Tag: europe

Hi Honey

I’m home.

I left SF at 11am, and arrived home in New York at 1am. You’re correct in thinking that math doesn’t add up. Blame it on the summer storms I saw from the sky, both terrifying and super dope.

I haven’t had time to be excited that I’m home yet, but I can say I have massive stress relief knowing the event is over.

I will, of course, regret saying this in a week when I’m unemployed again, but at the moment, it feels good knowing nothing really intense and all consuming is in my immediate future (jk hi Europe).

I enjoyed AIDS Walk San Francisco much, much more than New York. Mostly because I had the actual opportunity to enjoy it. Way less people, the set up is all in one area, and I got to see the legendary Thelma Houston perform It’s Raining Men. Yeah.

This isn’t to say it didn’t almost break me. It wasn’t many years ago that I could work on film sets for hours upon hours and recover just fine. Now, it’s impossible. I haven’t even begun the recovery process. The event was five days ago and last night I slept 12 hours.

I wish I could say I spent this week really working on holding back any complaints. But I can’t even pin point a moment where I stopped myself, or even thought about stopping myself from complaining.

So let’s just start over and pretend I never previously attempted to quit complaining okay?

This week I’m going to work on watching my mouth. That’s right you lucky suckers, I’m going to go a whole week without complaining and see if it clears up my complexion.

Ugh.

I’m in New York until Sept. 10th and then I fly home to Oregon for two weeks. My first NY roommate and lifemate Cam Jordan is about to become Cam MacDonald (cause for some reason I put her fiance’s name is my phone as Matt MacDonald. That’s not his last name). Also my best friend Katy is getting married to everyone’s favorite dreamboat Steve. I’m very excited, and also sad. It’ll be the last time I see my friends and family until I come home from Europe.

Sidebar on Europe for a second (this could get ugly):

Most of the people who read this blog know me personally. So I get why people have lashed out at me for being irresponsible for going to Europe in this capacity. Yes, it’s very me to uproot my whole entire life and future to frivolously wander an unknown land for a year based off of an initially bad acid trip…

Yes I make impulse decisions and often times without any thought process whatsoever.

Here’s some perspective: I decided to do this trip in December of last year. As of this post, that’s over seven months ago. I have to ask; do you really think I just decided to go to Europe for a year seven months ago and haven’t done any research?

I regret that I’ve made a name for myself by making whimsical decisions, but please, don’t take my ability to try new things with or without fear as stupidity. Besides, seven months is a long time to have this massive trip coming up and not research the cute shit I’m going to do while I’m away.

So yes, I have looked into visas (or lack there of in my case), I’ve looked into travel insurance, banking, taxes, immunizations, I have a plan for when I get back to the U.S…. I’ve done my homework, I’m not a twat, mind your own business.

If you’ve traveled for a year in Europe specifically, I would LOVE to sit down and chat. If you’ve traveled for a year around the world, three months in Europe, a few weeks or on a fam vacay, please please tell me your favorite places, any etiquette advice I can get, and trips and tricks with currency. If you had a student visa, a working visa or a spouse/family tie please tell me everything you know about relevant regions and the people, food and culture. If none of this is you, don’t tell me how to travel Europe for a year. It’s different.

Also, I’m not afraid. If it doesn’t work out, if I didn’t do enough research about something that wound up being way more important than I thought, if I don’t like it, I’ll come back to America. Or I’ll get fined. Or I’ll be put in a foreign jail. That’s life, and it’s my life. I’m not afraid of that shit. I’m afraid of not doing things I want to do because other people tell me I can’t. I’m afraid of living my life to fuel other people’s dreams, I’m afraid of dying and thinking I was the reason I didn’t follow my heart.

I will not be the first person to pull this off. Not even close. I’m going to be fine, and yes, a lot of this will be figuring it out on the fly, but I was a waitress for eight years, moved myself to New York on a whim, changed my college major three times and I’m taking French lessons. I’ll be fine. I’m Jaclyn On-The-Fly MacDonald. No thanks for your concern.

I am always looking for info. Always happy to learn. If your intention is to tell me how much you know and that what I’m doing isn’t going to work, that’s actually not info. Keep your fears to yourself, they make me uncomfortable.

Now that this tangent is (far from) over, I’m just going to listen to another album this week, lol.

If you missed it, I was a Revolve Girl. I had a magazine for young Christian girls that had lists of books to read and music to listen to in order to keep us wholesome or some shit.

For now I’m skipping over Top 10 Way to Have Fun with Friends, Top 10 Ways to Show Your Mom You Love Her, Ways to Have Fun on a Date, Top 10 Ways to Have Fun With Your Dad, Make a Difference, and the completely scratched out 10 Things to Pray For.

This week, from 10 Christian CDs, I’ll be listening to Lift by Audio Adrenaline. UGHHHHHHH. I didn’t think this journal/blog project would be easy, but I didn’t think it would be Christian music that threatened to burn it all down.

