Highlights in a Month of Travel

June 2018 Highlights: The Highs + Lows

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June was a good month, but it was a busy month. (Though when is that ever not the case?!) We were engaged in a half-dozen community events and marketing projects and were only at our house nine nights this month. I’m excited for July as we have a number of projects we’re kicking off—in Murfreesboro, Ohio and at a couple of Tennessee state parks—as well as headed out to Portugal for the long-awaited creative entrepreneur workshop we’re teaching.

AcroYoga at Bonnaroo

But for now, this is how June shook out:

HIGHS

NBC News let me dish on my favorite topic: brain-picking! You can read the whole story here. If you haven’t read my original post on the topic, it’s available here.

We traveled back to our beloved Oklahoma City. This trip was all about art and OKC’s mural scene, and I couldn’t have been happier. If you haven’t been to Oklahoma, I highly suggest putting this underrated city on your travel list.

Murals in Oklahoma City

The Blonde Mule highlighted me as one of her bitches. It’s a good thing, I swear!

I was also part of a female vent session regarding working in a social media management position. Similar to my “13 questions NOT to ask a travel writer,” Kim compiled a list of things you should never broach with a social media manager and you  should definitely give it a read.

We produced a free community-wide luau. The marketing portion of it, in which SVV dressed up as Left Shark and posed at businesses all across the community, was my favorite part of the whole ordeal.

Left Shark playing pool

Left Shark
Left Shark
Left Shark

I’m in Austin! I couldn’t be more excited to be back in one of my favorite cities working with my favorite hotel brand, Fairmont, on another content project highlighting the city and the company’s newest property.

Murals in East Austin

I attended my 10th Bonnaroo. This was possibly our most low-key Roo to date, and we still had a blast. As I mentioned in the post, the best Bonnaroos are the ones where you go in with zero expectations or plans.

I wrote this essay about our Manchester mural project for Mic. The mural project was a doozy—met with far more controversy than you’d think an American flag could stir up—and we are still getting resistance from the old folks on the Historic Zoning Commission. Expect more updates as our grassroots art movement evolves….

Commissioning a Mural

LOWS

Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. I’ve struggled with anxiety ever since my teens; it reached a tipping point about 10 years ago when various medications and therapists didn’t work, and I had to learn how to tackle it myself. Due to the nature of how this year has gone, I’m nearly to my tipping point again, and it sucks. I know what I need—routine, a regular workout regimen again, back to healthy eating—but it’s going to be awhile until our schedule dies down to reincorporate all those things once more. Until then, I’m trying to take small steps toward improving my mental and emotional well-being.

We had to drop a long-term client. Sometimes you have to do the hard thing, and the hard thing is often the right thing, whether it takes you a long time to admit it or not. In this case, we’d been strung along for a while and not treated as we should have been—for example, not being paid for four months!—and we just realized it was time to part ways.

AcroYoga at Bonnaroo

What was the highlight of your June? Any fun summer travel plans in the works?

All of my past monthly highlights can be found here.

COMMENTS
  • July 1, 2018

    Not sleeping at home for so much of a month must have been really tiring, I don’t know how you pack it all in! Hope you have fun in Portugal and sorry to hear about your anxiety. Sounds like you know what you’re doing though which is good, feel better soon x

    Jenny | Local Leo

    • July 5, 2018

      Thank you, Jenny! It’s definitely a game of checks and balances, anxiety is. The good thing is that at 35, I know I’ll get through it, whereas at 25, it was the scariest thing ever. Trying to do more yoga—that always helps 🙂

  • July 1, 2018

    Congrats on the NBC News feature Kristin. That is beyond awesome. Some super highs that month. For me it was 2 weeks in NJ at the end and 2 weeks wrapping up a 3 month trip in glorious New Zealand.

    • July 5, 2018

      Thank you, and congrats to you on one epic trip. Three months in New Zealand—WOW! Color me jealous.

  • July 5, 2018

    The heightened anxiety does not sound good, please take care of yourself! I had to take a bit of a break from work as well because it all became too much. Luckily, I had a trip planned in June to Peru. For me, nothing works better than emptying my mind during a trip so it did me a lot of good.

    • July 5, 2018

      I feel like everyone in our generation goes through this—it’s a byproduct of the society we live in, the pressure to be successful, social media and all the negativity pulsating through the world right now. Still doesn’t make it any easier to get through! I’m glad you had a nice mind-emptying trip. Austin and OKC, even though they were both work trips, were nice respites from the stress for me (sadly it showed back up when I got home from both cities!).

  • July 12, 2018

    It’s so hard to keep anxiety under control when a regular schedule is impossible. I don’t travel nearly as much as you all do, but every day for me is different and it’s always a challenge to take care of myself when it gets especially crazy.

    Also, all that shark business had me LOLing. I love it!

    • July 12, 2018

      So so very hard. I go in waves—I’ll have a great week, and then it will hit me like a ton of bricks when I’m not expecting it.

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