Traveling scratches a lot of itches for me, but I think the biggest is answering the question, “What’s next?”.

I fight with this sometimes. I have a bad habit of sacrificing now for next. I like having things to look forward to, but I get consumed with it to the point that it feels like a trip is over when I finish planning it.

It also makes the actual trip feel like a checklist: a neat, chronologically-ordered inventory of the place I’m visiting. I either complete it by visiting all the sights I’m supposed to see or I don’t and I’m bummed because I missed something.

Most places aren’t Disney World: there’s not a finite set of attractions to ride. But sometimes it feels like it! It feels like you don’t see Paris if you don’t visit the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre, and the Catacombs, and Moulin Rouge, and the Bastille, and and and and

I’m trying to embrace that there’s always going to be an ‘and’. Embrace that travel is more like a window: it’s a peak through to somewhere you don’t normally get to see. I’m trying to learn to enjoy what the window shows me rather than worrying about what’s outside of the frame.

Blogging is a lot like that too. I have such completist tendencies that sometimes I don’t bother if I can’t document everything. But I need to let that go. Blogging isn’t about giving readers a complete picture, it’s about offering them a window into somewhere they wouldn’t normally get to see.

So this travel blog is my attempt to offer a window. A restricted view into where, how, and why I like to go. Sometimes I’ll be philosophical about it. Sometimes I’m going to share some amazing pictures. Sometimes I’m going to recount a cool story. But most of the time I’ll probably just talk logistics.

That’s OK. It’s my window and I get to choose the frame.