15 Years

15 years today I started blogging here (or anywhere else for that matter). This makes this entry number 545. 

I started blogging (http://wander-world.blogspot.com/2005/07/why.html) from a need to communicate, but also from a love of writing and not least of traveling. 15 years ago, I was avid of finding out what life was about and share my findings with you all.

I never amounted to many followers, in the traditional sense of the word, but I know many of you read this blog, because in the meantime following to a blog has become so much more complicated: 15 years ago, people were blog followers on Blogspot, or at the most, they’d subscribe with an email address. But today, I advertise my blogs on Facebook and on twitter, sometimes even on LinkedIn, and there are so many more people following them through there … My second blog (http://livingwithfh.blogspot.com/) is linked to an external website altogether (https://thefhfoundation.org) and another audience is created there. Social life and newsfeeds have become much more fragmented and complex. Following is not that important, really, to me, because I am thrilled and humbled when my words touch even one person, regardless of how they found me.

It’s been quite a journey! I sat on the title and the url of this blog for a while till it dawned on me: it had to have something related to “travel” in its name. I think one of the top reasons, if not the top reason for immigrating here, was so that I can, one day, have an American passport that will open the door to most any country I wanted to visit and which would allow me to skip the whole “requesting a visa” process. Well, in 15 years, that dream did come true – the one about the American passport. With the new world of the Coronavirus pandemic, the borders of most of the countries in the world are closed to Americans now. So, there, I guess life has shown me.  

But I did travel some – I crossed America twice, I lived in the West and came back to the South-East of The States, I traveled many countries on three continents, and I have learned a lot – about travel, about people, about myself. I try to write as often as I feel like it, but nowadays I have several outlets for writing, some of them more private than others. Life, again, has gotten more complicated.

As long as I live, I know I’ll write, and to some extent, as far as the world around me will allow me to go, I will travel. Just like 15 years ago: whether I travel across the country or sit in my living room and travel in my imagination across the world, or take a day trip across town – my mind will continue to stay open and inquisitive and my feelings and senses will hurry to the blank pages to tell the story and share it with the world.

After 15 years of … everything … I still know one thing for sure: that life is indeed … a trip. Thank you for coming along on my journey. Here’s to new roads and to the next 15!