Tomorrow is the last day of 2014 and I'm excited for the fresh start a new year brings. It's not that 2014 was a bad year. But I spent most of it feeling off track. Maybe because I knew the return home was inevitable. Maybe...
My family celebrated Christmas yesterday. It makes sense, really. We have such a small family and we all live somewhere in Chicago or the suburbs that we see each other often enough. And there are so few of us that it's a little repetitive to...
Heather and I moved in together when we were both going through some of the toughest times in our lives. It occasionally made for a pretty depressing (and very messy) apartment, but it was good for us both. We needed each other. We understood when...
Other people do fancy things. Other people go to those kind of parties that cost $50 to get in. Other people get gussied up to go to a museum event, like the Last Speakeasy Chicago prohibition party, on a Thursday night. Other people. I don't. I am...
It's been over a month since I left Athens. Stopped traveling. It's been over a month since I came back home to Chicago, since I started back at my new old job. And it's been over three years since I've been back in Chicago and working...
Last year I went to TBEX Dublin and left with more inspiration, more motivation, to take my blog where I wanted it to go than I had ever had before. And then my laptop got stolen a week later and I couldn't do anything for nearly...
Athens, Greece, is one of those cities, like Santiago, where most people only spend a night, maybe two, or skip it altogether, and say it's not worth going. They say it's just another big city, they say it's boring or dangerous or lame. It's...
In my travel plan, that one I made in June and almost immediately abandoned, I had thought to return to Spain after three months in South America. I wanted to spend some time there. At least a month, hopefully three, longer if that damned visa...
"Santiago is just another big city." That's what everyone would tell me when they said they went for just a night or two before moving on or skipped it altogether. "It's just another big city," they'd say. "It's boring," they'd say. But I had already decided that...
Every time I was buzzed into my hostel in Valparaiso, Chile, the woman at the front desk would ask me, "A dónde fuiste?": "Where did you go?" "Solo caminar," I'd say. "Just for a walk."* Because that's what I did in Valparaiso: I walked. I walked on...