Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • Domino Days

      “I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.” — Françoise Sagan

      At some point in our lives we must turn our best intentions into action and do the things we claim we want to do. Otherwise we are adding our voice to the choir of quiet desperation Thoreau warned us about. Playing a bigger part in the play of life naturally leads to more things to talk about, which is nice in conversation, but it also leads us to a string of ever-larger dominos disguised as days. The thrill is in seeing how big we can grow our days, simply built upon the one before.

      There’s nothing wrong with lining up a row of our days of like size, one after the other, for a time that suits us. When we raise children, every day feels like the same-sized day of changing diapers, making lunches, helping with homework, driving them to practice, teaching them how to drive and suddenly(!) moving them to college. We’re simply helping them line up their own domino days, along with our own. It turns out those days are growing in scope too, we were just to busy to realize it at the time.

      There are days when it feels like we’ll never topple those larger dominos, but each incremental day builds towards something more substantial still. Our unbroken string of days pays off with an ever-bigger life. It’s the gaps that force us to start all over again. Mind the gap, as the Brits say, and step into the next thing. Soon we’re really going somewhere.

      The blog you’re reading now (thank you) is a string of dominos disguised as daily posts taking both of us somewhere bigger than where we started. When we view our writing and our lives in this way, we begin to see that it’s all about building and sustaining momentum, thus increasing our contribution for the days beyond this one. Growth is inevitable in both our writing and our lives when we just keep pushing a little further along.

    • The Experience-Collecting Years

      “We all have at least the potential to make more money in the future, we can never go back and recapture time that is now gone. So it makes no sense to let opportunities pass us by for fear of squandering our money. Squandering our lives should be a much greater worry.” ― Bill Perkins, Die with Zero

      I saw an old friend at the local hardware store and caught up with him while juggling my handful of fasteners and domestic life enhancers. ’tis the season for stumbling upon old friends, as every errand seems to offer a harvest of good conversations with acquaintances from different parts of my life. When people get out of their homes more often serendipity offers opportunities we don’t get when holed up behind locked doors. Life is best experienced together, don’t you think?

      My friend in the hardware store asked me where I was traveling to next, thinking of me as a world traveller. In fact, most every friend I see asks me this question. Perhaps I overshare on social media, or perhaps they don’t travel much themselves. Who knows? I feel I don’t travel nearly enough, and that’s a driving force for more travel still. I view myself as a collector of experiences more than passport stamps, but the two tend to go hand-in-hand, mostly because if you want to experience something like climbing the Tower of Pisa or to navigate the labyrinth of the four quarters of the Old City in Jerusalem, you’ve got to travel to them.

      According to the Pew Research Center, only 11% of Americans have traveled to ten or more countries. I’m fortunate to be well past ten, and have a bucket list of countries I’d like to add to the list in my healthy, experience-collecting years. Once we’ve acquired just enough money and time to collect experiences (and it’s often a matter of prioritization), the only other currency to consider is our health. And friend, we aren’t getting any younger. With many experiences, it’s now or never. A Canadian friend, who travels far more than me, has a strategy to go to the farthest, most challenging places now, because when he’s older he won’t be able to do it. That seems pretty logical to me.

      We all have some idea of what a full life means for us. I admire people who are happy staying within the community they were born in, living a full and meaningful life within those borders, but for some of us that’s not quite enough. For we are nomads and adventurers, ambassadors and explorers. The experiences we seek aren’t meant to be for bragging rights at cocktail parties and local hardware stores, the experiences fill some void we feel within us, making us more whole.

      Our handful of experiences offers a return on investment in memories and perspective that is invaluable as we navigate the rest of our lives. In ten years what will the world look like? Will we even be able to cross certain borders? If we defer, will we be able to walk on ancient cobblestone roads or hike up icy trails in that evasive “someday, when”? There’s an opportunity cost to saying no to travel, just as there’s a financial cost to saying yes. I’m not advocating being irresponsible with financial currency, just don’t be too frugal with those health and time currencies. The best experience-collecting time is usually now.

    • Survival Skills

      “That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      “A ship in a harbor is safe but that is not what ships are built for” — John A. Shedd

      I met with several old work friends for lunch yesterday. We haven’t worked together in years, because I left their industry to try something completely different and never looked back. As with old friends we picked up right where we left off, caught each other up on other people, and stepped back into our present lives as we separated. I remember the uncertainty of leaving the industry I was in with those folks, and the climb that lay ahead of me in the industry I stepped into from there. Life offers us plenty of opportunities for growth, we just have to be bold enough to step into the unknown.

      As it turned out, later that evening I went to a holiday party with my current coworkers (I’ve been there a month now). One veteran asked me how it was going and was confused when I said I was still drinking from the firehose. It never occurred to him that my move to this new company would be full of massive change for me, because he’d been comfortably doing the same thing for years. He’s reached a level of expertise in a company that he wants to be in until he retires, and kudos to him for reaching it. I’m inclined to leap back into the unknown now and then. Call me a risk taker or reckless, but for me life is best experienced just out of my comfort zone. As soon as I get comfortable I get bored.

