Why I am the “sometimes” solo soul?

Because I enjoy traveling alone but I also like to travel with others!

Being a mother, of course I take my daughter along with me on adventures and exploring! Especially now that she’s a teenager and no diaper bag required.

I also have my rescue doggie who I found and made her part of our family. 🙂

What makes me want to explore?

Years of doing this:

Makes me want to do this:

Police work is tons of fun. I love helping people in their time of need, and this job fulfills me in that way and contribute compassion to others. Police work is also scary at times. Every day could be the day you don’t come home. It’s so rewarding though. But you need that recharge time to get away and reset your mind when the job starts to bring you down.

Going back to school to get a bachelor’s degree also helped open my mind. Let me share this: you’re never too old to try again! I finally outgrew community college and made it to university level. So evenings are spent at the University of Texas at San Antonio working towards a degree in Fine Arts; it should be done soon. Birds Up!

What little spare time I have is spent drawing, painting, and other mixed media. I have recently learned to love gouache paint because it forces me to work quicker and meet deadlines.

Minimalism can be a daunting thing to try. I went through a phase where I wanted to purge EVERYTHING. Reading about minimalism helped (thanks Marie Kondo and IKEA) and so did new smaller furniture (less storage space, less things)!

What makes me qualified to write about exploring?

My military childhood!

We grew up around the world and I do mean around it. Starting in Mississippi, we went overseas at the age of 4 to Japan, where I mostly remember playing in snow and hating the taste of seaweed. Back to stateside where it was back to Mississippi, then Colorado, Wyoming, then to Germany, where I went to high school and had the chance to explore Europe. My senior year I saved up the money to take a school trip to Morocco for a week despite that there were no cell phones, internet, or email for contact!

• 

• 

After high school, back stateside on the northeast coast and finally settled in Texas.

I also learned to only live with what I needed, thanks to the government not getting your things to your next living place on time. I can live out of a backpack for a LONG time.

Now police work doesn’t pay a whole lot, but it doesn’t mean that travel and exploring is out of reach! Check out my planning and budget sections to see exactly how I do it.

Where do I want to go? Everywhere! Being a first generation American (my parents are from Honduras) and a military child, it’s easy to feel disconnected from others and feel like you don’t really belong anywhere. Plus I’d like to take my daughter to make memories for her to take to college instead of a car. 🙂

I hope you follow along! All things art and travel! I’ll also cover some local things here in San Antonio because out of all the places I’ve lived in, I will say this is the best one yet.

Warning: I will reference The Simpsons, Star Wars, Star Trek, and the occasional Frasier so if you enjoy these shows, you’ll appreciate the quotes.

Support local art here in SA!