VanLife Update and What’s Next | New Van?!

Change is the only constant in life. It's almost hard to remember life before VanLife. I started "MyBasicJourney" in 2018 as a creative project to learn how to create videos. I wanted to create videos about veganism, minimalism and travel. That all changed when I got Bubsy, my 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan. A minivan that I built into a single-person camper so I could live on the road and travel everywhere. Now, my channel became a VanLife channel and I have been living out my dream for the past two years as I snowbird around the U.S.; Chasing 70°F. This website has pretty much became a hub for my shop as I haven't written a blog in over a year. That changes today, because I am so excited that the next chapter of my amazing and ever-changing journey is about to start. I got a new van! https://www.instagram.com/p/CbzubJSODSv/ That's right, I got a Chevy Express Regent 2004. It has 124,000 miles on it and I am totally in love with…

2019: The Year of Acceptance

Chantelle
January 8, 2019
Healing / Law Of Attraction / Manifesting / Personal Development

Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to 2019, a year that I will hopefully learn to just “go with the flow” and accept what is. I have always considered myself a free spirit, but honestly, sometimes I’m such a worry wart. I catch myself in this spiral of horrid thinking about how I’m a such a failure and I’m not where I thought I would be by almost 30. 2019 will be a year of acceptance so that I won’t drown myself with these thoughts anymore. If you are someone I know personally, you know that I have recently gotten over an illness that left me unemployed. If you don’t know me, to sum it up, 2018 was one of those years that was all about setbacks and the lessons that come with them. It wasn’t my favorite year, but at the same time, I’m lucky that I have such an awesome support system to help me through these hard times. I am still unemployed and searching every day, and I…

Why I Actually Hate The Holidays..

Chantelle
December 1, 2018
Minimalism / Personal Development / Vegan / Zero Waste

The older I get, the more I hate the holidays; Especially Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a holiday that essentially celebrates genocide, and we do this by killing 300,000,000 turkeys a year. That’s right... Three hundred million! Then, before the night is over after we get done saying how grateful we are, we go and spend a shit-ton of money on gifts for the people we’re grateful for. Some of us even put ourselves into debt because of this. It’s a huge consumerism trap, and I’m finally breaking free. Some people may think I’m just crazy, but hear me out. Without giving a huge history lecture, basically, a group of white refugees came to a new country fleeing their corrupt government. The natives greeted them with a feast and blessings, welcoming them with open arms. Then the white men went on to almost wipe out their entire race, raping their women and stealing their land. Now, we celebrate these events by buying a turkey. Here’s a little history video about that. After…

At Home and Healing (Pancreatitis Series #4)

Chantelle
November 23, 2018
Healing / Healthy Living / Uncategorized / Weight Loss

Welcome to the fourth and final part of my pancreatitis series. Finally, I’m at home and healing. I know this part took quite a while to be released. It’s almost as if I didn’t know where to end it because the healing process has been anything but quick. Whenever I thought things would get better, some curveball would come at me. Some unforeseen complication would disrupt my healing process. If you’re new to my blog, welcome, but you’re going to want to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this series before continuing on with this post. (Also, note that this is not my normal blogging style. These posts are also significantly longer than my norm.) Because a lot of the days at home healing was a lot of doing nothing, nodding out of high doses of pain medication, I am going to only elaborate days of importance. October 23, 2018 (TUESDAY) I woke up this morning at 281 lbs, and the realization of a 16-pound weight loss…

Final Days In The Hospital (Pancreatitis Series #3)

This blog is the third part of my Pancreatitis Series. If you haven’t, you should read Part 1 and Part 2 first to get caught up. I have explained the start and the beginning to my time in the hospital. Now is all about the final days of my hospital stay and the confusing conclusion to my diagnosis. (Warning: This blog is a little longer than normal.) October 12, 2018 (FRIDAY cont.): Finally, Things Start Looking Up Today was full of surprises. My stay here so far has been absolutely horrible, painful and terrifying. I was lonely and scared. I moved to Oregon from Illinois with nothing but my dog and whatever would fit in my Saturn Ion at the time. When coming here, I knew that I was going to be alone, but I also have never been really sick before. I’ve never spent time in a hospital so I didn’t know the feeling of lonely you get from being there. When I found out my mom was blessed…