Hi, I’m Jen.
A woman in the middle of something — figuring it out one day (and one trip) at a time.
I’m 46, I live in central Missouri, and I have a list of every place in the world I want to visit that is basically just “everywhere.” My husband used to point this out regularly. He was right.
This blog exists because of a few things that happened in quick succession: two friends visited Amsterdam within the past year and both came back telling me the same thing — that I had to go. One of them said it was “just Jen,” whatever that means. I read a book called Die With Zero that said out loud what I already believed — that experiences matter more than a savings account balance, and that waiting for the right time is just another way of not going. And a friend named Deb sent me a Gilda Radner quote at exactly the right moment:
“Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity…”
— Gilda Radner
I’ve had a lot of changes in the past year. Big ones. The kind that leave you standing in the middle of your own life wondering what comes next. I don’t have a clean answer to that yet, but I’ve decided that not knowing doesn’t have to be a problem to solve. It can be the whole point.
So in September I’m getting on a plane to Amsterdam. Alone. Which would sound braver if I didn’t have to tell you that I’m also terrified of flying — a fear that arrived uninvited somewhere in my late 30s and has absolutely no business being there given how many places I still want to go. The flight is booked. I’m going anyway.
Beautifully Ambiguous is where I write about all of it. The travel — solo trips, work trips, the places nobody writes travel guides to. The life — this particular chapter, the questions I’m sitting with, the things I’m figuring out. The in-between moments that turn out to matter more than you expected.
If you’re a woman somewhere in the middle of your own story — not sure what the next chapter looks like, maybe taking a leap or thinking about one, making peace with uncertainty on good days and not quite managing it on others — you’re exactly who I’m writing for.
I’m glad you found this place. Stick around.
— Jen