• Another lovely Thanksgiving has passed. This year was a bit quieter since I celebrated early with a Friendsgiving in Japan. We are also in between trips, so I wasn’t really up to organizing the cooking or getting people to come celebrate with us. So, it was a blessing to be able to join friends at their place where they put a lot of love in the labor of cooking a delicious meal for…

  • A pause in our flitting to and fro feels nice. We have been traveling every month to somewhere new according to M’s photo memories. The positive of traveling is that life is always changing and we experience new things regularly. The downside is that it is easy to forget where we have been, and we do not get to fully appreciate where we are now. Although we are still on the go through…

  • I just returned from what has become a yearly visit to Japan. My relationship with the country has evolved now that I don’t live there full-time nor need to work to enjoy what the Land of the Rising Sun offers. While I can never quite decide if I would want to live there again, I know that I will always continue to visit. This was a short week-long visit that was really about…

  • I may have left it too long for my memory to recall our/my latest trip to New York City. It was nearly a month ago now and it seems that despite my promises to update about the trip, I have only just now remembered. Guess that’s part of the brain fog era of life that I am in. Anyway, let me see what I recall. First, the main reason for going was to…

  • Well, I had two glorious days of doing absolutely nothing, which was much needed. My energy cup was bordering on empty, which is often when my bipolar tendencies kick-in. Though I don’t think that I have such strong ups and downs these days, I definitely notice when stress affects my productivity, judgment, and behavior. So, the Universe looked out for me and helped me to create the time and space to just be…

  • I keep meaning to sit down to write, but catching up on “normal” life and trying to see local friends has made it more challenging than I had anticipated in settling into routine. I feel as if I’m running on fumes. Perhaps, that is also because I might have the tinge of a cold threatening my head and body…but anyway… Since I’m already behind with updates on travels, let me push it off…

  • I am due to write a proper post about my travels and activities, but I felt it appropriate to take a pause to acknowledge the passing of my cousin this past week. L was quite a bit older than me and by the time I arrived to the Bilyeu family, he was already living his adult life. Still, he was always kind to me and would make an effort to talk to me…

  • Escapism is one of my coping mechanisms for getting through life. When reality is too much, the world of a book, a different culture, a cafe, or a new environment of some kind can serve to justify the escape. While it might be easy to explain it away as something positive, the truth is that there is a darkness below the layers of disguise. It is not necessarily a consuming shadow, but recently…

  • This was a trip planned sometime back in April, I think. Despite our frequent travels and desire to stay put for a bit, we/I enjoyed our week in Sardinia – still on the island as I type this post, actually. Some people put it on our radar last year when they relayed stories of their visit saying that it was lovely. So, when we were discussing with our friends about a joint trip,…

  • For some reason, I stopped going away on my own mini writing retreats. Perhaps, it is because we have been traveling so much. Perhaps, I thought that it was too much of a personal luxury. Perhaps, I just forgot that they had a purpose beyond just the writing focus. After having just gone on one last week, despite the busyness of our lives between events and trips, I am recommitted to reinstating them…

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