I sat out, overlooking the beautiful city of Florence, tucked away in the hills of Tuscany. The sun had begun its long descend into night, the heat of June’s day had begun to subside, and with one cool gust of air, I had a whole new understanding of Frank Sinatra’s “The Summer Wind.” In the distance, I could hear the faint sounds of a dinner party being entertained by a jazz piano, the clinking of glasses, wine being poured from a carafe, and the audible noises of memories being made, proven by the sounds of laughter and the harmonious chord of Italian vowels. And it was in that moment that I was so in love with love, yet so broken with lonliness. Florence was playing my heart as if a harp, the strings perfectly tuned for some grand concert.

If a single soul had spoken to me in that moment, I would have immediately fallen in love. 

10 months ago · 2 notes

“Then I remembered my life in New York: constantly running from place to place, job to job, broken heart to broken heart. New York swallowed me whole within its year and a half of having me in its fists. It turned this small state boy to a workaholic. Consumed by opportunity, running dreams, and empty promises, the amount of coffee stains on my notebook were greater than the hours of sleep I was getting. I knew, in my heart, that going back to New York meant living that life again. Never again could I fathom another opportunity to see Europe, or what I had initially thought was the world. I decided I was going to backpack, companion or not.”

10 months ago · 3 notes

With two and a half weeks left of my backpacking trip, I started to realize how much we rely on social media to pass the time. Hardly ever does my generation just relax alone sans a laptop, an iPhone, or blackberry. It’s kind of upsetting. 

For me, Facebook has become a way to be over personal with hundreds of people at once. How many times a day do we read “going to work in the am, then to the gym, then dinner with the fammmm. <3” or something similar on our homepage? Honestly, its not that I’m not happy that you are spending time with your family, but that is not any of my personal business. We have become ‘over public’ with ourselves, publicly showing what events we are attending, who our friends are, and who is in a relationship with who. Quite frankly, if I haven’t spoken to you since high school, it is not my business to know who you’re dating and when you have broken up.

Yet, the pivotal point of hating social media came when I landed at Logan Airport three weeks ago. Within a twenty minute car ride, I had discovered that during my time of my backpacking trip, my cousin became engaged, another cousin was now pregnant, and another cousin fell about 40 feet on a mountain and needed to get airlifted to the hospital. “Why did no one tell me?!” I shouted. 
“It was on Facebook, I thought you knew.”

 For our generation, there is now an expectation to be on Facebook so you can stay connected with what’s going on. Our only form of communication has transformed behind a computer screen, lowering our ability to actually interact with real human beings. It’s sad. We are becoming as programmed as our MacBook Pros are. 

And I am just at fault. While I would love to delete my Facebook and call it a day, there are too many travelers I have met whom I would like to be able to reach out to next time I travel or too many people that could potentially get me a job whom I talk to. So I am stuck in a strange place. Which is why I stopped blogging on here. That was something I had control over.

For the future, I want to continue to share photography and works of my own. I am ever so slowly compiling a memoir of my travel just so I’ll never forget how amazing my trip was. The book won’t be for anyone else but me and possibly my children when I have them, but I would love to share bits and pieces to get feedback. Because that’s why I started this blog: to share my work to see what works. And that is what it will be from now on. 

10 months ago · 3 notes