By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness

January is the start of a new calendar year, a new semester, and, for me, a new year of life (my birthday is January 20th). Those are a lot of rebirths packed into just 31 days. That's  probably why reflection comes naturally this month. I start with all the things I'm grateful for. The list is long. Along with the big things, I include everyday things that can easily be missed, such as seeing the sunrise when I drive my kids to school way too early in the morning.
 
Yet, even with this long list, I know more can be done to slow down and appreciate life as it comes. The need to do so is becoming more and more urgent as I get older and realize the fragility of time. Each day is a gift with no guarantee of another. A sobering thought to be sure, but also one that frees me to think more about how I want to live the days I'm lucky enough to have.
 
The answer this January was clear: less busyness, more nothing. 
 
Let me explain. I'm a bit of an efficiency hack. I manage to squeeze as much out of my work hours as humanly possible so I can spend my personal time off-the-grid with family. That means I am on when working, moving from task to task with laser focus. You can even find me responding to emails as I wait in the kids' school carpool line or on a conference call as I drive home from work (using a hands-free device, of course).
 
The drawback is I'm never off during work hours, never doing nothing, which is horrible for creativity and health. As a psychologist, I know this, but I'm also a member of a culture that prizes busyness and that cultural pull is strong. Moreover, I'm a woman of color in unjust systems which creates a complicated individual and institutional/systemic interplay around perfectionism and overwork.
 
This year, though, I'm going to try hard to swim against this cultural tide. I have to. Time won't slow down for me, so I must slow down for it. To do that, I'm choosing to create space in my day and my life where I do absolutely nothing.
 
What does this nothingness look like?

• No more working in airports or on planes
• Doing nothing on the drive home
• Doing nothing in the carpool line
• No more work (or anything else) over lunch
• Doing nothing for at least 10 minutes when transitioning between work tasks 
• When writing, stopping every hour or so for 5 to 10 minutes to do absolutely nothing

 
As I boarded my flight to Denver for a psych conference in January, I was kicking myself for starting this do-nothing journey then. I'd be in the air for almost four hours with a pile of work on a plane that actually had functioning WiFi. It took all my willpower not to take my laptop out of the bag.
 
Then I sat down...next to the most amazing person. We talked the entire flight. I provided some advice to help with a painful family issue and received thoughtful guidance about a professional problem I was tackling. I even got a follow-up email about how my suggestions had worked to initiate the very beginnings of healing for the family. This deeply memorable encounter would have been impossible had my head been buried in a laptop. Thank you universe. I receive your gift. 
 
Whatever your belief system, this is your one shot in this body on this planet in this moment. None of us will live forever. However, all of us can work in whatever ways we're able to cultivate lives of meaning. One small step toward that goal is to slow down and do a bit of nothing each day. I invite you to give it a try.

In peace and solidarity,

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​By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

I lost a colleague from this side of the heavens on December 28, 2018. I said my last goodbye in person on December 19th, nine days before her passing, and I knew then that the end was probably near though I hoped for a different result. So I knew when our mutual friend texted in the very early hours of December 28th what the sad news was before I even returned the call.

Charlease Kelly-Jackson was 42 years young. A fierce mom of two. A loving daughter. A loyal sister in a family full of brothers. And a badass scholar in the STEM world.

Before I wax nostalgic about our relationship, let me be clear that my post is not meant as a tribute piece. I could never properly capture Charlease’s impact. Furthermore, tributes are often written by those who are closest to the deceased. I do not want to exaggerate our closeness. I find it offensive after someone’s passing when folks mischaracterize relationships. We did not have a girlfriend’s type of friendship. We never took a trip, had drinks after hours, went to the nail salon, or did retail therapy together. I characterize our relationship of several years in a different way.

I call myself her older academic sister—though her footprint in the field of STEM grants outsized us all. And this is the relationship I wish to highlight in this post. I remember our first lunch; a colleague who knew us both separately thought I might be able to ease her transition to our university—this place can be culture shock for even the most seasoned academics.

