Over the course of the last six months while COVID stopped our lives in their tracks, while protests began and are still going, and while I started to realize that our “normal” that was gone, really was just something that we had gotten used to, the one thing that helped me keep my thoughts together has been writing. I know this blog is mainly about travel, but over the years of writing here on LOM, for me, this outlet, it’s always been about just that…. writing.
As a kid and young adult, I loved to write. I wrote everything, short stories, poetry, songs. I’ve always loved lyrics and the way words flow together in different languages. In short, I just love the idea of words, how they can shape us, how hearing something beautiful, written to perfection, can make you feel something. Honestly, in my life, I feel at my best when I am writing. I’ve always felt that way.
So when I started blogging a decade ago, this was such an incredible outlet. I suddenly had a platform to share my words, to write what I was feeling. And over time, that writing changed. Not better or worse, just different. I started writing about travel and making guides and expressing these beautiful places I was seeing. And suddenly, my worlds collided in the best possible way. Writing and travel, two of my very favorite, most tightly held passions, molding together.
And while my long winded poetry writing might have come to an end for a while as I grew LOM, grew my career and got into the routine of life, writing stayed in one form or another. Over the past ten years, I’ve continued writing, but it’s become more about a means to an end. It became about this blog and about jobs I was doing and somehow, even while it continued, some of the creativity that I used to find in writing, it slowly slipped away without me even noticing it.
During the pandemic though, it’s like something inside of me just… clicked. I needed to write. Now more than ever.
I found myself a little while back in the midst of a depression, in a sadness that I just couldn’t shake. It stemmed from several things, someone I loved like a brother cut me out of his life completely, a toxic family member put me on edge constantly, a former student of mine passed away in her early 30’s and the world was in so much pain that it hurt me deeply day in and day out. Everything combined, it felt like a deep grief for months. And in that grief, I mentioned one day to Nick that I really felt like I needed to start writing again, really writing. One day when I got home, a beautiful leather bound journal with my name inscribed on the front was waiting for me, a beautiful gift from him to get me writing again. And I did. I started writing poetry again, started writing my thoughts, my feelings, every emotion that had been pouring out of me for months in tears and sadness, suddenly had a place on those pages. Suddenly the words that I had been needing to say filled those pages and a weight began to lift off of me.
In short, I found my way out of the sadness through writing. I found my way out because that passion that I’ve always had, to allow the power of words written to express myself and in turn, heal myself. And while writing had always been part of my life, many thanks to this blog for that, I realized then and there that writing for me, it’s a necessity in my life and it always will be.
I’ve often talked on this blog that I don’t have a huge following compared to other travel blogs and I don’t put enough time and energy into it in order for it to be a money-maker, but the one thing I do know, is that I will keep writing here. I’ll keep writing about travel or life or whatever else happens because the outlet to write, to have a place that my words resound to anyone listening, that in itself is more than enough. I still write here, not because I am hoping to make money, but because I genuinely love it. I genuinely love the connections that I can make here with my words, with all of you reading them.
Writing is my constant. It’s what grounds me, what feeds my soul. And when the world becomes too dark, you’ll find me writing. So thank you for following along on this ride, all these years later and reading these words I write. I’ve learned that when all hope seems lost, when the world feels heavy and dark, I’ll always make the case for writing, to sit down and let the words come tumbling out. They don’t need to be perfect, they just have to be what your heart needs to say, right then and there in that moment.