I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life!

I don't even know if I want to do massage anymore!!! 

Maybe I just want to not live on a mountain and ride a beach cruiser and work in an old used bookstore and do Bikram yoga everyday and eat Greek food and fancy cheeses and shop at whole foods and dye my hair blonde and write letters and plant my own garden and change my name to Pauline. 

Maybe. 

Identity crisis. 

I write crazy things between sleep.

I just found this in the recent notes on my phone. I wish I could remember writing this ;)

A night of useless pillows and rain at the window. Neil Diamond wafting in and out of my dreams. I nestle beneath the down comforter and pray for the ceasing of the odd birds call. Will we swim tomorrow?

I can do anything right now.
I can stay in Florida the rest of the month, the rest of the summer, the year...I can go home whenever I want.
But then what? THEN what?! What about NOW???
I could just live here. I could get a job doing whatever I want and just live here.
I can do whatever I want!!!! 
I could move to New York! I could live with one of my most beloved cousins in a city I've never seen before!
Or I can go home and resume my old comfortable life.
Do I want to settle into my former ways again? Do I want to be comfortable? How do I feel about repetition? How do I feel about the securely structured freedom I once had? How do I feel about intense excellerated growth of character?
Can I have all the things I want wherever I decide to be? Does location even matter?

I miss my cat. 

My first nephew was born today!
And he is the most precious boy baby on the planet!
TINY!
I chose the right country to be in this week!

(Newborns look like miniature grandfathers. I think it's normal.)

It blows my mind that I could & still can think of endless reasons why this trip was so wrong for me.
*gasp*
I had put so much prayer and preparation into this adventure!
And then it felt like anything but an adventure to me.
I felt as if I could predict every thing that was to come next and I was already beginning to feel dulled by it all.

How?!?

It was only the rare moments of complete solitude that nourished a feeling of authentic life in me. 
Riding fast and freely through the Danish county side with not another human in sight. 
Or the dirt path through cow pastures along side a lake at sunset. 
Or when I independently discovered the most delicious yogurt in the last bakery we met in Denmark. 

Maybe I should have gone on alone but in the end I was too afraid and too exhausted. With the unknown and the language barriers closing in around me. Real and imagined.

I have great love for these travel companions I chose. And I once thought the whole thing a very wise choice. But experience has taught me otherwise. This was not our trip. It was their family adventure and my independent soul seeking journey. Maybe if I were in a very different phase of life or if I hadn't already set an intention for a specific kind of individual growth, things would have worked out differently. In the end it wasn't my summer for Europe. I should be more sad about that part but I know future opportunities will be made more available to me because of this experience and I will be more informed in my decision making.

As I left for Europe originally I was thoroughly and completely relieved to have a good 3 months of freedom from the things that pull at my mind continually. Things like "I should more aggressively pursue success in my career." " I should probably date someone and rid myself of the constant fear and sabotage of real relationships"...I was relieved to have an excuse not to date or massage anyone for a good period of time. 

But now, here I am. In Florida,  Desperately praying for direction again. I thought I'd been let off the hook for at least another few months. But God and I don't like to pass up opportunities for growth. We'll see what happens.

Ps my travels from Lubeck to Hamburg to Dusseldorf to Miami were beyond interesting and a little frightening and quite funny.

I recently found an old list of reasons I'd like to be more like my baby sister:

She is the "queen master of hula hooping", talks the cats through guided meditations, fills her crystals with happy thoughts and sings her bedtime prayers.

I'd like to add that she whips up her own polenta porridge for breakfast most mornings, has the most outrageous dance moves and the kindest heart of any girl child I know.

We have sleepovers more nights than not. I'm almost certain I'll come home at the end of the summer and be roomless. Every time I leave for a weekend I receive texts from my mom's phone asking if she can start moving her belongings in to replace my own. I assume these texts aren't actually from my mother.

I already miss her the most.