I don’t know if I eased her transition with the advice I gave that day, but we became closer as a result of some mentoring through her tenure and promotion process. In the last few years, I have found that mentoring, especially as it relates to getting underrepresented faculty tenured and promoted, is one way to advance my commitment to social justice.

We developed our professional relationship through our work with a small group of public schools our college partnered with; she worked at the elementary schools and I worked at the high school. We both felt at home in these schools, working to better prepare teachers for “our” kids. I pride myself on knowing how to work respectfully and thoughtfully with teachers, families, and communities. But Charlease had me beat. Every. Single. Time. She had five schools, I only had one. We often joked that we worked with our teacher colleagues much more easily than our university colleagues.

Our closeness came through countless phone calls. I can hear her fast talking now.

Guillory, you got a minute? I have a situation and I need your advice…
 
Guillory, am I making too much out of…

Guillory, let me read this email to you so you can tell me how to respond before I go off…

Guillory, have you worked with such and such before? She’s asked me to do a grant with her…

Let me pause here to say that many women of color in the academy will be familiar with the topics of these exchanges. They come from having to navigate a higher education system where our experiences, regardless of institution, go something like this: Woman of color enters the academic space. Woman of color works and works and works some more. Woman of color is dismissed/devalued/disrespected. Rinse and repeat.

Women of color find myriad ways to survive this cycle, and one important strategy is to seek support from other women of color who have traveled our same path. We offer advice, an encouraging place to land, and knowing affirmation while we help each other make sense of our individual experiences within a system that too often diminishes our humanity.

Charlease was not always receptive to my suggestions, but she always accepted them. We had this familiar process. She called for advice. I’d give advice. She’d argue with me about the advice. I reminded her that she called me for the advice, and I’d ask her again if she really wanted it. After she was less mad, she’d tell me that her mom told her to do the same thing that I had just suggested. And I always reminded her that her academic big sister might not always be right, but her mama always was. 

And then there were the heads-up phone calls. You know how we do. We call each other to share important information which helps us to navigate an unexpected or difficult situation because there’s never a shortage of struggle for women of color in toxic, oppressive academic spaces.

And then there were the calls for the last two and a half years that were mostly about her cancer, its effect on her children, and the full-time battle she waged on top of an already over-full plate. She kept me informed—I feel privileged that she trusted me to know some of what she went through at each stage of a new treatment plan, a new clinical trial, another doctor’s opinion.

I wish for any one of those calls now. I wish she was on this side of the heavens. As is often the case in the aftermath of death, you reach clarity, which has been the case with me too. What seemed big at work before I left for the holiday break seems really small now, so inconsequential in comparison, especially when I think about Charlease’s family.

And perhaps this is why I felt compelled to write this post. To make a public promise to continue to mentor others in her name. To answer the late night call to dictate an email that settles a stressful situation before morning, to weigh options when a new work request comes through, to mirror someone’s worth back to her, to pay forward all the laughs we had together.

And to remind us—and myself especially—that mentoring relationships have a lasting impact on the mentor too. 

Author

Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

By Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings

Innately, I’m a thinker and planner. As an academic, professor, researcher, author, editor, and entrepreneur—not to mention mate and mother—I’ve designed plans for all sorts of institutions and organizations. I’m also a coach in part because I love saying, “What I/we/you need to do is….”
 
But it turns out I don’t know how to rest. Recently, I happened on Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s book Rest—OK, OK: “I admit I am powerless over lay productivity studies–that my obsession with happiness psychology and neuroscience for amateurs has become unmanageable.” Until Pang, I didn’t even know one needed to plan to rest. For all my knowledge as a teacher and scholar and as a professional coach, I have to learn how to rest if I’m going to restore my energy. Which I now admit, too, I need to do.
 
