THE HUMAN CONDITION

Welcome to my lifestyle blog, The Human Condition. All of these stories, memories and adventures that make up my life will lie here in my collection of what I call The Human Condition.

The name The Human Condition comes from a place of love. All of my books have showcased a form of human connection and human experience. I have always loved the psychology of human emotions and growth. I wanted a space for not only recipes in my previous blog, A Gluten-Free Gal, but also a space to document my adventures, my stories, and my memories through writing.

As we all encounter growth in different ways, I wanted to strive in the direction of my passion for writing and use that to captivate others through my blog. Everything I am creating is for me. I love helping people through my words but at the end of the day, I write because I love to do it and it makes me incredibly happy. I encourage you, at the end of the day, to do what makes you happy.

When looking up the meaning of The Human Condition, several definitions illustrate the energy I am looking to put out to the world: All of the key life events that compose the essentials of human existence, some of these include growth, emotion and aspiration. All things I've been driven towards from the beginning.

My passions for Writing, Cooking and Traveling make up many of the key events in my life. These events allow me to see growth within myself. It's moving when you look back in hindsight knowing what you know now. The events allow me to reflect on my emotions and love who I am. I finally feel alive with just being myself. I plan to bring you with me as I grow into new chapters of my life. I hope to be shaped into new molds, gain new perspectives and community through creating this blog. I feel growing through human experience is the best way to undergo growth.

The Human Condition: The Layers

Writing

I truly believe my love for words started when my parents read me books as a child or the fact that my mom is an author herself. I went into my pre-teen years, flipping through diary after diary loading my drawers high. Going into my teenage years, the word diary became "journal". I created a private Tumblr account to display my writing, only for myself to see. I wasn't sure how I felt about sharing it with those around me. Several years later in college, I had the courage to post some of my poetry on social media. It was overwhelming but so exciting. So many people had reached out to me, both on my post and off of it. About a year later, I felt confident enough to create and publish my first book. Years later, here I am, creating The Human Condition not realizing how much it would impact my life. I have always wanted a place where I could sell my books as well as a place where I could share my writing process. Over the years, I have received so many questions on how I started and how I self-published. This is a place where all those questions will be answered! As I take you along with me, know that I am still writing. I am working on creating my fourth book. I have no timeline at the moment but stay tuned for more!

Cooking

In my freshmen year of college, I was going through a lot of pain physically. Everything and anything I ate was making me sick for days even weeks at a time. I was experiencing a lot of fatigue, nausea, stomach pain, and several other worrisome issues. My relationship with food became terrible. I was scared to eat anything. I saw several doctors over the course of two years who weren't giving me much at all. I took several tests and procedures to find out what was going on with me. It wasn't until the 3rd colonoscopy and endoscopy for my doctor to figure out I had severe Celiac Disease and IBS. It honestly felt so relieving to finally have a diagnosis but so scary to think about the lifestyle change this news was accompanied by. In the beginning, I lost almost 35 pounds. Being thinner for my age already, I looked so thin. TOO thin for many. I would often hear I needed to eat more or gain weight. Little did they know, it was extremely difficult to do so. It wasn't until about a year ago, my love for cooking was born. I finally decided to start taking care of myself. When I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, I took it very seriously. I focused on a strict diet but it took a long time for my body to adjust. I was still getting "glutened" by not being knowledgeable enough on my own disease. I have learned gluten is not in just food but in makeup, shampoo, toothpaste, face wash, sunscreen, lip balm, and the list goes on. When I continued to get sick going into restaurants where cross-contamination would ultimately continue to make me ill, I decided it was time for a change. It was time for me to teach myself how to cook. On my blog, I will share with you my love for cooking and how I got to where I am today. I focus mostly on what I call "borrowed recipes". These recipes are made by other creators, influencers, and other famous chefs. I always make sure to give credit where credit is due by tagging the recipe, the creator, and all of their socials. I take the borrowed recipes and substitute gluten-free and dairy-free ingredients to make them my own and safe for me to eat! Feel free to take any of my borrowed recipes and make them your own too! Always remember to give credit to the creator!

Travel

Travel has always been a big part of my journey. Something about exploring a brand new place and all of the little places within is beautiful to me. When I met my boyfriend, one of the things we connected on was our love for travel. We have started documenting our trips and all the cool places we've been to through videos, pictures, lists, and documents. We like to make the most of our trips and try to experience as much as we can each day. I want to use this blog to showcase how we plan our trips and all of the little adventures in between. I will be giving my tips and tricks on how to find good places to stay that are still within budget, how to find gluten-free places on the go, and what to plan for ahead of time. Stay tuned for more!

This blog will share posts about my growth over the last 24 years of my life and what I've picked up along the way.

I am still accepting and learning to love the little things--and you should too.

xoxo

Nat