Why a blog?

One of the things I've regretted since COVID hit was that I'd never put any focus on documenting my trips.  I have all these memories, people I've met, places I've gone, things I've done and seen, but when trying to recall them sometimes it falls flat.  I love that I have them, but without some sort of catalyst to bring them back up again they might as well not exist.

There's a lot of reasons why I've never really been into recording trips (or my personal life in general), I like enjoying the moment I'm in, I spend enough time traveling that there was always something to look forward to; no need to look back, and I don't like clutter and knicknacks so saving souvenirs never really interested me.

The few times I've thought about doing it, even planned to in advance, I gave myself too much choice too.  I'd pack my bag with cameras, lenses, GoPro's, Moment lenses for my phone, water proof cases, all the gadgets that one could want.  Well, turns out, at least for me, too much choice is a bad thing and the end result is that I'd avoid taking anything just out of ease.  Well, except one trip that included two days at Kennedy Space Center, I actually ended up with a ton of photos from there.

Oddly, despite my reluctance to document my trips I heavily rely on others who have to plan my own.  It's a fun diversion to read about what others experienced in places that I'm going to be in, and it gives me a huge amount of information about what's available to do in each place.  While I don't really like planning my days out in advance to much I do really like knowing what options there are in each place so I can figure out what I'm in the mood for when I'm actually there.  This would never be influenced by too many Gin and Tonics the evening before...

Part of my hope for this is that it'll be more than just a place for me to go when I want to remind myself of past experiences, I hope that it'll be useful to others when they're planning on vacations of their own.  Since a lot of the time, especially in the Caribbean, I'll be visiting the same places multiple times over the years, I'll be able to remind myself of the things I wish I'd done too.  Even when on a cruise a week or two on the ship leaves lots of things unexplored and half a day in a port leaves even more that still needs to be seen.

Finally, I think it'll make my time traveling more enjoyable and memorable for myself.  Instead of leaving one of my biggest hobbies on the side I'll be using it to make trips more interesting.  I'll have an additional focus on exploring an area and the people in it, making more connections.  I'll be expanding my photography out from just portraits to landscape and travel photography in general, learning a new genera, letting it influence my work in other areas, and generally figuring out my photographic voice a little more.