I was in the bookstore a few nights before Christmas to buy a Scrabble™ game. A friend had agreed to try out a new ziti recipe for me if I’d also let him beat me at Scrabble. I’m lousy at most board and parlor games, so I’m inured to losing. Stunningly uninspired to fight to win. The ziti was my prize, so getting whupped at Scrabble™, Shit Happens™, Spades, any game—well, yawn.
 
Once upon a time, I was competitive. I’d be like, “C’mon!” and “Bring it!” Once the poster child of high accomplishments, I am worn out. Folks, I am finally what not saying “No” often enough, what being one soldier of a tiny army raging against anti-Blackness, looks like. I couldn’t take on another task if I wanted, and in the haze of this malaise, I don’t want to. I’m shedding responsibilities like nobody’s business (that’s a pun). You couldn’t pay me to _____. If my life depended on it, I couldn’t _____. You get the idea.
 
And now I am even saddled with the work of planning deliberate rest, if I am to follow what seems the common sense—wisdom, really—of Pang’s book, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. (Note my critiques, though: Pang, who cites the restoration processes of numerous White, male creative persons, doesn’t seem to have met even one poor or Black person or working woman ever, and throughout Rest, mind-wandering is advocated more than mindfulness; notably, meditation doesn’t appear in the index.) I urgently need to return to the Elohee Center and Bald Mountain and our WellAcademic retreat in the worst way. And I’ll get back there next May.
 
Meanwhile, I am resting and wrestling with Pang’s concepts of “deliberate rest” and “deep play.” Pang defines the latter as sustained rest in scheduled creative activities involving physical movement such as sailing, skiing, landscape painting, foreign traveling, or mountain climbing. Uh-huh, my new hobbies might be more like finally creating a household budget we can stick to and dragging a Black woman friend with me to join the local group meditation center, to recover from over-exertion, to rehabilitate.
 
Deliberate rest takes the less costly form of planned, conscientious, significant time away from whatever constitutes one’s work, again rest being a conscious and active goal. Pang offers one example in Charles Darwin’s afternoon walks of several miles, around his own back yard, after his morning labors. Now that I can do.
 
And I need to, to regenerate not so much to rejoin the too-tiny righteous army but to be able to remember how awful depletion and over-commitment feel. I need deliberate rest now because I am in fact joyless. For my many self-care rituals have proved inadequate against the number of heavy stressors I’ve faced recently. My habits of daily meditation, regular massage and reflexology, acupuncture, sufficient sleep, an 80% vegetarian-Mediterranean diet, investment in hobbies such as reading for pleasure simply haven’t been enough to sustain the physical and emotional power I believe define me.
 
So, I must rest. But first, I must learn how to rest.

Until next time,

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

This past summer, I received an invitation from a leading scholar in my field to do a keynote address for a conference where other leading scholars showcase their work. He had asked before, and at that time, I said no. I said no, not because I didn’t want to do the keynote, but frankly, I didn’t even think I—or my body of work—was worthy of the ask.

Let me say that again. I did not even think I was worthy of the ask. Sad, right? Like too many other Black women in the academy subjected to consistent devaluation as scholars, I have struggled with/against Impostor Syndrome since I entered the academy as a professor more than twelve years ago.

I am the poster child for what psychologists identify as a condition of self-perceived intellectual phoniness. Doubting my accomplishments, thinking I am not deserving of my achievements, fearing exposure as an intellectual fraud—this is the internal script that has been on constant replay in my head. To this day, when people I meet for the first time ask me what I do for a living, I don’t say “professor.” I say I teach. The next question is invariably about where I teach, and when I tell them my university’s name, they tell me that I’m a professor. Did you catch that? Perfect strangers have to tell me that I’m a professor.

So when I received the invitation to do a keynote this time, my first reply was not just no, but hell no.  Doing a keynote with this group in particular, my closest colleagues in curriculum theory, engendered my worst fears about myself. I do not belong in this space. I am not a real theorist. I work in teacher education, not in a curriculum theory program. What someone else has to say is far more important than I what I have to offer.

