I haven’t been feeling the best the past few days. I’m not sure if it was because last week was a particularly good week that I had to compensate for it by having a crappy one right after. Or perhaps it was Monday blues gone bad that extended all the way until Thursday. Or perhaps my body was operating mainly on the seven cakes that I ate last week and the sudden dip in the number of cake consumption severely affected my mood.
Anyway, I can’t tell the cause for certain, but I know for sure what the effects are: sulky face and muddy mind with a severe writer’s block. Good thing for me, I have a surefire way which helps to alleviate this: reading my favourite travel blog the Everywhereist.
I had always thought that I was a good reader. When I was younger, I would spend hours reading a novel, absorbing every single word that the author wrote. I would feel a sharp pang of disappointment whenever I finished a novel and would be begging for more words. These days, it is really hard to keep my concentration at one place. I would start walking around after two pages of reading, or maybe browse through different things on the net instead of focusing on a webpage. Ironically, I find myself dreading reading most travel blogs, not because they are not great, but because I may have developed some kind of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).
But the Everywhereist is different. Geraldine’s writing style makes me hang on to every word she writes. Not many people know this, but the Everywhereist is one of the main reasons that this blog even exists in the first place. I got very bored previously writing a travel blog where I spelled out my itinerary for the day, the tourist attractions that I saw, etc. But reading Geraldine’s blog gives me the reassurance that I am not alone in being fascinated by little things encountered during travels and not the normal touristy stuff.
It is normal, for example, to marvel at the amount of trash accumulated at Notting Hill Carnival instead of the costume parade.
It is also perfectly acceptable to be a seasoned traveller and get lost all the time. And sometimes when you are lost, you see the best things.
Although I don’t think Geraldine is quite as childish as I am…
Her writing is genuine and honest. It is very refreshing to see her no-ad policy since to me that adds credibility to her opinion about a place and I can be very sure that everything she wrote was based on her own experiences and not some staged thoughts driven by the money she earned from the sponsorship. To me, she seems to be thinking out loud in her posts and good for her, her thoughts happen to be very eloquent.
Some of my favourite posts of the Everywhereist include:
The Cemetery in Amalfi: A First Failed Attempt
Horrific Temptations and the Golden Gate Bridge
And a lot others… You can basically randomly pick a post, and they would most likely be worth reading.
Bottomline is, I want to thank Geraldine for being herself in her writing, for being an inspiration without knowing. If you ever come across this post, just know that you have made a difference in someone’s life, in your own way.
For the rest of you, check out this awesome travel blog. If anything, it is a good cure for writer’s block syndrome and ADD.
(Oh and of course, Everywhereist was named one of TIME’s 25 Best Blogs of 2011.)
missruslee 