      That doesn’t mean that leaps should be haphazard or foolhardy. We must acquire and then leverage the survival skills we’ve developed in our lives or we’ll sink into the abyss after our leap. Organizations don’t hire people without the skills they need to fill a gap, but they take a chance on people who may have a gap in their experience but otherwise have the skills. Too often it’s us who lack the imagination to see that a gap isn’t a chasm. We may grow into the next version of ourselves simply by leaning into it. The people who stumble are usually looking backwards too much.

      Our lives up to this point have been an accumulation of survival skills that allow us to function and thrive in the complex environment we choose to live in. Where can we sail our ship next? Writing and travel are my personal call of the wild, and the small steps I’ve taken with each are merely an accumulation of skills. You might have a different call of the wild and other skills begging to be tested. The thing is, we’ve heard the call, and we’re often we’re more ready to answer it than we give ourselves credit for. Is that safe harbor really enough? Asking the question usually reveals the answer that was awaiting our attention.

    • A Path to Better

      “Don’t surrender your agency and revert to the numbing day-to-day grind of compliance. You can make things better.” — Seth Godin, This Is Strategy

      If you’ve ever been to the American Southwest you may have been warned about flash floods. It might be beautiful right where you are, but a downpour elsewhere upstream takes all that water that can’t seep gently into the hardened earth into a flow to the low. That in turn creates a rush of water into stream beds and rivers, which turn the clear water muddy and confused. And then the water begins to rapidly rise, sweeping anything or anyone caught in it into the confusion. The only thing to do in such an event is to climb up as high as possible and hold on to something solid.

      There are different kinds of grind. The positive grind is working hard at our craft with a healthy dose of hustle and focus. We know what needs to be done and we get after it. Writing this blog post is one expression of getting after it for me, hopefully the first of a string of positive expressions towards making the most of the day.

      The negative grind is often felt on Sunday night when you know you’ve got to go to a job you hate the next morning. We go through the motions, follow the rules and generally become conditioned to stop caring. The negative grind is a complete surrender of agency. There are millions of people suffering through their days right now—we must not let it be our fate.

      It’s not easy to tear ourselves away from a negative grind when we don’t have a clear path to something positive. The trick is to scramble out of it to something better. This isn’t always easy when we have bills to pay and a routine that locks us into place, but we’ll be swept away with all the rest if we don’t climb immediately. Grab a lifeline and hold on until we find our footing, then take another step and another until we reach higher ground.

      That lifeline is found in positive anchors like writing, taking a class and exercise. It’s a lifeline to agency, which leads to that foothold to higher ground. When the grind begins to feel less clear, when the stream begins to get muddy and confused, we must feel the urgency to take control of our own situation. Ignore the apathy of the compliant and find a path to better. Knowing that we must keep climbing or be swept into the abyss.

    • A World Full of Curiosities

      “Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.” – Lovelle Drachman

      I’m at the tail end of a good book, the kind you can’t put down for the progress you might make reading just one more page. The kind you mourn the finish of as much as you celebrate it. The feeling that passes over me when I finish a great book is similar to how I feel the night before a long vacation comes to an end. You’ve loved the time spent on something worthwhile and expansive, but feel a bit melancholy that it’s over too soon. I suppose life gives us that lesson over and over again.

      Awaiting the finish is a stack of books all vying for my attention. Shall it be more fiction, or back to history, philosophy or science? It’s like going to the buffet line with a tiny plate—there’s only so much time and so much to read. And competing with reading are the holidays, a few movies and series I’ve meant to get to, and the ever-present call of the wild beckoning me to do something altogether bolder with my time.

      Being curious, and not judgmental is more than just a clever way to chat up a darts opponent (Ted Lasso), it’s a way to navigate life in a more enthralling way. Who doesn’t want to be enthralled by life? We ought to put the boring chapters aside more often in favor of the page-turners. Our time goes by either way, shouldn’t it be delightful?

      That brings us to this particular chapter of our lives, which may be fraught with as much boredom or enthrallment as we can handle as any of our previous chapters. Life is what we make of it, as we so often hear. We know that this world is full of curiosities that are simply awaiting our engagement with them. Who are we to ignore all of that by plodding along with blinders on?

    • Now on Bluesky

      Honestly, I long for the days when choosing a social media platform wasn’t a declaration of one’s political views. But here we are, and it feels like we’ll be here for some time. I quit that other platform just after the purchase and while it was still called something else. I’ve tried Mastodon and Threads in the time since, with mixed results, and now I’m trying Bluesky. To me it’s simply a place for someone to find my blog without the “obligation” of subscribing (I haven’t exactly made that easy either, but it should be cleaner now). So if you’re trying Bluesky and want to follow me there, you can find me at @nhcarmichael.bsky.social

    • A Bundle of Memories

      And the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
      And we’ll live a long life
      — Mumford & Sons, Ghosts That We Knew

      My vehicle turned 100K yesterday, which in itself indicates nothing more than time and mileage together. The very point where it digitally flipped from 99,999 to 100,000 was a point on Interstate 495 known for being a choke point. Sure enough, I was in traffic barely moving when the odometer flipped, and took a picture for posterity in the relative safety of not really moving much at all. If I’d had my druthers, my truck and I would have done 100K on epically beautiful roadways while circumnavigating the continent, but alas, most of us simply drive from here to there again and again. The location was appropriate for the places in the northeast I’ve driven to. And just like with any other birthday or anniversary or milestone achieved, I simply kept on going.

