When I was 24, I was living in Davenport, Iowa with my ex-boyfriend. We had a really cute apartment with instruments and my paintings hung on the walls. He brought home a cello one day from his job with 1-800 got junk and I started learning it.

It was great fun and it’s on my list to pick it back up again one day! We were musicians who would sometimes busk on Sundays (him on mandolin and me on guitar). We definitely drank too much beer, especially me, and saw a lot of live music.

Davenport was a super cool city, to me, because of the music scene. There were many talented musicians who lived there and they liked to get together to play music. I ended up joining in a few times and found out how fun it is to “jam.”

These hippies also influenced me to go to some phish shows. In fact, there’s still an article on the Internet about my most notable Phish experience. I did not come up with the name of the article (This One Time I Took Acid at a Festival).

I would have named it Revelations from a Puddle since taking way too much liquid LSD at once is nicknamed getting “puddled.” I don’t call LSD “acid” because it’s expansive, and acid is corrosive.

Excerpt from my article:

“If only this were different, I’d be okay” is something we all tell ourselves all the time. I had done it the whole day and night at this insane concert, and realized intensely and vividly that if I could not be okay right then, I wouldn’t be any other time! I saw people craving cigarettes and wanting drugs and saw this as only the appearance of wanting those surface desires and realized it was the longing for something deeper, something wordless, something that I had touched a few times during this night. It was something that no external chemicals were necessary to attain, though they could sometimes act as catalysts.“

I was pretty depressed back when I was 24 (2014), but it was one of my most productive creative periods ever. I was painting and reading a lot of books at the time because we had no Internet at home. My book shelves from the past included Stephen King, Huxley, Tolle, Watts, etc. Along with reading, I was also writing a lot of songs and singing.

We had a little three-piece band and even played a paid gig! My ex and I would ride our bikes to the library to rent movies and I ended up renting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a French film.

The France Trip

I ended up enjoying the sound of the French language and wanted to learn some, so I picked up audio lessons from the library. As I listened to the audio lessons, I began dreaming of visiting France. I decided that was the first foreign country I wanted to visit (having already been to Mexico).

Within 6 months, an Internet friend (an old woman named Nada) invited me to her place in France. It was a super old and beautiful house in Dordogne, the South of the country. She said she had work to be done on her house and needed some help but that I could stay for free.

When I had set the intention for France being the first country I visited during my travels, I didn’t even know Nada lived in France. We hardly talked back then. It had felt like a distant dream to me when I set the intention to visit. Her invitation came out of the blue, to my great surprise!

I saved up money by working overtime at two sketchy hotels in Phoenix, for 6 months, staying with family, and made a trip to France happen. That adventure began my eventual digital nomad adventure. I traveled for 2.5 years.

Once i visited France, I knew I was going find a way to stay in Europe for a while, and that’s exactly what I did! I did not take my flight back home, and didn’t visit America again until the following year. I showed up in Omaha in April of 2016, having flown in from Albania, super skinny because I caught a stomach virus that made it impossible to eat.

Writing Dreams

I also manifested becoming a writer, without a college education or connections. I basically put myself into a desperate situation that I would have to solve and I solved it with getting paid to write. When I was in high school English class, our teacher handed us each a sheet of paper that said, “What I want to be when I grow up” with three lines beneath. I just wrote one thing:

Writer.

My English teacher did not hide the fact that he didn’t like me. My first memory of this guy is him, sitting in the corner and glaring openly at me. He didn’t even break eye contact as I nervously looked away and back, repeatedly. Once, he wrote “A mouse named Gerald” in one of his writing prompts and I went up after class and said, “Pink Floyd?” and he just kind of nodded and gave me a mean look.

But even this grumpy bugger had to give me As on my essays, which I usually wrote real quick right before class. Writing is my gift, and I’m so grateful I’m back at it! I realized recently that I was stuck in a defeatist loop about how writing can never be worthwhile or profitable again because AI exists now. But I actually checked out some AI fiction, and I’m not impressed!

My very first emails to people when I was trying to make it as a writer said,
“I’ve never written professionally, but I’ve always enjoyed it and I keep a journal. I’d be happy to illustrate my writing ability upon request,” or something similar. I sent enough of these emails out to actually begin receiving responses.

My very first article was a blender description that paid half a cent per word (slave wages in the writing world). I worked my way up from there, eventually earning a fantastic rate and learned so much about many different topics. I did the math, and I was making about $60-70 per hour during my best period.

I did not have to work much at all to fund my life. I had two investment accounts, a savings account, a balance of about $2k that remained close to that even though I had an Amazon shopping habit and I was ordering door dash frequently. When I moved back to America after living in Prague for eight months, I made trips to Europe.

I have experienced financial abundance. It’s great. But it’s NOT the key to happiness, because I noticed that I felt happier at Taco Bell (not with my work, just in general) than I felt back when I wrote mattress articles with a glitchy keyboard. Yes, I ended up stuck working at Taco Bell as recently as earlier this year!

Back when I worked there, starting in early 2025, I made a podcast about the past several years. I ended up deleting it later because I wasn’t ready to talk about my experiences yet. I didn’t have enough distance from them to know what to say beyond a few episodes. I labeled my podcast The Fast Food Mystic, which I still like as a name and might use as a song title or something. Maybe that will be my new book.

I decided recently to try my hand at writing fiction more. I always remembered this short story I wrote when I was about 30. It ended up being a supernatural horror story, and I really liked it. I also enjoy writing erotica, but I will be using a secret pen name for that!

Right now I am writing a story about a man who is desperate to turn his life around and decides to try ayahuasca. During his aya experience, he senses a female presence. He does four ceremonies and sees her all but one time, and starts to suspect she’s a real person. It will be a supernatural story.

The Plattsmouth Apartment

Another time, I manifested an apartment on the second floor with big windows and greenery outside, near a green area and walking distance from a nice park. I also wanted a bathtub. I specified all of that and ended up finding the apartment online shortly after, as though I conjured it.

It was during COVID, so I just took the virtual tour. The day I was moving into the place with my ex, we heard our neighbors fighting through the wall. This became an unfortunately familiar sound to me. People talk a lot of trash on Nebraska, and I don’t get why.

People complain about high costs, pollution, traffic, drugs in their community, homeless people everywhere… Yet flock to states like California where all of that is rampant, and judge states like Nebraska where all of those issues are better. I love Nebraska and my heart still lives there.

I plan to live there again one day, at least part time. And also Europe some of the time. I dare to dream big, and after reading this, maybe you’ll understand why. I won’t mention one of my most impressive manifestations because people who know me already know about it and they’re sick of hearing about it. But it involved setting an intention to meet someone famous and it came true!

I say dare to dream big. I am, for sure.