I didn’t think that I could stand in front of large room full of scholars whose work I had read and studied. I felt like that they would see me just as I saw myself—an academic fraud, a phony, an impostor. I didn’t send the “regrets” email right away though. I told myself that I would sleep on the invitation and reply the following day.

Some of you reading this who are not Black women scholars may also feel like impostors in your workplaces too, but I just want to make clear that for marginalized groups, feeling like you are fraud and are not deserving of your achievements is often intensified by systemic racism, sexism, cis-genderism, and ableism, to name just a few. Systemic practices in the academy which value us for our service more than our scholarship, for our obedience more than our critiques, for our silence more than our voices are dehumanizing and do real damage to our productivity, not to mention our physical, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being.

So back to my decision about the keynote. I eventually said yes for one reason only. I am trying to teach my son to practice bravery when situations arise where he might be fearful. I don’t want him to allow fear to drive his decision-making like it did (does) mine for a lot of my life. I am not a perfect mother, but I am always an honest one, even when it’s hard. So I figured that I could not say no to the keynote and then turn around and tell him to say yes to doing things he fears. 

Mothering always pushes my boundaries. I’m not always grateful for the nudges, but this time proved differently.
The writing of the keynote—not delivering it in front of an audience—was the hardest part for me, mostly to calm the noisy voices of doubt and fear long enough to produce thoughtful and provocative analysis. I learned that I write best with an academic babysitter, which Roxanne reframes as writing “in community,” and without my writing partners—Roxanne and Megan—the voices would have won. The second hardest part was to quiet my comparison mind because conference organizers sandwiched my talk in between keynotes by two popular big name scholars whose work I admired from afar for all of my career. I told myself that they were the badasses, not me; that people would come to hear what they had to say, not me.

Having given the keynote last week, I now have the space to recognize that saying yes was one of the best decisions I made for myself (and ultimately for my son). Not because what I said was positively received, but because of the lessons I learned about myself and my work.

I am not an impostor after all. The academy has done its best to convince me that I’m not a scholar, but no more. It’s time we step back from the expectation of institutions that don’t value us in the first place and step up on behalf of ourselves.

My institution and all of its problems seem very small now in comparison to the work/writing I have left to do, and I realize that I must center my energy on intellectual work, which is my writing on Black mothering as a resistance practice, both as theory in my academic publications and as praxis in Mothering In Color.

People being moved by the keynote was a humbling experience that highlighted how grateful I am to all who paved a way for me to deliver the keynote in the first place. I was moved even more toward bravery by their very generous support of the work.

I invite others who are suffering through Impostor Syndrome to say yes to something you are fearful of doing. Taking that risk just might quiet those impostorism voices once and for all…or at least quiet them considerably.

Author

Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

By Joycelyn Moody, JMoody's Musings

Last Sunday I met a radiant sister Black professor who teaches at another university in town (I’ll call her “A” to protect her anonymity). A thrilling oddity in San Antonio (seventh largest US city), where the population of African Americans has remained a constant 4% since I moved here over a decade ago. Sister professor, possibly a new friend. Unlike me, though, this other professor is also an Associate Dean. That position adds a whole other level of stress.
 
Still, Dean A cast a pleasant, vibrant demeanor. When she mentioned having served her institution for over 20 years, my research background and the many, many conversations I’ve had with other women of color in the academy kicked in: she’s undoubtedly suffered from the toxicity of injustices and “interlocking systems of oppression” that relentlessly plague academic sisters. Our conversation proved me correct, unfortunately.
 
My first inclination as a way to sustain connection with Dean A., to help her cultivate a wider network of not only Black academic women’s support but also minoritized educators of all ethnicities, and to envision her having the extraordinary experience I’d had recently among WellAcademic retreat participants: I invited her to attend our 2019 retreats for women of color faculty.
 
