“I asked the universe for a shake-up,” she said, “something to get me a little uncomfortable. Well, you know what they say. Be careful what you wish for.”

One day, as my boredom peaked, I went to a wine bar in the late afternoon. I ordered a glass of Georgian wine, sat alone in the courtyard, then spent the next hour scribbling and scrawling in my notebook: Why am I here?

Two of the greatest months of my life, distilled into three simple verbs: Read, write, walk.

A saga concludes.

The epiphany has landed.

This isn’t going how I wanted.

Things are about to get bumpy.

“Matt is 38, biologically, but has the motor of a six-year-old. This trip, every morning I’d wake up and hear him already in the kitchen, wide awake, manically preparing breakfast or backpacks for the day because let me tell you: When you’re with Matt, as soon as you get up, it is time to GO.”

“I mentioned I came to put space between me and my job, and space I gained. Sometimes you miss something, other times you look back neutrally. For me, I was baffled that I even had the job in the first place.”

Would you like a psychic lap-dance for $60?

“As we walked, I told him of my discontent in New York. ‘I just feel when I’m there, I’m stifled,’ I said. ‘Like, I’m not creative, I’m not inspired. I don’t have good ideas. But when I go elsewhere, things seem to erupt.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Because we’re hunter-gatherers.’”

“I feared that I was losing my spark. I felt like I’d given up on my dreams. Sitting on my couch at night, watching some TV show, I wondered whether I’d ever be happy again.

Well, I have good news. It turns out the world is pretty forgiving.”

I finally meet the fishermen.

“Now, I’ve never met a card-carrying communist before. I’ve just heard about them on TV. And so I asked him if I could ask about it.” 

“When it comes to travel tips, I usually wait to get to know someone before sharing, or give them morsels.

That’s because I am a Gatekeeper.”

“We got into the car and you could feel it. The vibes were right. There’s perhaps no greater feeling than knowing with full and immutable conviction that you are in the right place at the right time. And here is where things peaked.”

“The world saw I was getting a little too lyrical. And so it brought me Jairo.”

“(Saramago’s book), to me at least, is less of a travel guide and more a treatise on how to be a traveler. Eventually I will recount all of his insights, but one of the main ones is:

A traveler must have intuition.”

A story of insomnia.

“I’m a big believer in signs and omens. So you can imagine my concern when, just days before boarding a plane for Copenhagen, I bought a book about Denmark and opened up to this…”