22 Comments

I am so glad you are forgiving and looking for a new start. Not forgiving eventually takes us down a path of ill health and further sullies our character as only things counterintuitive to our health can come out of anger and bitterness. Why spoil our future?! Wish you much luck on your new journey with your best friend, your wonderful writing!👍🏼

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Thank you, Anu! Also, I love how you frame my writing as "my best friend."

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You are most welcome. Writing comes from within and our Self, so always an authentic and a loyal friend:)

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Hey, I’m from Vancouver and have many of the same problems you do. Maybe we’re a certain type…a type that moves, that gets stomped by the CRA, that has relationships blow up spectacularly…

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Hopefully we can move forward with a community of ‘our type.’ In difficult times, it feels good when people relate.

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I call us “goers”. We’re the people who leave. I’m trying to learn how to stay, at least for a time. Freaking hard.

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I get that. Whenever I try and stay, something happens that makes me float between two places so I’m never truly grounded.

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We even have the same governments dismantling our lives. What a world.

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Plans? Plans get in the way of joy, serendipity, and adventure.

Avoid them at all costs.

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Delighted to be here at the start of this next chapter in your journey.

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Thank you, Michael!

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Apr 23Liked by Nolan Yuma

Go with the flow is also our favourite way of travelling. We always book the first hotel in advance and all the rest depending on circumstances. The advantage id you never have to rush to your next booking. Just walking around in an unknown city to inhale the atmosphere and sometimes sniffing good kitchen brings you to surprising destinations. So yes you are on the right way.

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Time to follow my nose!

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I relate to a lot of this Nolan - although I am not a third culture kid - I spent most of my twenties, thirties and now forties, living in 10 + countries and navigating similar ideas about travel, home, purpose, and journeys. I have also been deceived and let down by people I love multiple times along the way and I think not feeling rooted anywhere adds a magnifying glass to whatever comes up in that process, especially when you have moved country for a relationship.

I also agree that all this leads to a feeling of no narrative arc, or sense of linear journey, at best a very choppy one. Since a few years ago, and after quite a few rock bottoms, I have re-examined my relationship with stability and my home country, which I have found very healing.

I have since moved abroad again and still enjoy travelling the world, but I do it more slowly and with much less lightness than in the past. I think when you travel a lot, there is less romantic sheen to it and home and community have become equally if not more interesting to me in recent years.

Look forward to reading more of your thoughts.

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Catriona, thank you for your response. I have always been a fan of slow and deep travel, especially when I focus on the present. Somewhat paradoxically, this deep immersion into the journey and moment happens in moments of levity. I wonder if my current approach differs in the lightness.

I also feel allure to home and community, though. Maybe it's age or the amount of travel. Yet, that romantic lens is thick with me. But I'm a romantic (possibly problematic, but also enjoyable) in most aspects of life.

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Hi Nolan - thanks too for your reply. I need to read more of your writing I think to give you a proper reply - as I don't want to assume! :) But my initial take - travel is over-romanticised in our culture and also in literature. I have found so much romance in building homes over the past few years. I would also say I am a romantic but what feels romantic to me has changed based on my experiences around the world. It's an interesting topic!

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May 3Liked by Nolan Yuma

This one is giving my brain too much food for thought lol.

thanks Nol!

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I'm excited to follow your journey through travel therapy. Don't forget to turn towards west Europe on your way back, wave wave! It's a beautiful area too, only maybe more expensive. :) I'm a fellow planster too. I leave lots of rooms for serendipity. I seek them!

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I wonder if this "planster" lifestyle comes naturally (or forcefully) to people like us who are part of various cultures. And yes, I'll turn towards Western Europe on my way back!

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I never thought bout that. Or is it people like us tend to seek out even more cultures? Via travels and migrations and just plain living in foreign places ...

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That’s definitely the case for many of us.

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To the start of (another) journey! I'm a planner with my writing, but a planster with travel. Life, unlike the plots of novels I'm asking people to buy, should be messy.

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