A slightly unhinged origin story filled with curiosity, courage, and questionable choices.

Hello, New Best Friends!

Welcome to The Sober Globetrotter—a sober travel blog, recovery diary, food journal, and personal chaos container, all rolled into one. I’m Ginny Dee, and I’ll be your narrator-slash-mess-maker. It’s entirely possible I’ve forgotten how to introduce myself, so let’s just dive in and pretend I know what I’m doing.

They say the only real requirement for starting a blog is having something to say—and oh, I have so many things to say. Honestly, more people should tell me to shut up. But since they don’t, here we are. Welcome to the nonsense and silliness.

They also say to write about what you know. So I’m writing about what I love: travel, food, and my own slightly messy, incredibly meaningful sobriety.

So Who Even Am I?   And Where Are We Going?  And WHO FEW DAT HAM?

I’m a 40-something Xenial (or am I a very old Millennial or a very young Gen-Xer? Honestly, I like the “Oregon Trail Generation” descriptor best of all). I grew up in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the middle of three girls—so yes, I have the classic attention-seeking tendencies and complex neurosis to match.

I’m silly, nerdy, weird, and fully out of fucks to give about what people think of me. It’s incredibly freeing, this la-de-da attitude I’ve somehow gained recently. My sister tells me this new attitude is called “confidence,” which feels deeply suspicious.  Maybe it’s perspective?  Being right-sized?  Or knowing that, just like I don’t remember a single stranger I saw in the last week, none of them remember me either.  AKA strangers don’t care or remember the nonsense that is me.

I am a huge nerd. I want to know how things work, why they exist, and what happens if I poke them. I’m deeply curious, slightly chaotic, and emotionally attached to a frankly unreasonable number of rocks and elephants. (Not real ones. Yet.)

I love words. I love language. I love clever wordplay and stupid puns and phrases that make you think and laugh. I’ve always wanted to go everywhere and try everything. As a kid, I remember learning how many countries there were, and calculating how long it would take to spend just one day in each—and being genuinely heartbroken that it wasn’t possible.

A Beautiful, Broken Place to Hide: The Fire, the Fury, and the Fall

I spent over 15 years in the professional kitchens of New Orleans, where I learned to feed people, hustle hard, and swear like a sailor with third-degree burns. It was a gritty, gorgeous life… until it wasn’t. 

I started at a time when there weren’t many women in the industry, and the attitudes—and language—weren’t exactly grandma-friendly. I used to say that when a man walked into a kitchen on his first day, it was assumed he’d be good at the job until and unless he proved otherwise.

For me—and every other woman I knew playing the same game—it was the opposite. We were assumed to be weak little girls who would cry in the walk-in, until we proved we were just as tough, just as capable, and just as gloriously potty-mouthed as the guys.

But still, I loved it. I thrived in the chaos of a busy shift, juggling crisis and complaint deftly, with the hum of adrenaline and the scent of fryer grease in the air. The world of professional kitchens is a microcosm completely separate from mainstream life: we work while you play, and play while you sleep.

We got through a shift with all the uppers—caffeine, adrenaline, cocaine—whatever it took to keep moving when the tickets wouldn’t stop printing. Any dip in energy or enthusiasm could be chemically corrected.

And when the kitchen finally quieted, we came down with booze. We’d gather in the bars that never closed, telling war stories and laughing too loudly at things that weren’t funny, trying to convince ourselves that we were just blowing off steam and not falling apart.

That world felt normal when you were in it. Everyone around you was just as wired, just as wrecked, just as proud of the scars on their knuckles and their psyches. It was fast, and intense, and addictive—and I was good at it. That made it harder to leave.

Not all the stereotypes about chefs are true.
But the prevalence of substance abuse and mental illness?
Absolutely above average.

And eventually, the party got too loud, the pain got too big, and I found myself burned out, broken, and ready for something else.

Wandering the Dark Forest of Sobriety

I’m an alcoholic and addict in recovery.

Getting sober cracked my life wide open.
And not in a soft, glowy, spiritual-awakening kind of way.
It was brutal.

I left behind everything I thought I was.

It was the Dark Forrest moment of my life – the messy middle of the story, where everything falls apart and the map disappears.

But somehow… I landed here.

In the Light Beyond the Forest, I’m Alive, Sober, and Still Growing

In 2022, I moved back to the Twin Cities to start completely over. I was heartbroken. Sober. Raw. But also—somehow—hopeful.

When I got sober, I had burned my old life to the ground. I lost my marriage, my home, my career, and the identity I had spent decades building. At the time, it felt like total ruin.

But eventually—somewhere along a quiet road in Maine, on a solo road trip that was more therapy than vacation—I realized something that changed everything:

Losing everything also means gaining infinite freedom.

The freedom to start over.
To experiment.
To ask, Who do I want to be now?

Sobriety didn’t fix everything. It just gave me a fighting chance. A chance to rebuild. To rediscover. To choose again.

And Now?

I’m happy. I’m silly. I’m alone, but not lonely. I’m in the middle of my life and finally feeling like I know who I am—warts, wonders, weirdness and all.

I’ve traveled more in the past few years than I ever dreamed possible.
I’ve looked down in awe at the largest city in the world.
I’ve marveled at the Grand Canyon’s impossible beauty.
I’ve sat alone and silent on a nameless beach, connecting with the entire universe.

And I’ve rediscovered a passion for writing that’s always been in me—one I never believed I was good enough to pursue. Until now.

So Why This Blog?

Because I want to share it all.

The beauty and the mess. The spiritual detours and the bad translation fails. The moments that made me cry, the meals that made me believe in magic, the stories I used to be too scared to tell.

This blog is where I’m documenting it all—travel, food, recovery, curiosity, connection, chaos.