If you answered 'yes' to any of the questions above, chances are you would like Kristin Newman's What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding. While the title is a bit of mouthful (WIWDWYWD?) it doesn't even fully encapsulate the tales told and journeys taken inside it's 300-some pages.
As it turns out, Chuck and How I Met Your Mother are two of my favorite shows of all time. So when HIMYM producer, Kourtney Kang, tweeted her praise for the book a day before it's release, I rushed to check it out. Then I rushed to buy it. And I rushed to read it (I happened to be heading to the beach that week so that was easy.)
As a young woman who knows she wants to write for (or about) television and eventually travel around the world, this book affected me probably more than it would say, my father or my friends who have a more definitive life plan. Kristin's stories, particularly the one about about Israel, reignited the passion about travel in me that has been waning since life got in the way.
My dreams about taking a summer or semester to travel Europe got side-lined by the realities of working hard in classes and internships to ensure I landed a job straight out of college this January (ho-lyy shit).
The title of the book comes from the fact that she was doing all of this traveling in her 20's and 30's, when her friends were suddenly getting married and having children. Anyone who knows me know that that is just not how I see my life playing out. I'm in no particular rush to settle down. I want to establish a career for myself first, spend time alone in New York City and/or Los Angeles, and then worry about find a partner and all that jazz.
I love the way Kristin traveled. She didn't do the touristy resorts or five-star hotels, but she never struggled to find a place to stay, food to eat or to meet new friends. While there was an emergency booking at the aforementioned fancy hotel on one trip, she spends her vacations renting apartments or hopping around the couches of the fine kiwis who took her in.
I've grown up in the world of Dateline, 20/20 and various missing persons reports on the news, so I have to admit that I'm not brave enough to venture to a country where I didn't know the language at all - like Kristin is more apt to do.
Alas, I do know conversational spanish, and have been teaching myself French and Czech. Hopefully by the 2016 Euro Cup in France I'll be fluent enough that I can travel alone to Paris. I've got it all figured out: one of the semi-final games is on July 4 weekend, so I'll take the day before the break and day after off work (granted I have the ability to, thankfully I don't get sick often) giving me a nice 5-day window to travel to Paris alone - finally.
