Hello, Old Friend.

There are times when I cannot fall asleep. I lay in bed and think about how am I ever going to fall asleep when I have to be up in only X amount of hours. And then a bunch of other anxieties come up, too, and all the day’s prior meditations and mind-tiring tricks (counting sheep!) won’t help.

So where did I turn back to? Nope, not Xanax. I turned back to relaxation MP3s. They worked once long ago when I had a similar problem and they worked again. They were a life saver.

This time I turned to the Gaiam Meditation Studio app, which I’d gotten for free from a Starbucks download last year. I’d highly recommend downloading it because it’s cheap – like $3.99 – and it has TONS of meditations (including a bunch with my yoga teacher, Chrissy!). 

Take that, sleepless nights. Let’s hope the insomnia stays at bay this time. 

HAHA. Right. 

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A Break (Sort Of)

A few weeks ago some of my family members were basically having a discussion in the comments section of one of my posts on Facebook. They were both in the same place at that time so between twenty to fifty feet away from each other. They were home and choosing to debate something on my Wall. instead of in person. Back and forth, back and forth. 

That’s it. I need to disconnect, I thought. Even if it was just in the tiniest way possible.

Live and let live, I suppose, just not on my wall, please. I decided that night that I did not want to do this. My dude is, luckily, not on Facebook, or any social media. He loves not knowing what people are up to unless he actually talks to them. i think that idea sounds astonishingly neat. And such a simple thing to obtain! I have this blog, and an Instagram account (and Twitter, which I really never use anymore), so it’s not as though I wouldn’t have an outlet at all. For the most part I simply wouldn’t be giving people an outlet to speak their minds under my name (on my Wall).

I was also, in part, impressed by that chick Essena O’Neil, who said she was breaking her addiction to social media after earning quite a good living while modeling from it. I’m a tad bit confused about how she’s going about quitting social media because isn’t a blog sort-of social media? But that’s another conversation.

I realized I was getting a little too into how many likes my link posts and political ramblings were getting. They were often critical, and even more often knee-jerk reactions. I think that passion would be better redirected to this spot. At the very least it would at least have to be more thorough and thought out. 

So, on my train back to the city, I finally took one little step towards disconnecting and I deleted the Facebook app off my iPhone. For the rest of the train ride, I couldn’t mindlessly scroll through my feed and I read my book (The Knockoff, loving it!). 

I just want to experience that thrill of sitting down with a friend and having them tell me what’s going on in their life and not already knowing all of it because we’re Facebook friends and I checked their feed on the way to brunch. And it’s also a major time suck. 

My “Wall” will never, ever be a primary form of communication with family, or friends, or anyone. It’s not as though I deactivated my Facebook, but this was one little tiny step towards disconnecting and it felt good. 

Apps You Must Download If You’re Traveling

Without a few apps on my iPhone, the trip definitely would’ve been a lot harder. (Thanks, Kristen, for telling me to download two of these, btw.)

Triposo: This app was awesome because it let you pick your destinations and suggested popular things to see and tours and places to stay and basically everything you could ever need to know. The maps also work offline.

Tripomatic: This did basically the same thing as Triposo except it looked a little cleaner. The reason for downloading Triposo was for the purposes of using the offline maps. It helped me plan out my journey day by day.

Currency Exchange: Any old currency exchange app will do. This helped me not freak out when something in Stockholm cost, say, 650 kroner. I would’ve died without this. 

Yelp: Duh. You know this is the best for finding all of the best places to eating and other random things too. This helped me find places to eat often.

With these four apps, you should be good to travel solo in a country where the language looks like a Scrabble board threw up and your breakfast costs 300 krone.