More than anything, what Roxanne and I want for those we encounter—as WellAcademic coaching clients, as retreat participants, as newsletter subscribers, as readers of our blog posts, in on-campus workshops—is to share our unique strengths and gifts as feminist scholars of the African diaspora. As our mission statement announces, we have dedicated our own professional lives to providing others, especially academic women of color, with enriched productivity through reduced life stress.
 
Meeting Dean A last weekend, I immediately imagined her as an ideal WellAcademic retreat participant, someone who’d almost certainly experience some of what I had in early October 2018.
 
When Roxanne and I held our first retreat on Bald Mountain at Elohee, I performed two roles: (1) WellAcademic coach and (2) retreat participant. In preparation, 14 retreat participants signed up for 20 to 40 minutes of private coaching with me. At Elohee, heart after heart opened to mine in trust, humbling me. I’ve flattered myself a creative thinker, tactically intuiting when to go deep and rapid fire versus when to work more contemplatively and long-view. Moreover, I’ve savored my research into self-improvement, rereading and applying it through Black feminist theoretical lens.
 
During my WellAcademic coaching sessions, I felt rejuvenated by the individual connection with clients seeking to regain their paths. At the same time, I gained a new solemnity, a serenity, about my skills while coaching clients. With them, I was experiencing both dynamic personal growth through the incremental “Breakthrough Sessions” Roxanne had crafted for us—then gently led us through—and developing the precious intimate group bond emerging in our sister circles.
 
We’d accepted Roxanne’s call to Elohee for insight and renewal, for sisterhood and rejuvenation. Having participated in numerous workshops with my astounding business partner before, I knew the other participants and I would inevitably have an extraordinary experience. Whatever the others expected, my own expectations were truly exceeded. The difference lay in the fact of community: while Roxanne was our indisputable fulcrum, magic lay in our collectivity.
 
I doubt many of us anticipated the powerful experience we’d create together. 
 
Almost each retreat participant arrived with trepidation about WellAcademic’s deliberate timing at institutional midterms. Most divulged the challenge of permitting herself to break away for her own revitalization just when others feel free to demand more from us—make-up midterms at students’ convenience, belated committee meetings on chairs’ timetables, and so on. Even retreat participants “on leave” arrived almost panting, as if we’d run the distances from Cincinnati, Madison, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Miami, doubled over by the demands we make on ourselves and we face (or face down) from others who claim power over us.
 
I’ll close with two short lists.
 
What I expected:

• Loving reunion with Roxanne Donovan, one of my closest friends and also my business partner
• Committed service to the 14 women I’d pledged to coach
• Natural beauty transitioning from summer into fall
• Nutritious, delicious food
• Solitude: no WiFi, a break from school work, a break from infuriating global news
• Reunion with Kennesaw State sisters
• A chance to meet Roxanne’s only biological sister
• More than this list permits.

 
What I gained/Hadn’t imagined receiving:

• A community of minoritized sisters in the academy expressing a similar blend of success, insight, stimulation, curiosity, seclusion, need, grief, fatigue, and hope I feel from day to day
• Deep fortification— cellular memories, science-based exercises, journal and diary entries, workbook sheets, photographs, clean mountain water and air
• A bed I first mistook for clouds
• In-person meeting with the retreat participant with whom I shared the same coach when I was first a client
• One sister, aged 50, lifting her arms over her head to illustrate reclaiming victory over her physical body after setting her own terms as a Black feminist professor and administrator
• Two shooting stars with Roxanne, five minutes apart after the “Firelight Sister Circle,” on a two-person swing uphill of Eucalyptus cabin
• More than this list permits.

​Until next time,

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

My partner Jerome—a Black man—went for a bike ride that was cut short because of leg cramps. He visited a nearby grocery store, one we frequent a lot, and purchased a banana for 23 cents. He then proceeded to eat the banana in the store to stop his leg cramps as he shopped for our weekly groceries.

Not long after, a store clerk walked by—without stopping—and told him, “Be sure to pay for that banana before you leave.” 

