Welcome!

A photograph I took in Cordoba, Argentina in 2013. ©AJG

Until a few months ago, I had been keeping a weekly blog of my travels. 2010-2013 were whirlwind years that took me on trips involving planes, trains, busses, micro-busses, automobiles, even horses, covering tens of thousands of miles, sometimes in a single month. My life spanned two continents, four countries, and three different languages. The more I was on the move and my life up in the air, the more I craved that continuous movement. I felt like I’d stop changing, learning and evolving if I ever stopped going.

And then I crashed.

I had to return to Canada for some reasons involving paperwork, and for months I stayed put in my old (second) home of Montreal. Now I’ve been more or less back in Canada (except for a few trips to the U.S.) for nearly a year. And you know what? I like it. I like the stability and the steadiness. And when my husband mentioned we’d have to travel again this year, I was really upset. Because I liked my calm life that rarely relies on having a passport and suitcase at arm’s length. For the first time in years, I felt “normal” during most of 2013. Getting back into a harried, unpredictable, travel-plagued life haunted and terrified me, because I know how difficult it is in so many ways. And I simply do not want to do it again, because it’s exhausting.

Anyways. Whether or not I’ll travel this year is still up for debate. We’ll see.

In the meantime, what I want to say is that there were a few side effects of staying put, one of which was the months seemed to fly by without any real way of measuring them. I found that tweeting and micro-blogging on Tumblr were the only real documented moments of my life this past year. I kind of missed having something that documented the passing days, my interests and my evolving thoughts and tastes. As difficult as it was sometimes to continue to blog about my travels, my weekly blog posts provided some measure of progress in my life from mid-2011 to early 2013.

So, with the goal of saving some snapshots of my life in some form, I’m attempting to re-boot my blogging life. I actually do write a lot, so I’d rather not write the 1,000+ word posts I used to on my travel blog. I’m going to try to keep them shorter, and maybe more visual. Art is a big part of my life, and I’d love to show off some things that I’m working on, as well as the art that I see and enjoy in my every day life. I’ll also talk about my work as a writer and editor and, simply, life as me, on the cusp of turning 30.

Thanks for visiting a cheers to a new blog!