racism is learned and not innate. There are examples everywhere that show how young children don’t even see the color of ones skin. So I began to wonder, when exactly, does this happen? Of course, if a family is racist, it begins at birth. But what about children b