Audio Adrenaline was what the cool guys and even some pastors listened to at church. It wasn’t my style then, it’s not my style now. This album is from 2001 and the lead singer’s vocals trigger a gag reflex. It’s the gravel in his voice. It scratches me the wrong way.

Anyway, there’s that. And I really really will stop complaining. Starting….

Now.

Wish me luck and give me some constructive advice for my trip.

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The One Where Jac Takes On Too Much

Nashville. What can I say? It was hot. Really hot.

But I enjoyed seeing the Nashville Renaissance Faire. It was so much like the Oregon Country Fair and FaerieWorlds that I wasn’t shocked but I did get to see a dude launched off his horse in a jousting match. So that’s cool.

Downtown was like Times Square for Bachelorette parties. Kid Rock-style. Naturally, I was in and out in under 20 minutes. Seen it, got it, check, bye.

The magic of the Opryland Hotel

Cousin Elias took me to Opryland Hotel which was probably my favorite part of it all. It was the Wonka Factory and Jurassic Park mixed together. Beautiful plants and a stream with a boat you can ride. It was beautiful. You’ll get more when I eventually go back and stay there.

Back in New York now and I went and saw Gary on Broadway. Which is HUGE considering our Lord and Savior Nathan Lane plays the title role. He was amazing, the cast was amazing, the show was wild. 3 people, no set changes and a hysterical hour and half. Lots of dicks. Like, a lot. Maybe 30 dicks with an equal amount of dick jokes. Maybe don’t bring the kids. The set is literally just a pile of corpses. One of them pees in Nathan Lane’s mouth. So.

Follow me on JACLAND to see more of my daily adventures. I’ll be posting things like the shows and my explorations there from now on unless a juicy story is involved.

Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes

The more I get into my past desires, the more they pile up in the Now. As mentioned before I’ll be moving to SF for a month come mid-June to go hard on AIDS Walk San Francisco. So, in an effort to actually honor Lil Jaci’s cast-aside interests I’m going to slow down to make sure I’m not skimming over projects I’ve been skimming over my whole life.

For now that doesn’t mean anything other than I’ll focus on the projects I’m working on before I take any new ones on. If you have a problem with that take it up with management.

I’ll also be posting more to the Insta account, so be sure to follow me there. This is all really to alleviate these long-ass blogs posts.

Slowing down also allows me to explore the things I’m already doing. For example, I’m in the early-earlys of throwing my bad cooking into Insta video content. I’ll be doing short videos for Instagram to catalogue just how bad it gets when I cook. I’ll need victims, ahem, I mean friends to come test my cooking for each video so if you want to come to my crypt I’ll 50/50 feed or poison you for free.

Party.

So another big… BIG project mostly unrelated to JACLAND but also will come up is my trip to Europe.

The details are that I have a one way ticket to Barcelona on November 24th and have planned to be at it for a year. I should said “planned” for a year. Cause coming up with different identities I want to assume for each country isn’t substantial planning. But it’s important.

Imagine me next to each little blue dot. Hi.

I did acid, as one does, and had an epiphany that I HAD to go to Europe for a year. What’s more ridiculous, is that I’ve been planning it, saving and researching for six months and will 100% be following through on a drug trip vision.

I know. Classic me. It’s actually alarming how incapable of not being me I am.

I have over 30 locations written on a list called “Go to Europe.” Some of them I can’t really remember why they’re on the list, and they’re kind of weird places (looking at you Gelterkinden). But I love being surprised (to anyone listening and wondering what to do for my birthday). Maybe I’ll fall in love with Gelterkinden.

How am I going to pull it off, you ask? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you have past itineraries, tips or friends that I could crash with/work for please help a psycho out. Also hey I’m a professional at asking for money now so what’s up, Europe for a year has gotta be expensive (Venmo @Jaclyn-MacDonald).

Moving along. I’ve got a lot to cover here.

Health. Woof. Not only did I not even attempt to start eating healthy last week, I went hard on Auntie Maryanne’s homemade mac and cheese, with the added cream cheese factor (omg my mouth started watering when I wrote that).

With my Uncle’s tragedy barely out of my center of focus, it’s time to face facts: MacDonald’s are fighting an uphill health battle. We’re all unhealthy as a foundation from which we build. And I’ve used abuse as the bricks. I drink too much, I eat too much, I rarely exercise and I feel it more now than ever the seriousness of taking care of one’s own health.

Dear Reader, that’s where you come in. I don’t know that I’d take myself seriously if I didn’t hold myself accountable publicly. I need your help. How does one take care of oneself? Where do I start?? Help me out, do it with me. Let’s start a health club where everyone’s just generally gloomy. Health doesn’t have to mean you turn into a protein powder meat head. You can still be a little black raincloud. I mean, if not, I’ll never get healthy. I don’t do anything high-key.

Ok. Talk to me this week. Health, Europe, Venmo. Follow JACLAND for all the doing and having fun which is bound to happen. I live in New York! It’s everywhere!

Wish me luck and don’t forget that being moody is cool.

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