I’m at YVR airport with two hours to go before my 2AM flight to Taipei and then Denpasar, eating trail mix and chocolate, standing at a high table in a fast-food court, which makes a great standing desk. Which is good since I’ll be sitting for most of the next 22 hours, so I’d better make the most of being vertical while I can. In my second week back in Vancouver, I started to have some severe doubts about my competency to do this sort of travel. First of all, I messed up my Indian visa application. Even though I’ve…
Travel
I’ve been back in Vancouver for one week now. It’s been a strange readjustment. At one level, everything is more or less the way I left it. It was only a month, after all. At another level, everything is reorganized and intense. It’s not like coming “home” and really couldn’t have been; I’m still settling in at Matthew’s but leaving in another week and a bit. Work suddenly got super busy, and I had appointments and errands and wanted to see friends, and that whole sense of time and spaciousness that I had at the Krishnamurti Centre seemed to go…
My first nomadic destination outside of Canada is supposed to be Bali. My flight is October 16, and I’ve got an AirBnB booked in Ubud, walking distance to a handy coworking space. All sounds great. One thing I didn’t know to plan for, though, appears to be the volcano that’s about to erupt on the island. 75,000 people have been evacuated from the area as of this writing; flights are still proceeding as normal but airlines are preparing for the likelihood of diverting to other airports when Mount Agung finally blows. Of course nobody can say exactly when a volcano…
I’ve never lived anywhere rural before. I’ve always been in places ranging from semi-suburban to full-on city living. So I’ve been really curious to see how I’d feel about this time on Vancouver Island at the KECC. This year, I’ve been craving space and nature and peace and distance from other human beings and noises and chaos. But I’ve also always been a city gal, and wanting to have access to all sorts of fun things. (You can see why I’m at a bit of a crossroads about where I actually want to live permanently.) Anyway, I’ve also never lived…
Most of my life, I’ve been a pretty determined little nester who greatly enjoys having a nice space to live and all the comforts of home. We’re not talking Martha Stewart levels here, but I’ve been very firmly tied to the idea of a sanctuary of my own, a safe space to get away from the world, a place I can decorate, dream, adapt, and imagine possibilities for its future. When I’ve moved somewhere, it’s always been with the intention of staying years (apart from that one hellhole after graduate school, but we won’t get into that). I’ve always wanted…