"How did you sleep, Dolly?" *Thumbs up*

I had the most delicious breakfast!
And I've started to attempt to understand the currency. 100 kroner is $17.93. Kind of confusing. But their money is lovely! The coins have hearts on them and some of them have a hole through the middle.

The Chokolade Bolle.

My First Danish Pastry. I think we all decided it was the favorite ;) 

We rode around Copenhagen all morning/early afternoon and ended up south along the coast in another campsite. Much like the last but this one is right next to a river that feeds into the ocean. 

I had the richest shower and now I feel like a human again! I expect that we'll all go to bed early tonight.
I still don't fully understand that this is my life for the next 3 months. 

Riding my bicycle, seeing beautiful places, eating delicious food, playing music, reading lovely poetic non-fiction about solitude and nature, sleeping under the stars. Every day. Every night. For the entire summer. Everything I ever dreamed a summer ought to be?

We got up around a quarter to 6am feeling like we'd slept in all morning.

This time change is proving to be a little more than I'd expected. 

Most of us took naps at different times this afternoon only because we couldn't fight the heaviness of our eyelids any longer. 

This campsite is hilarious.

I'm convinced the Danes must be very concerned with being classy all of the time. Camping is not an exception. Freshly mowed lawns and precious domestic looking rabbits that have been let loose cover the property. No doubt to cute the whole place up. There was a large pink pig in a pen, a zip line and one of these odd roofless rainbow bounce houses they seem to have everywhere a child might be present. 

Our first night the sun didn't go down till after 11pm. I really didn't think it would at all but sometime in the night I woke up and noticed that all of the glow sticks Kaleb had activated were visible. It must have gotten dark. 

The land of my ancestors and origin of my name! 

We spent several hours off to a corner in the crowded airport putting together our bikes. I really wish I'd paid better attention to the original assembling of my front pannier rack last week.
Man oh man. 
It didn't help that we were missing some bolts and screws. They probably fell out of that hole in my box that was created in the transport of my bike from plane to plane.  Whoops! But all is well! David somehow figured it out. He is the hero!

Finally we were out on the road!

It's really strange seeing so many signs and not understanding what any of them mean.
At all! Not even close! No idea!
This must be what it feels like to be completely illiterate. Except I don't even understand the signs that are just pictures.

We rode 5 or 6 km (not far at all) to our first campsite.

I am in love.

I wish you could understand what I feel when I see so many beautiful things in one place! You thought I was ridiculous for crying when I read cook books and restaurant menus??? Try riding a bike with me through Denmark! I would live in any one of these houses in a second. Danish houses, the sweetest architecture on the planet. And the yards are spilling over with flower gardens gone wild. Denmark is my kind of lady and I would sit down to tea with her every Thursday if the universe could permit it. 

The air is a flood of delicious scents. Pure and green and blooming.
I have a problem with holding my breath but I feel like that has gone away for fear of missing out. 

We set up camp and had a dinner of Turkish flatbread, hummus, at least 4 or 5 different kinds of olives, cucumber and tomatoes. Heaven to our desperately hungry tummies!
This was followed by a walk to the edge of the Baltic Sea. Easily the most beautiful bit of land my feet have ever laid weight on!

Wild roses, trees full of spring blossoms and berry bushes, cat tails, yarrow...in many places the grass had grown up passed my shoulders.

Iceland may be the most magical place my legs have ever stretched themselves upon!
And I didn't even get to leave the airport.
The pillows on the airline had a translation of an Icelandic lullaby written on them along with a cooing yodel-y tune playing over the intercom between safety announcements. They sell the most deliciously soft sweaters in the airport and all the walls are adorned in native poetry, among them Bjorks lyrics:

"I feel emotional landscapes

They puzzle me."

If I had the desire to change my attitude about the cold I'd say I want to live in Iceland.

The whole land seems to be icy and grey and drizzly. Full of secrets and mythical creatures...I'm sure of it.

Oh! And their language! It contains the longest words I've ever seen!

For example:

Bjorgundarvesti undir saetum.

Which means:

life vest under your seat.

Even that is ridiculously beautiful.

