Orlando, Florida

Since I started making this day dream a reality I've been so excited I can barely sleep. And every day I believe more and more that I can do this.

In the past few days I've divulged my plan to some select friends. Those friends we all have that we tell our good ideas to for that reassurance we say we don't really need, but want none the less. After these few conversations I realized something: Orlando is my first destination.

Sunny Orlando, Florida has been a city that changed my life no matter how much I resisted it. And even though I didn't think it was possible, I've met some really amazing people that have everything to do with this adventure. And Orlando itself has been an adventure worth telling about.

I ended up here in '98 when my parents took a job here. My sister and I were home schooled and didn't grow very attached to, or fond of, Florida. When I turned 16 I took a summer job painting apartments in Boston, Mass. and lived in a basement apartment in my birth-town, Malden. I lived like a grown up for most of a year, and then gave up and moved back to Orlando. The next summer, when I was 17, I moved to Boca Raton, Fla. and lived in the dorms at Florida Atlantic University. I'm hoping that maybe I'll get a chance to re-visit this place and dig up some of my old contacts before I leave Florida.

My ideas for this project grow every day. Next week I plan on meeting with the director of my school, Paul Mitchel the School Orlando, and hopefully I can make plans to talk at my school and the Paul Mitchel schools in the cities I visit. I've been telling all my friends and some of my clients to get all their friends to subscribe to my blog. I'm hoping that through networking I can get some followers in the cities I'm visiting and maybe get some clients scheduled.

The more I think about my project, the more I wonder who I'm really doing it for. I really do believe I'm doing this for all of us. I feel like I've got to prove to everyone in my generation, and future generations, that you can dream big, and follow through. And I know that by traveling the country and meeting REAL American people, living their every day life, I can be a poster boy for kindness and community. My drive to become a journalist has always been to get peoples' stories told so we can all understand each other a little better.

I wanna meet everyone. And their grandmother, and their sister, and her kids. I wanna eat dinner with families and meet hippies and hipsters and country boys and city girls. And I wanna do their hair. There's something about the time you have with someone when they're creating their look. People let you in, they let themselves be a little bit vulnerable, and they count on you to show the world who they are.

My million dollar theory is too good for me to keep locked up. When I am trying to decide what the best look for my client is, I think:

"If I were the producer of a movie, about this person, playing them self, what would I want them to look like?"

I guess that leaves plenty to debate, but if you can think with it, you can kind of get an idea of what I go for when I'm styling. You might just be working in Macy's at the mall, but you have a family, a heritage and a way of life that you can easily show in the way you do your hair and dress yourself.

I'm thinking for the next 5 months I could really showcase a lot of culture and style of Orlando and some other parts of Florida. Downtown, Winter Park, Baldwin Park, College Park, Cassleberry, Kissimmee. Florida is home to a lot of special looks and some really unique people.

So far my plan goes something like this: Savannah, GA for a week or so, Atlanta, GA of course, then Alabama to visit my aunt and regroup, then Memphis, Tenn. and then I'll probably Greyhound into Arkansas to see an old friend. Depending on how well I'm doing by the time I get to Alabama I might take the Amtrak up to Chicago, IL before coming back down to St. Louis, MO, then Arkansas.

Looking at the map of the Amtrak routes around the country, I can barely sit still thinking about the scenery and the parts of America you can't see from anywhere except a train. There's a leg of the route that just goes straight through Kansas east and west, I can't imagine what I could see. I'd love to do well enough that I can afford a room on the train for a trip like this, but I don't need that to have my moments.

People are worried about how I will keep myself going. I mean, technically this is a non-profit mission. I'm not looking to walk away from any amount of money, I'm just looking to support my trip with the tips of America. I hope that where ever I go I can leave behind a story and maybe a lot more.

What I really want, is for this to consume me. I don't know where I want to put down roots, but I'm not sure that it's here in Orlando. And as much as I've always wanted to run back to Boston, I don't think I can until I see what else is out there.

Just now I got an email back from a photographer in Savannah that I contacted through couchsurfers.org. I think I'm off to a great start and I know I'll have more to tell soon.

Gunnar