Before

One day left in Canada. Just a quick pause before I get going again. My laundry is rumbling in the next room. I was helpfully helped by the radiant Ariana, a 3-year-old belonging to my AirBNB hosts.

Weary to the bone. Droop-eyed. Screaming muscles. I’m walking 3+ miles/5km a day these days and “rude awakening” doesn’t begin to describe it after two years of sedentary life. It’s over 35 [...]

There’s a time when I know I just need to stop and write. It’s when I’ve updated Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and… Yeah, okay, there’s a blog post [...]

The uncalm before the nearly-here storm. Time to let all y’all know what’s going down in the world of Steff. My home is chaos. 80% of what I own has been offloaded or has been paid a deposit [...]

Well, folks, three weeks from today the heavy-lifting of prep work will finally be all over and I can say goodbye and thanks to people for a week, and then it’s off to live the life of my [...]

It’s nearly go-time. I’m not counting the days as often now because it’s scaring the crap out of me. It’s 28 days till I’m home-free and I give up my keys to the landlord.

When embarking on travels like these and getting stuck in a research phase, it's disheartening because it feels like momentum has stopped. But wrong! It’s the phase that has to happen before you [...]

A day of many deep breaths. And it won’t be the last. There’s a lot of anxiety in my mind these days. I’m saying goodbye to a whole way of life for something I’ve only tasted for a handful of [...]

I just choked up watching Anthony Bourdain eating in the Lyon episode of Parts Unknown. Wow, man. I’ve got this Europe bug bad. For the last three years since I moved to Victoria, I’ve worked [...]

I’ve had to wipe tears away just to see what I’m typing. Things are getting real faster than I had planned. You can’t understand this emotional whirlwind that is dismantling one’s life to set [...]