independence

I Believe I Can Fly. I Believe I Can Touch the Sky. . .

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 4 Comments

“I’m thinking, for our next meeting, being the new year and all, it might be good for you to bring a business plan so that you’re free spiritedness doesn’t get blown off track from what you’re trying to accomplish. Since you’re a pantser, and all.”

He’s my accountability partner. We’re both members of the Key West Writers Guild working on first drafts of our first book. He wanted to stay on track and proposed we have weekly phone call check-ins. And he’s referring to what some writing instructors like to teach: Are you a plotter or a pantser? Plotters make outlines and plans. Pantsers fly by the seat of their pants and just see where the story goes.

“Noted.” I say as I put away the groceries from my bike basket.

“Oh…did I overstep?”

“That’s just not how I operate. I don’t even balance my checkbook and you want me to write a business plan? All the best stuff in my life has come sans plans.” Evoking the Jed McKenna quote to cross my mind once again. ‘God gives me better than I would’ve thought to ask for, and before I would’ve thought to ask.’

I’m not a panster, I’m a flow-er. And I’ve gotten to this amazing space in my life–living on an island, in a camper with my kitty, writing and business building on a seventy-some degree day in January. I’ve just had a story and poem published in an anthology and now get to bop around the island promoting it.

I did not plan this. I allowed this. I held steadily an intention of fulfilling my purpose, and am receiving (and thoroughly enjoying) the outward picturing, and support from the Universe. “There’s no way I could’ve planned all this.”

He verbally stumbles. “Uh, um, well, yes, of course. I didn’t mean to…”

But he did mean to. The same way many people of the planner and plotter persuasion have tried to reel me in, wise me up, structure me and convince me that some other, more orderly way of living would somehow be better. I was raised by a woman like this. A woman who’s view of me was akin to that of a wild horse needing to be broken. As if I would fall off the edge of the Earth if she didn’t keep me tightly tethered.

I was a wild child. Still am. Still gravitating to the edge, wanting to fly and be free–to be weightless. I didn’t like the pull on my freedom then and I don’t take kindly to it now. It chokes me, cutting off my air supply. I run from these conversations like someone from a house on fire. I’ll die if I stay inside. 

I live on the fringe full-time because, ‘If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.’ 

Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 2 Comments

I know you really want to tell me goodbye. I know you really want to be your own girl.

Every woman I know in a relationship right now is feeling oppressed. Are they more aware of what’s always been there? Or are men–consciously or subconsciously–acting out a ripple of Roe v. Wade?  Is the behavior ramping up or is the intolerance?

And it’s all the same complaints. Jealousy. Control. Anger. Micromanagement. Disrespect by infidelity, invasion of boundaries, and inability to express feelings without throwing shade. Over sushi I hear stories of men refusing to do the work necessary to save the relationship. Men in the middle ground–not exactly leaving, but not totally stepping in either. These women are willing to nurture their partner’s (or anyone’s) growth–even the slightest spurt of it brings encouragement from these loyal cheerleaders. Men strike me as oriented towards ownership, locking it down. Women seem more oriented towards change: in their relationship, themselves, their children, their jobs, their government. We exercise a broader field of thought. We have more crayons in our box. Can entertain a variety of possibilities. We can hold the desire for something we want and the not knowing of how it will come does not sway us.

My one friend recently said, “I’ve checked out books about how to separate financial assets, how to advocate with a mediator for custody of my children. I’ve scoped out locations where I can live.” Another, “I’ve put my foot down and if he does it again, I’m kicking him out to live on his boat. Which is where he’s supposed to be living anyway.”

These women (past versions of myself included) started to making exit plans long before making the move that stuns a man oblivious to more nuanced gestures. We inch away in small ways every day towards the door where a shocked look will watch us leave for the last time. We get told we’re overreacting–well, we’ve been micro reacting for days. Months. Years.

An astute divorced man once told me, he thought a marriage license was license to change someone. The women I’m writing about. . . they’ve turned that license on themselves. They are outgrowing their marriages and are not going to take this shit much longer.

Tales from the Side of the Road

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

No, I’m not broken down, everything works fine, I could leave anytime. But I don’t want to—-I’m in Key West. And everyone pays a high price to be here. I pay in guts, not money. I take chances; chances most people would be uncomfortable taking. It’s sometimes uncomfortable for me too, but I’ll take it over being a slave to corporate America any day. The price of my lifestyle is risk but with that risk comes great rewards—-freedom being one of my favorites.

I have good Spidey-senses and let my intuition be my guide; most of the time. Tonight was not one of those times. I hear their walkie-talkies before I hear them knock.

“Are you alone in there?” Always the first question.

You mean besides the fool who told me to park here? Is what I think but don’t say. “Yep. Just me and my kitty.”

They answer with the looks of disbelief that I’ve come to know so well (and actually kind of get off on). That boost that comes from being what I’ve always been—unconventional—never gets old. It only encourages me; adds fuel to my fire.

They let me stay after stern warning and one even helps me lift the steps into my camper back up.

I learned my lesson: don’t let anyone have the final say on where I lay. If it feels wrong, then move. I was not surprised by my middle of the night visitors, I was surprised that I’d let myself park somewhere that I felt in my gut wasn’t right.

