spontaneity is key

Happy Tuesday! How are you doing? Are you taking time to check-in with yourself and give yourself the care, love, and attention you need? If not, it’s perfectly okay to set aside time for yourself to do whatever you want/need to do during ‘me time.’ Maybe it’s yoga, meditation, running, reading, tending to a pallet garden you built, sewing some pillowcases for your home decor, making a dress to match your homemade mask, or even playing animal crossing with family and friends. Whatever you want to do during your assigned ‘me time,’ make sure you’re doing it and giving yourself a break.

If you didn’t get a chance to read yesterday’s post - “Maxim Cover Girl Semi-Finals” — you can click here to read about how grateful I am to you for helping me make it to the Semi-Finals round of the next #MaximCoverGirl contest! It’s been a fun journey so far, so I’m excited to see what happens! Otherwise, if you’d like get back to stories from my travels, buckle up and strap in!

Last we left off, my college girlfriends and I were on our road trip around Ireland, having just had dinner at Brewers Fayre. There are so many hours spent together in a car during a road trip around Ireland that not everything can be magical after magical experience. Sometimes, the most magical experiences, however, come from utter spontaneity… like seeing the breathtaking sunset in Donegal or giving one of your closest friends a noogie on the Irish coast.

During our road trip around Ireland, my college gal pals and I listened to a lot of blast-able women’s power ballads. The amount of Cher, Celine, Sheryl, Shania, and Spice Girls we listened to knows no limits. To this day, hearing “Strong Enough” solely reminds me of my road trip through the lush, rural Irish countryside with two of my favorite fellow Villanova Wildcats, doing our best Cher impersonations and bonding over dumb guys who let us get away.

One of my favorite spontaneous moments, however, came in the form of a quick lookout view where we could pull over, stretch our legs, and gaze out over some beautiful scenery in the middle of nowhere. For whatever reason, we were at peak sillies, so we parked, climbed up on the stone wall separating the carpark from the picnic area, blasted “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” by Celine Dion, and scream-sang out (with gusto and lots of arm gestures) into the mountains below while other travelers looked at us like we were nutters (joke’s on them.. we *are* nutters).

Have you ever noticed that it is those totally unplanned, spontaneous moments that stick with you long after they’ve happened? Do you have any stories like my gal pals’ and my roadside sing-song shenanigans you’d like to share? Let me know! Subscribe in the e-mail submission box below and reach out, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and reach out to me on the “contact” page. I’m so happy you're here and that I’ve been receiving a lot of really incredible stories, questions, and feedback from a community all over the globe! Other people’s stories that I’ve gotten to read via e-mail, text, tweet, DM, etc. recently bring me such smiles, and I am so grateful for all of it! I hope I get to hear all about whatever stories you’ve been thinking about as we’ve been on this virtual journey together! Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you have any restaurants/eateries/pubs/coffee shops/ice cream joints/theatres/lookout spots you would recommend in other countries or even in your current home town or city, I'm absolutely 100% all ears!! I couldn’t do this without you! So THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, truly, thank you.

And please, if you have 10 seconds to spare, I would really appreciate your daily vote for me to be the next Maxim Cover Girl 2020. Click here to vote! Voting for the Semi-Finals ends Thursday July 30th at 11 PM EST! The race is close, and I need to finish first in order to advance to the finals, so I would really appreciate your help and support as I continue to try and become the next #MaximCoverGirl by moving ahead into round 8/the Finals round of the competition! Thank you for all your support! I wouldn’t have made it this far without you! Click here or on the photo above to vote!

Sincerely,

Johny

P.S. - If you want to catch up from the beginning on this series of travel adventures, here's a cheat sheet to the posts (in order in which they were published):

1. Won't you join me?

2. grateful for starbucks and sandymount strand

3. Once Upon a December in the National Gallery

4. plant a smooch for that gift of gab

5. may the 4th be with you: Dingle style

6. cinco de mayo: the best Mexican food in Dublin

7. pizza in roma

8. mussolini’s window and the philosophers’ metro stop

9. father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife

10. it's the vatican, not the vatican't

11. spoiler alert: i did not lose my hand

12. more pizza and gelato and Neptune, oh my