He never stopped to ask if Jerome had already paid or to ask if everything was okay—eating a banana in a grocery store is not a usual occurrence, after all. He just assumed Jerome had already “taken” merchandise he hadn’t paid for and was going to leave the store. He wanted Jerome to know he had been “caught.”

It took a few seconds for Jerome to realize what had happened. Once he did, he went looking for the clerk who had disappeared in the back of the store. He found the manager instead. He explained what happened and asked to see the store clerk. Assuming Jerome couldn’t hear the two of them in the back of the store, the manager told the clerk, “Just apologize. It doesn’t matter.”

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

Jerome is a Black man who has lived in the Deep South all of his life. So the store clerk’s accusation is not new. Two years ago in Louisiana, Jerome brought my mother’s very old faucet into a home improvement store to buy a replacement part, which he did not find. On his way out of the store with the visibly used faucet, a store clerk accused him of shoplifting.

And that’s just one example among many.

These kinds of accusations are exactly why Jerome knew to pay for the 23 cent banana before checking out with all of his other groceries. So when this clerk assumed that he had not paid for something, he was not surprised.

What bothered Jerome the most about the incident, however, was what the manager said about the situation—it doesn’t matter (and hence Jerome didn’t matter).  The manager was more concerned with making Jerome go away than he was with challenging and changing how his employee viewed and treated certain customers. 

Let me pause this story for a moment to say how very fortunate Jerome and I feel—which is also quite sad—that the police were not called.  We are all well aware of the recent calls to the police for our alleged crime of “Breathing While Black,” for going about our daily lives—for eating in a Waffle House, barbecue-ing in a park, moving out of an apartment, checking out of an Airbnb, sleeping in a common study area of an Ivy League university dorm, playing golf at a country club, playing a pick-up game of basketball at a recreation center, buying prom clothes in a department store, selling water on the sidewalk in front of our home, sitting at a Starbuck’s waiting on a friend, using a coupon at a CVS, talking in a Chili’s parking lot after dining there, mowing a neighbor’s lawn, swimming in a neighborhood pool, attending a funeral for a family friend. And it is important to note that this long list is not exhaustive. 

Later in the evening, Jerome and I talked about this situation at the dinner table with our ten-year-old son Nicholas, because he could tell that something was bothering his dad. After Jerome told the basics of the story, we asked Nicholas for his thoughts and feelings. He said the store clerk should have just asked Jerome if he had paid for the banana.

He also wanted to know the race of the store clerk.

Nicholas has been asking this question a lot lately in response to news stories he hears on NPR or in response to conversations we are having about the latest incident of “Breathing While Black.” Nicholas has always been fascinated with finding patterns. So I think he’s recording instances and trying to find a pattern between racist acts and the people who commit them. In the case of the grocery store incident, Jerome chose not to tell him the race of the clerk. Instead, he used Nicholas’s question as an opportunity to explain the systemic nature of racism, that racist structures rather than individuals are the real problem.

I realize now how difficult it must have been for Jerome to stay calm while telling this story to our son, how difficult it must have been not to reveal the race of the store clerk. When I asked Jerome later why he chose to withhold that part of the story, he said that we were not raising Nicholas to hate and to fear and that he wanted him to form his own beliefs, not copy ours. 

This from a Black man who has to struggle against the effects of racism Every. Single. Day. And who does so without the benefit of having a group of supportive friends where we live, like I have, friends with whom he can process and repair racist micro and macro aggressions.

I’m writing this post to publicly acknowledge this brilliant moment of fathering. And not just for our son, but for us, the two adults raising him who grew up without biological fathers, who experience racial traumas of our own within a national context of hate. I live in a constant state of worry about sending both of “my boys”—Nicholas and Jerome—into a very dangerous world unsure whether they’ll always come back safely or undamaged. The grocery store incident reminds me of the difficulties of raising Nicholas so that he does not live in fear but also so that he does not blindly assume that all people in the world will protect him or regard him as we do. 