Do You Just Want Me to Do It?

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I’ve arrived at my new park: Fort Zach Taylor State Park in Key West. A one-minute stroll to the beach, where the Gulf of Mexico collides with the Atlantic Ocean. Navy base with an Epcot Center looking oversized golf ball to the left, stunning sunsets to the right. The station for the bike entrance used to be a tiki hut. This park is as small and cute as it is majestic and historic, boasting and preserving a Civil War-era fortress.

And the space for the four volunteer RVs is the most challenging of any I’ve had to get into. It wasn’t easy when I had a seventeen-footer and I was ready for it to be even harder with my new thirty-footer. I tried not to think about it as I drove over bridges spanning the fifty shades of aqua that is The Florida Keys. I let my excited emotions overshadow the logistical laps my mind was doing around the pool.

Once arrived, the usual introductions from the volunteer campers already thereI asked for guidance so I didn’t hit anything. Just “driver side” or “passenger side” or “straight” was all I needed. I knew which way to steer. I already knew that the camper moves the opposite way that you turn the steering and told the men as much. But the one didn’t hear me–or didn’t believe me–and it got real complicated real quick. I get underestimated a lot. Still. After almost five years of living on the road.

Do they think I can’t have boobs and brains? Do they think not having a man driving is some kind of disability? (I could argue the opposite). You don’t need a penis to pull a camper (there’s a joke that if you do, you’re doing it wrong). And testosterone has nothing to do with parking. I’m an excellent parallel parker; the instructor I took my test with to get my driver’s license told me I could “park his car anytime.”

Yet somehow, in all the fumbling and misdirections of “Okay, now turn the wheel to the right . . . I mean the left. . . nope, too close. Pull her back out and try again,” it gets said: “Do you just want me to do it?”

And I answer the same way I always have, for almost five years. “If that would be easier for you.”

Because I know what I’ve always known; the hard, cold fact that the only way to master anything is through practice. The only way to learn, is to do. And I know something else. What my father would tell me over and over again as I grew and matured:

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

He used to love to tell me that. And I loved to hear it. I wanted to believe it. Even though it went against every Cinderella storybook ending,

Officer and A Gentleman final scene,

co-dependent love song lyrics conditioning I’d been receiving since I was old enough to notice.

Maybe that’s why he repeated it so often. Maybe he knew what I was up against. Whatever the reason, it finally made it through a crack in the gender norms where it could smolder inside of me until it became a mantra of my subconscious.

I pushed it to the side when I hopped out of my truck and let this guy take over. I watched as he tried to back it in. It was a little like being outside of my body, watching this thing that had been attached to me for the past 723.5 miles move by someone else’s command. I started counting–a compulsive way to ground myself that I’d always used: two tries. . . five. . . nine. . . twelve. Twelve tries it took. Wow. Tight spot.

I’d barely gotten settled in and set up when, a week later, a storm started forming and heading our way. We wished and willed it away, but still it kept coming until we got the notice to evacuate. Getting out was easy. Even so, remnants of that past parking job lurked and lured me into the future, when I’d have to get her backed in there all over again. A storm within a storm.

This time, I’d decided as I wheeled back through the park gates the next day, I was going to do it. Even if it takes me twelve tries.

It took me one.

Where In the World is Jennifer Montero?

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

My blog is my online journal–rough and raw. It’s me throwing paint at the canvas and being more concerned about the colors I have chosen than the strokes, shape and impression. The first baby steps in an effort to express myself, the birth of creativity. My live processing of what happens in this mad world.

I use the term mad in the most endearing Alice In Wonderland kind of a way. I take the potion often, the red pill, and it takes me through the wardrobe and behind the wizard’s curtain, finding the truth rooted in love. Something pierces the illusion and sets its sites on my fear. I find that if I keep moving, don’t establish, stay in the humbled state of unknowing then those magical moments happen a lot more often and my grip on the world loosens. My mind, released, naturally rises to the only home it knows–the one of infinite possibilities.

I post about my gut reactions and often about the sucker punches to the gut that life has a way of throwing when you’re busy looking the other direction. There’s a lot of things I’m still trying to make sense of or things I thought I already understood, learned the lesson but here it is, back again for another round. I seem to have a deep instinctive need to try to figure things out, look at them another way and grow and advance on the game board of Life.

Jason Isbell talked about touring in an interview. He said he felt stagnant when he was home yet his relationships were strained by him being on the road. Can’t decide which is harder. Doesn’t really feel made for either one of them. I can relate. I don’t find the safety and security that others find there, in stability. I don’t share their ambitions. Longing to break out of the crowd of popular opinion. I’m a wanderer, a wonderer and I live on the fringe.

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” Cool thing to say as the first American to summit Everest. And I agree.

One more thing. I call it solo chick traveler because I usually am, solo. Sometimes with someone, but usually not for long. The constant and common denominator is always me and I make my moves quite independently even if it may look otherwise.

Where in the world is Jennifer Montero because it rhymes and because of the three last names I have had, Montero is my favorite. Compliments of my Colombian ex-husband.