CURRENT MISSION

I'm a traveling writer--coming here and there and anywhere when I can.

ABOUT ME

Amanda Coggin is a free spirit who believes that when humans aren’t using their inherent gift of creativity, they get grumpy. She also knows what it’s like to be homeless. Having moved twelve times in San Francisco, she’s opted to call The City and the Bay Area home since she’s been there longer than anywhere else. In her thirteen years there, she’s lived in fifteen different places and eleven of those she’s never paid rent. Bouncing from Paul Hawken’s houseboat to others along a Sausalito dock, to sleeping on friends’ floors next to their growing pot plants, and then eventually to random people’s apartments that she’s cared for from hunting them down on Craigslist. She finally took someone’s recommendation to register as homeless, if only to benefit from the free health care. They say home is where the heart is, but for Amanda, home is any place where her backpack can sit and recover until her next great adventure.

Her love of travel began in Italy, as a college blonde that the Roman men enamored. She grasped the Italian language while tutoring English and quickly learned that screaming, “Va fanculo!” to young boys who grabbed her made her feel independent. So after backpacking Europe at nineteen, and then a two-year solo journey through Asia at twenty-six, she decided that traveling to experience the world’s cultures would be her lifelong study.

It’s been as many countries as she has in years, on three separate continents, and she’s still going. Her personal motto: “The world showed up for us to explore, so let’s go see,” is still intact.

When she is or isn’t traveling, she’s writing. Her love of the written word began when she entered a writing contest at the Chicago Sun Times to answer the question, “Why is your dog your best friend?” Her first published words at the age of ten were, “When my parents divorced, Misty (her golden retriever) licked my tears.” She won two tickets to the Purina Dog Show and spent the next twenty-three years developing her craft.

When she is traveling, she’s also shooting photography in order to capture the spirit of the people and places where’s she’s laid her backpack.

In February 2006, she embarked on a two-month drive through Mexico and the United States in a one-hundred dollar van that her dead ex-boyfriend bought off Craigslist. Some say she can’t stand still and has celebrated and suffered enough. Others applaud her when she’s not looking.

In March 2007, Amanda was hired as a staff writer for DivineCaroline, the first venture of Real Girls Media in San Francisco.

Amanda has one book manuscript down and the next one to go. The works on her blog are pieces of that next book project puzzle in progress.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Haven't had one yet. Hope to in early November 2009.

Interests

• dogs
• writing
• books
• photography
• traveling
• blogging
• backpacking
• hunting
• communications

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Monaco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Vatican City State, Viet Nam, Virgin Islands, British

Countries I’ve Lived In

Italy, Mexico, Thailand, United States