The Vegan Pact Goes Cross Country

Yep. You read that right.

You’ve obviously continued to hear crickets on this blog, but if you follow me on social media, you might have noticed I’ve had the busiest summer ever.

But hasn’t “overly busy” been the theme of my life for the past four years?

I used to LOVE what I do. I loved food. I loved cooking, I loved providing a service that helped people eat healthier, lose weight, combat medical issues, feed their families better, ect., ect. Teaching and cooking with strangers and giving them insight on how to be vegan has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. My clients I’ve had over the years have become some of my best friends and my extended family. I have given everything I have to helping others, and getting others healthy.

But after four, long, exhausting, incredible, difficult years, I’m finally getting to a point where taking care of everyone else has made me completely incapable of caring for myself. The long hours and days of making a million Whole Foods trips, doing dishes for what feels like 200 years and actually cooking for clients has taken it’s toll, and I’m physically and mentally exhausted. I have no drive to cook for myself or take my own meals into consideration when prepping for clients. Days will go by where I eat nothing more than avocado toast and maybe a lame salad. With all my energy going into other people’s food, I’ve had no energy for my own. Or to work out, or go to yoga, or blog, or read or write, or travel as much. Which looking back, has pretty much been the case since I quite my corporate job and started The Vegan Pact.

And I don’t regret a second of it. Everyone I met along the way. My first clients who were SUCH pains in the assess, but were my greatest teachers. For the events I spent weeks preparing for, only to have five people attend. For the last minute events, I had NO time to prepare for, and ended up presenting in front of thousands. For the back-to-back long nights of classes in Boston that have given me some truly amazing friends. I’ve seen clients get married. Clients who got pregnant and live off my food the whole nine months. And the babies who now eat an amazing vegan diet, that I also cook for them. Every person, every student, even one mildly famous actor-I have been grateful for it all, even in my most tiring and hangriest of days.

But after this summer, I’m ready for a change.

I’m ready to wake up every day and worry only about feeding myself. To go to Whole Foods and buy what I want, and not have to consider six or seven other clients. I’m ready to not put everyone else first, for once. And I am also SO ready to avoid another Boston winter.

And so, I’m heading to-you guessed it…Boulder.

It’s been almost exactly a year since I first fell in love with Colorado, and that month I had to myself in Boulder was one of the best months of my life-not just because I met my now boyfriend during that time 😉 I felt the best I’d felt in years when I was worrying about only feeding myself and running on my own schedule. And I’m ready to find some balance and regain some of that initial feeling I had last September.

My plan? Well, I don’t totally have one. I’ll be based in Boulder, but will spend a lot of time traveling, hiking, being outdoors as much as possible and of course, EATING. I will travel and work with my favorite clients here and there, in other places (likely California), but will be giving up all professional aspects of Boston for the time being.

Maybe, I’ll miss it and will come back in the spring. Maybe I will LOVE not cooking for others and find something totally new, somewhere completely different. Maybe I’ll find a new outlet for cooking/teaching in Boulder that isn’t as draining and stay there.

Whatever the case, I’m putting myself first and just letting things happen. I am going to miss SO many of my amazing clients and students here, and hope that you’ll all continue to stay in touch with me as I start this new adventure. My hope is that as I get back to cooking for myself, I also get back to recipe development and blogging, which really were my first loves when I started this whole endeavor.

You can also read a little more or fund some of my green smoothies along my travels, at my Go Fund Me here:

http://bit.ly/2wIOlxv