Join me on my new site...as I launch my new business!

I have very exciting news to share with you. 

I officially graduated from Blogger and have fully redesigned a site on Squarespace. Same URL: www.aseriesofadventures.com, but a whole new world! I'm using MailChimp to manage a newsletter for readers...so please head to the site and sign up. I want to stay in touch. Big changes are coming. Big.

The most exciting news is that I've teamed up with Danielle LaPorte to bring one of the first-ever Desire Map experiences to Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm designing in-person workshops and overnight retreats, as well as building an eCourse soon to be open to anyone and everyone!

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know how transformative The Desire Map has been in my life. I'm on a mission to help others discover their own Core Desired Feelings and live their most adventurous life. This is going to be epic. Join me on the new site, get on the newsletter, and stay tuned!

Love,
me

Coming Soon: Mediterranean posts + photos

Hello everyone! It's been a couple weeks since I've posted here...and that's because I've been on a travel writing assignment for The Avid Cruiser. I sailed the Mediterranean with a cohort of journalists from all over the world, accompanied by a representative of Holland America's PR office. It was an unforgettable experience.






If you missed my earlier post about this experience, or if you didn't follow along with my daily Live Voyage Report articles, know that I'll replicate all of the photos and articles on this site. It may take me a while to wrap it up, but it will end up very similar to my posts about my last Avid Cruiser assignment in Alaska.





In the meantime, I posted in real time on Instagram and Twitter. You can also see photos in my Flickr album. Stay tuned for wanderlusty goodness!

Love,
me

72 Hours in New Orleans

OCD may travel, but she never takes a holiday.

Technically I'm in The Big Easy for a week, but the fun bit before I switched gears into attending a work conference was three days and some change. My younger brother lives here, working as a History teacher in the KIPP charter school system after two years with Teach for America. The great part about having a friend living in the city you're visiting is your adventures aren't limited to the downtown core that you explore on foot. Ryan and I cooked up a few adventures that the average tourista in New Orleans would never have experienced.

He took me to his favorite all-day breakfast joint, Jimmy J's Cafe.

While at dinner the first night I was here, we flipped through the local indie weekly. We found two festivals that sounded adventurous and took us out of the city. One night we traveled an hour away to Luling, Louisiana to check out the 35th Annual Alligator Festival. Thirty-five years celebrating alligators. Let that sink in for a minute. Oh, The South, you're adorable. There was an ironic lack of alligators in attendance at the festival, which was disappointing. There were, however, plenty of alligators on the food vendor menus.

America is the great cultural melting pot, right?

Since we were in rural swampland Louisiana (no seriously, we drove straight through a swamp to get to Luling), the food was authentic and fascinating. I've been to the south many many times, but I felt like an anthropologist reading the menu: Alligator burgers, alligator sausage poboy, shrimp poboy, fried (un-named) fish poboy, alligator sausage on a stick, jambalaya, bbq pulled pork, crab cakes, beans and rice, bread pudding, crawfish pasta, chicken and andouille gumbo, hot boiled turkey necks, crab boudin balls with creole mustard, bbq ribs, sweet potato cookies, praline cupcakes, and you get the idea.

Small town festivals are a blur of Americana and thick accents.

The website promised "HAND CRAFTED merchandise with Alligator images. Massproduced items, including T-Shirts and posters, will not be allowed for sale. We hope to provide the festival attendees with high quality alligator-related souvenirs." My hopes were high. Low-quality alligator-related souvenirs are the worst. Alas, 85% of the "craft" vendor booths were filled with random Made In China bric-a-brac. Oh well. The organic soap maker, you know there's one at every festival market, was legit. Also, this guy was really the only artist (pictured below). He'll paint a custom piece for anyone who asks, just name the animal you'd like hanging on your dining room wall.

Seafood art on reclaimed swamp wood. Because Louisiana.

The next night we drove nearly 90 minutes outside New Orleans to the town of Houma, Louisiana (which we insisted on calling "hummus" with a hard H, naturally). Houma is home to a two-day music festival called The Best of the Bayou. When I realized Better Than Ezra (from Baton Rouge, local boys made good) was headlining I was 15 all over again and rocking out to "Good" on my Discman. I've seen them a few times in Salt Lake City over the years of touring, I still own all their cds, still know every word, and still think Kevin Griffin is pure sex. It was an awesome show. They played two full hours for a happily sweaty crowd packed into the humid Houma Main Street. For free!!

I loved you then. I love you now. Marry me.

The next night we indulged in the quintessential, cliche-for-good-reason, New Orleans evening: Dinner and jazz on Frenchman Street. We ate at my brother's favorite restaurant Marigny Brasserie, a place we visit every time I'm here, and then wandered until we heard jazz. That's one thing I love about the French Quarter, you're guaranteed no less than 20 musical options in a 10 block radius. Just keep walking and stop when it interests you. We ended up at Maison and really enjoyed the set.