But we didn't stay long at all.

Only an hour or two in the airport and we were off to Denmark.

Our journey to Europe flowed like a dream!

But maybe the constantly interrupted kind you have when you accidentally fall asleep sitting in a really uncomfortable chair. 

How glad we all are to have our own free wiggle space again!

Hours and hours of flights! 

Salt Lake City to Seattle to Iceland to Denmark.

We had a 4 hour layover in Seattle and decided to have an airport scavenger hunt. 

Our lists included things like orange shoelaces, an elbow, circle, duty, the back of someones head...

It took us several hours to put our bicycles back together once we got to the Copenhagen airport.

Being out of the road was the most delicious thing after who knows how many hours of traveling!

We rode straight to the nearest camp ground.

Let me tell you it is shocking how little my bum has been on the bike seat so far this year!
Not to worry, I will soon make up for it!

This is my cute bicycle. Her name is Edna Myrtle.

Very near the end of this month, I am traveling with a dear cousin family on a 3 month European bicycle tour!

At this point we have no return tickets and the most optimistic, spontaneous hearts we could muster within ourselves. We begin in Denmark with only a rough outline of a plan to cycle through 11-ish countries.

That is the whole point of this blog, My Friends!

So I can have my adventure documented to read and reference later AND so I can take you all with me :)

Once I dressed up as a hobbit...

actually 5 times.

Several years ago I was sitting in an interview with a bishop of mine discussing my goals, the future, my newly healed heart...I described to him how I saw the next phase of my life.

"I just want to read beautiful books and to play music and eat delicious food and meet interesting people and see beautiful places. I think I could travel the world."

The expression of my hopes and dreams was followed by:

"well, how do you expect to get married that way?!?"

I've had a good long while to figure this one out.
And I think I'm about ready to fully accept that life doesn't have to be a certain way.
I didn't marry young, I'm not having babies, I didn't get the majority of my education in a college, I didn't go on a mission, I don't have a car...have I done anything normal?
I did play in a folk rock band. And I went to massage school. Twice. I did live on my own for 4 years (go me!). But I live with my parents again... and I really love it. Like a lot a lot. My family is a dream. 

I've dated a ton. Like almost more than anyone I've ever met. Lots of the really-great-but-not-for-me kind of guys and lots of the not-so-great-what-was-I-thinking kind of guys. Don't worry, if you're reading this you're probably one of the good ones ;)

If I had to measure my life by the landmarks that make up the average mormon girls life it would seem that i've spent the whole of my adult years hiding in a closet.
I'm endlessly grateful for the Spirit and the gift of discernment.
How bleak and worrisome my outlook would be if I thought I needed to follow someone else's path.
Anyway, I have no idea what my future looks like! But I know God's hand is in it and I know that it won't be uneventful. I've put a lot of energy into listening for which direction I should head and I've also chosen a lot of beautiful things on my own.

I really like my life. So just let me tell you that it's ok for me not to be "normal". Let's all feel 100% good about this :)

My name is Kjirsten. Patchouli Jones is my mysterious traveling name ;) or stage name. or pen name. not real. Don't worry, you're reading the right blog.

I ride a bicycle. I'm a massage therapist & a musician, I write songs about cats and other small animals, I love vanilla rooibos tea, songs in 3/4 time, reading books, old books, marking them up, dipping the pages in the bathtub, coloring in them and the comfort of having a book in my bag if ever a lonely moment may occur. I love to read nonsense fiction and children's poetry. I love the classics. Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens...or any kind of book about anything. About healing. And God. And love. And real things. And poems by Billy Collins, Rumi and Rilke. I love reading aloud with whomever I can convince that it's not only for young children and the elderly. I love goat cheese and group naps, barefoot hiking in the mountains, the way a hum feels in my chest, grizzly beards, a good long slow stretch, comfortable pauses, Jesus Christ, silence and solitude, Thai food, soft things, Erik Satie, noises of appreciation, moonlit swims and bluegrassy men harmonies.

I cannot properly wink. Still.