Photo courtesy of http://primaryperitonealcancerinfo.blogspot.com/
I view my life in the present progressive tense. I’m always coming, going, waiting, thinking, hoping, wishing, choosing… When I feel aimless, which is most of the time, I recall a quote by my favorite author, J. R. R. Tolkien: “Not all who wander are lost.” I’ve always been an artist and writer at heart, and ever since my semester abroad in Norwich, England, I’ve caught a bad case of the travel bug. Since then, I’ve found myself in some pretty amazing places, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and the world around me along the way. As a conglomeration of my varied interests, this blog is at the intersection of arts, literature, culture, and travel.
However, this isn’t a site for offering tourist tips or suggestions of places to visit (I’m not nearly cosmopolitan enough to do that, yet!); instead, I see my “travels” as a broad and flexible concept, signifying everything from adventures abroad to meandering memories and wandering thoughts while driving to work. Using my English major tendency to close read and analyze texts, I will examine my continued encounters with the arts and travelling from a humanist perspective in order to reflect on their potential to foster introspection and personal development.
In doing so, I draw on a few blogs as sources of inspiration and potential voices in the digital conversation I intend to build. Both Medium and Matador Network feature the kind of wide-ranging content and image-based layout on which I hope to model my blog (Check out two really cool posts, “Men I’ve Met at Corners” and “Traveling in the Face of Death,” as examples of content I’m interested in. They’re also just really good reads!). The Art of Non-Conformity connects personal development and travel in a way I would like to emulate. Finally, the Paris Review addresses cultural and literary content of the sort that I wish to write about, but hopefully in relation to travel and in a more accessible style.
I think I can add my own fresh perspective, artistic eye, and unique set of experiences as a young college student to this conversation. I hope that readers of my blog will discover opportunities for art and travel and be inspired to live everyday with a “tourist’s eye”—with the desire and capacity to seek wonder and beauty everywhere and in everything. With this in mind, I invite my readers to join me on my journey as I study the art of wandering through life.