30 Days 30 Stories

My old friend casually drops this simple line,

“So tell me a story…”

After nine months of traveling, I have a few stories.

But when asked point blank, my mind goes blank.

It weirdly feels like I don’t have that many stories.

But when I’m flipping through my photo album, each developed negative starts a singular story that inevitably leads to a never-ending tale that goes and goes and goes.

I start one story and soon my words wander from one country to the next, from this friend to that stranger, from a close call to a life lesson, stringing together seemingly unrelated experiences that are somehow the same story.

Often I don’t know where the story starts and where it ends.

A story begins with one experience in this one country but before I talk about that story, I have to backtrack and give some context because it’s important. Then the story detours down a metaphorical cobblestone back street before circling back to the original story which turns the page into a whole new story that’s still very much the same story.

My trip is just one long, nine-month story.

Want to hear it?

Because I have to tell it.

I have to flip through my film photo albums, scroll through iPhone videos, open drone folders on my hard drives and re-read my journals.

I have to tell the stories.

There’s gold. There’s life. There’s perspective. There’s truth, pain, sadness, laughter, joy and a wide spectrum of multi-language emotions, lessons and experiences that can’t not be told.

There are more than a few adventures from some of the most beautiful destinations on the planet.

There are lessons I learned, some I didn’t and ones I need to revisit.

If I don’t go back, they’ll never come out.

So I’m diving in, time-traveling back, typing the words, assembling the clips and editing the photos.

Every day, for 30 days.

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