      Earlier on this same trip, while taking the train from New York to Boston, I looked out at the Thames River in New London, Connecticut as we crossed the bridge there. Just upstream I saw the Coast Guard Bears Sailing Center at Jacob’s Rock, which back in the days when I rowed was roughly the finish line for the 2000 meter course. Sitting on that train looking upstream at that spot, the entire race came back to mind in a flash, with a different version of me sitting in the five seat. We ended up losing that race when we stopped just short of the finish line. Call it home field advantage or an oversight on our part, either way I never got a Coast Guard shirt.

      The thing is, we often cross paths with the ghosts of who we once were as we navigate the world. The train track itself has carried many versions of me to and from New York, the stairs that I walked down this morning have known a quarter century of me as I’ve known each step. Every day is a milestone, every familiar path carries some older version of us we may revisit. Life is change and familiar routines, all rolled up into a bundle of memories. We may hold on tight to them or let them drift away until some random glance brings them back into view. ’tis best to give our ghosts a nod and keep on living this life in the now. One day it will be today’s version of us that will be the ghost. Just what will we think of it then?

    • Simplify

      My quest to simplify moves to the blog itself. It felt too heavy overall and less intuitive. This new theme brings it back to where it began—simply blog posts without all the excess. It’s a work in progress and will be refined over time, but always with the primary filter of “simplicity” dictating all choices.

      Back to regular blog posts later.

    • The Diplomat

      “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

      Every trip reminds me that we’re mostly all the same. Would that everyone travel more, that they too might learn this lesson. True, the popular tourist destinations are already crowded enough, but the lessons aren’t learned on a tour bus or cruise ship anyway. To know people we must meet them on their terms, where they live, without the sticker telling everyone which group we’re in.

      I am a diplomat without the pension plan. Wherever I go, I work to meet people halfway. That may be Rome or London now and then, but mostly it’s the person next to me on a train or a restaurant. I don’t know who they voted for most of the time (unless they’re wearing the uniform), but it honestly doesn’t matter anyway. The job of the diplomat is to build bridges, not to tear them down.

      Each day I work my craft. It’s not manipulation I practice, but the craft of reaching understanding and finding something in common with that human I’m interacting with. Most people reflect back that which we project onto them (the rest are narcissists or psychopaths—it helps to realize when you encounter them too). The diplomats are the ones who keep this fabric of humanity woven together. Someone’s got to do it.

    • The Pub Crawl

      A place like Dublin deserves a good pub crawl to really say that you’ve been there. Whether you drink or not isn’t the point, it’s the opportunity to immerse yourself into Irish culture and celebrate life all at once that makes a pub crawl a great experience. Of course, if you partake a few drinks can help one in that immersion business.

      The name “pub” is short for “public house”, which itself was used to differentiate them from private houses and thus able to serve alcohol. You’ll still see many a pub calling themselves a public house, and it brings us full circle back to the roots. Whatever you call them, they’ve become central community gathering places for generations, making them integral to our cultural history. I’ll drink to that!

      There are a few things one ought to seek out in a pub when choosing which of the hundreds in a place like Dublin to visit. For me, a bit of history counts for a lot. If I never get to Dublin again in my lifetime (and that would be a pity), then I’d want to get to a place with some history. No pub has more of that than Ireland’s oldest pub, The Brazen Head, a place that “has been a hostelry… since 1198. The present building was built in 1754 as a coaching inn.” The food was excellent and the Guinness was a perfect compliment. Walking around it, you feel you’re living your moment in its long history.

      Darkey Kelly’s isn’t quite as old as The Brazen Head, but it has its own rich history. “Darkey” Kelly was a brothel-keeper who was burned at the stake in Dublin in 1761 for witchcraft. She almost certainly wasn’t a witch, but there was evidence that she was a serial killer. Rough way to go for anyone, of course, and why did it always seem to be the women being burned at the stake? Anyway, the pub itself was lively and filled with music and conversation, everything you’d want in a pub. The Irish whiskey collection was the largest I’ve seen. And as a bonus the Ireland-New Zealand rugby match was on, capturing the enthusiastic attention of the locals. It was my favorite of the bunch.

      As a nightcap for the evening, The Old Storehouse, brought more live music with a young and active drinking crowd. In fact, noticeably younger. The later it gets, the younger the crowd gets. And that young crowd surprised me as they belted out the hits of the 70’s and 80’s as if they grew up with them )which of course they have, they were merely reminding me). The duo played to the crowd with far more rock and disco hits than traditional Irish music, but with a talented fiddle player sprinkling beautiful Celtic all over them.

      No trip to Dublin would be complete without at least a pass by The Temple Bar. It’s surely lovely to look at, but more than any other pub it’s geared towards the tourists, prices and all. Still, worthy of a quick visit, if only for the obligatory photo with it. After all, what’s a pub crawl without seeing and being seen with the most famous of them all?