It’s an amazing gift to watch Jerome’s thoughtfulness as a father, as he shows Nicholas that vulnerability is also a marker for strength, how not to hate so that he can show him how to love, and how to be proud and confident in a world that does not always welcome a proud and confident Black man.

I am thankful to be on this sometimes frightening, always beautiful parenting journey with him.                     

Author

Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen a the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

By Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings

It’s actually still midsummer, but for those of us on the academic clock, time to break away is nigh. A change of scenery, however you can seize it, can bring a vital breath of fresh air. So before your semester starts or kicks into full gear, I’m thinking new inspiring, invigorating scenery is in order.
 
What do you need?
For starters, a public library card. I live in San Antonio—a vast metropolis with a wide network of public library branches, but maybe it’s not exceptional in its offer of digital and virtual as well as print texts including pulp fictions. Check ’em out. Next up to get a new view: a fit-enough body. (More on physical needs below.) Disposable income doesn't hurt, but you probably need less than you think. Essential requirements: self-trust, curiosity, an open heart, appetite and wanderlust, more humility than judgment, a supple—not obstinate—attitude. Just generating that list starts a tug in me.
 
When to go?
As far as I’m concerned, we're already running late. Anyway, it’s always time to go. This disposition is insane for a number of reasons, starting with I have the worst sense of direction of anyone you know. Like really, stepping off an elevator, for example, you know how one direction leads into the hotel lobby and the other to a dead-end mirrored wall? I invariably walk into the mirror. You can bet on it 99 percent of the time. It’s sad, really.
 
So, you would think my wanderlust would be like lukewarm. No. In fact, I’ve recently returned from two states in Brazil—Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. It was my first trip to Latin America—which is saying something given that I currently live three hours from the Mexican border and I grew up on the Gulf of Mexico. It was an extraordinary experience, to say the least, one that’ll take a long time to process what I learned in both formal and informal professional settings. Expect to hear more about it here, from time to time.
 
I went to Brazil to participate in the annual symposium of the International Auto/Biography Association of the Americas. A small conference: about 70 artists, educators, and other intellectuals gathered to speak the same language; in our case, not Portuguese but life writing. A thrill to catch up with long-time colleagues and to meet newbies to our circle. Abstracts shared loud, expanded from the print iteration.
 
Back to the body. Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais reminded me vividly of accessibility limits in New York City my vertigo and I negotiated there last June. So, whatever your ability level, I advise calling ahead to make sure your needs are accommodated at each planned site; scope out transportation options beforehand; don’t be afraid to ask for what you need to make your visit stress free; and scour the web for relevant reviews.
 
Can’t get to Brazil or out of town at all? Here are five budget-friendly scenery-changing possibilities.
 
1. Public library card: books on travel, travel writing, transnational and decolonial literature. 

2. Outdoor FaceTime. Call a friend who lives in a different climate or region. Check out the  interior of a friend’s new home in a distant city. 

3. Evening and/or Sunday drives: Sweet Lorraine (my newly irrevocable spouse—gulp) and I drive the 45 minutes to Canyon Lake and eat bad fried food at a seaside café. Sometimes we silently—intuitively—make a pact not to talk much the whole way there and maybe back, too. Glorious time and space to daydream, follow one thought to another. Sure-bet return: harmony and equilibrium restored. 

3. Ditto for a short drive into Texas Hill Country vineyards. Boo and I both sample just enough wines to be able to drive home unless the mood strikes for an impromptu overnight. 

4. Like your library card, most cities and towns offer public transportation to local museums. 

5. Some public transportation routes will also take you to a nearby nature preserve, a city park, or a tourist attraction (think roller coaster or Ferris wheel if a carousel doesn’t shift your gears fast enough). 

Looking ahead to fall travel, I’m crazy-excited about our upcoming WellAcademic Fall Retreat. I know firsthand the rejuvenation that comes from breaking away with other writers and thinkers. Good talk, good food, peace for reflection, stunning scenery all await. Come join us!
 
I’d love to hear about any of your happy travels. Please share in the comments below.
 
Until next time,