Two Thousand Five Hundred.

Today my blog views are exactly 2,500. I certainly don't check my blog daily, maybe once or twice a week, so it seems kinda extraordinary that I happened to check it on the dot of 2,500. Kinda like when you glance down at your odometer while driving and see that you just landed on some creepy or significant number, like 77777, or you're about to roll over to an exact 100,000 miles driven.

2,500 is a pretty good sized number for my little online journal. At least it is to me, seeing as how I started it as just a way to share my experiences with friends and family. I have been happy to share them with you all.

Today happens to also be exactly three months since my return to the states. I have almost been back as long as I was gone, and I still don't feel like I know what that experience did for me. Good things, I know, but it's hard to articulate when someone asks what exactly happened to me during my time there. More time is needed, I think.

I have about five more weeks here in Idaho with my family. In a typical HaLee fashion, my feelings are split about returning to Portland. Part of me knows I couldn't last much longer than another five weeks in my parent's little house, and I am excited to have a shared space with Dave again. But the other half has grown to enjoy the closeness and the friendship that my parent's and I have. Although I know that I don't want to ever be a permanent resident of Idaho Falls again, I can understand why people stay close to home when they grow up. Family is like a group of friends that you always have access to. It's so much effortless than many of the friendships that I tried to cultivate over the years in Portland. But everything has a flip side, and family can be wearing at times too.

I have been a little sad at my return home in some ways. The biggest thing that I feel I have lost touch with since my travels is my connection with my spirituality and the feeling of closeness to the universe. That connection is such a beautiful thing. When I found it over there, I wanted to take it back with me here. But it's hard, just as I knew it would be, to be connected to a job, your family, your relationships, all the wants and needs of others, as well as your spirit and the universe. It all comes down to priorities, and I have struggled with mine, just like I always have. It's just part of who I am and it's got it's own beauty to it I suppose. I am once again reminded of being a strong Libra at heart, always needing to find balance, but often swaying from one extreme to the other in an effort to try and imitate balance. I would prefer that balance that just stays in the middle, rather than all over the place. I believe that comes with time, though.

Damn, I can't wait until my 30's.

I recently discovered Montana.

And I realized something about myself.

I am a mountain girl at heart.

When I fell in love with Oregon the first time (out of many times), it was on a mountain. A wedding on a mountain near Medford to be exact. I never realized that. It wasn't the beachy, hippy, city-scene that first gave me that feeling. It was a mountain. Growing up in the Rocky Mountains, I always ignored my love for high altitude, because I figured it was all I knew and I probably didn't know anything at all about what I really loved yet. We took a long, overnight scenic route back from our family reunion in Wyoming last week, and stayed the night in a rich little mountain town called Red Lodge. We had a great time and the town was beautiful, but I really lost my words when we took the Beartooth Pass home. We stopped lots of times along the way to get out and walk around. The top of the windy highway is above the treeline, so all you can see are high rolling hills covered in nothing but grass and wildflowers. Sigh. It was amazing. High mountain lakes and a family of white furry goats were some of the things we stopped to see.

It's been a beautiful summer. Thanks universe.

Challenge

I am considering a self experiment in an effort to live my life a little more genuinely and fully.

What if I cut out social media for a month? What would that do for me? How would I feel?

Thinking back to what I learned about myself when I was in Thailand, one of those things is my remarkable ability to hold other people's emotions for them. I learned that if I am feeling something uncomfortable, it's best if I take a second to think about who's emotions they are. Are they the person sitting across from me, talking about stresses in their own life? Am I taking on energy from people that I don't even know who are standing next to me? Is this feeling really my own? I found that when I brought the emotion to a halt and examined it, I was really able to get more clarity to what it was and if it was even necessary for me to be feeling it.

Social media is sort of like having loads of one-sided conversations, all at the same time. You are on the receiving end of whatever people what to put out there. Someone is having a bad day? You are essentially holding a little space in yourself to read and feel that for them, whether you know it or not. I think it's easy to get into a mode of comparing and contrasting yourself to what other people have going on their own lives. That in itself can be distressing, and for me personally, it adds another obstacle to living fully in the present moment and being content with how full and beautiful my life really is.

I learned that I need to form a little bubble of emotional protection from this by being selective to who and what I am exposing myself to day-to-day. Is that convenient? No. But does it help me keep my shit together and be a happier person? Yeah, I really think it does.

So I'm thinking about it.