For me, journaling is a way of capturing little slices of life from our extraordinary, ordinary days, and whenever we read them in the future, it’s as though we’re returned right to that very moment in time.
It’s all too easy to doubt our decisions—but every now and then, I’m grateful for the moments when we suddenly know, without any doubt at all, that our steps have led us in the right direction.
To land in Stockholm, and have my first port-of-call be a place that some of my best friends had stayed in not two months earlier, was a welcome point of connection to my San Francisco community.
The Book Passage travel writing and photography conference is a kind of touchstone place I keep returning to, and yet each year finds us all moving forward in our lives and work as well.
I realized then that besides a newfound appreciation for vodka and blue cheese crumbles, the most important thing Vera had taught me is that we can’t leave love for the future. We have to love now.
Having walked alone these last three weeks, another shadow moving next to mine made for quite a change. Yet again, the path had gone in a different direction from my expectations – the lesson then, I think, might lay in the space between.
I’m overwhelmed by everything I will never understand about Stan’s story – what it means to lose a parent so soon in your life, what it means to hear enemy tanks encircling your city at night – and by the simple yet poignant wisdom he now shares with me.
I could not be more grateful to have stumbled into this corner of the world. Mostar has reminded me that when we travel – and, more importantly, live – with open hearts and minds, connections happen.
This week five years ago, I stepped on a plane bound for London – little did I know how much that trip would change my life. It’s this sense of possibility that keeps me moving through the world, as well as through life.
I take their sketch with me when I leave – as a token of gratitude that something as simple as a sketch could open the door to our encounter. Here in Southeast Asia, as on every journey, it is the people who have made each place.