Hardworking local musicians passed the tip jar and said goodnight after a two hour set.

Assorted wanderings and memories written with light...

Two kinds of people in this world: Bourbon Streeters and Magazine Streeters. Period. 

Dining in the Quarter...there's nothing quite like those floor-to-ceiling window/doors. Distinct and stunning.

I had a great time adventuring around Southern Louisiana with Ryan and his tan line...but it's time for me to get to work.

My home / office at the moment. The Roosevelt, now a Waldorf Astoria property, was built adjacent to the French Quarter in 1893. It's alright, I guess. I mean, it's no airport Marriott.

More exploring. More architecture. More foodie adventures. More Big Easy goodness over the next three days. Perhaps another blog post, perhaps not. I leave for Europe (writing a Live Voyage Report for Avid Cruiser as I cruise the Mediterranean) two days after I arrive home in Salt Lake City. Join me! Follow my new adventures on the Avid Cruiser website, or always on Instagram and Twitter in real time. 

Love and lagniappes, 

me

Living the Dream: Holland America Press Trip to the Mediterranean

Regular readers will remember that in May I traveled to Alaska on assignment for The Avid Cruiser. I sailed the breathtaking Inside Passage courtesy of Princess Cruises. Through daily articles posted on the Live Voyage Report website, I was able to take for a test drive my life's dream of being a travel writer + photographer. Predictably, I was hooked. It was difficult work, late nights, early mornings, and not at all a leisurely cruising experience. I told Ralph (aka the avid cruiser himself) I would not only do it again, I would do it every day for the rest of my life. He was impressed with my work and invited me to join The Avid Cruiser team with an open invitation to future Live Voyage Report opportunities. Coolest job interview ever? Nailed it.

The view from this office cannot be beat.

Well...I have exciting news! My next opportunity to contribute a Live Voyage Report is as a member of a nine-person press corps sailing the Mediterranean with Holland America in October. It felt surreal enough writing from Alaska and realizing...dude, I'm like living my dream right now. So the sensation coursing through my body as the Holland America PR office continues to refer to me as a journalist...is nothing short of euphoric. Hell yes. Journalist. Me. Travel writer. Good at it. Doing it. Done.

It reminded me of a lesson I learned in preparing for Alaska: You are because you say you are. Jen Sincero makes a brilliant point in her book You Are a Badass. I'm paraphrasing, but she basically says: You want to be a photographer...but you don't take pictures. What sense does that make? Conversely, you take a lot of photos and it's a significant passion for you, but you say you're not a photographer? Why the hell not? What's a photographer then? Someone who takes pictures. So go do that. Say you're a photographer. Aren't you? Then go do it some more. You are whatever you say you are simply because you said it...then did something about it. 

Dear Universe, I am a journalist. I am a traveling storyteller who makes beautiful photographs and will share all of that badassery with all of you in just a couple weeks. I'm rocking an international data plan on my iPhone, so feel free to follow along in real time on Instagram and Twitter, and be sure to read the daily Live Voyage Reports.

However, before I jet off to Italy, Spain, France, and Tunisia, I'm going to New Orleans. Next week I'll visit my brother who's made a home in The Big Easy. Same situation with realtime goodies posted to Instagram and Twitter. I also hope to post about the New Orleans trip on this site while I'm there. Stay tuned!

Love and living the dream,
me

I Failed! Also Titled: Why My First Rejection Letter Is So Awesome.

Look, ma! I got a rejection letter from Porter Fox at Nowhere Magazine. Nowhere is hands down one of my favorite travel writing publications. It's my niche. Ever since I found them, I've felt like I could actually do this. I could travel and write and be me and carve out even a tiny resting place in the galaxy of travel writing. If you've scrolled through more than a thousand "Best Of..." "Top 7 Ways You Know You're Canadian..." "Five Reasons Thailand Is Better Than Seattle..." click-bait links, and you're as bored with them as I am, Nowhere is for you. Literary travel writing. Storytelling. Experiential travel at its best. Light on the overwrought lists. That's Nowhere. I submitted an entry to their Spring Travel Writing Contest and this is the response that I (and obviously countless others in the BCC field) received:

Why is failure exciting? Why am I so stoked to get rejected by a publication I revere? Because a travel writer who failed is still a travel writer. That sting is a far better feeling than sitting in my living room at my laptop wishing I had the guts to knock on Nowhere's door. People that I respect in the industry read my work. They didn't love it more than the work of the 11 people listed in the email, but that's not the point. It immediately brought to mind the infamous Theodore Roosevelt quote that inspired the title of Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly:

"It's not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is in the arena. Whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

Love and many more failures to come,
me