Origins

After I had been here in Mozambique for about two weeks I began plans for initiating a biweekly newsletter in which I would transcribe a few highlighted experiences along with any associated thoughts or feelings that I might have felt compelled to share with all my family and friends back home. This mass means of contact was to be an ongoing literary work, serving as both a window allowing any curious acquaintance a peek into the cross cultural conventions of my new-found bush-life and as a sort of diary to record for the future an experience I felt sure would stand out in the course of my life as something pivotal and permanent; an inalterable change that, if not insuring me a path of novel significance, at least would grant me access, perhaps (but not necessarily) in the form of clarity, to the secret of what I consider to be the greatest achievement a human being can attain: a life well-lived; or as currently like to think of it: life abundant. I suppose I might admit that I had even imagined, very very briefly and under the influence of an inflated and rather whimsical state of mind, that I might even use the material from this dynamic and insightful newsletter in a book I could perhaps someday write (I would defensively backstep this last admission but if I allowed digression for every self-conscious objection that came to mind this article would never say anything).

Four months and several failed attempts later I am posting this blog. The reason I've opted to blog instead of sending out emails can partly be found here, but mostly I'm thinking blogs are more sustainable and available and I don't want to gunk up people's inboxes. I will hopefully have a number of stories and reflections up here soon, I have many already in the works. One of the first posts I plan to write will be an explaination as to why it was so hard for me to write updates on my trip. Not so much because I feel terribly guilty about keeping everyone in the dark about my wonderful exciting adventures all this time, but because the struggle to write an update letter was actually one of the most interesting conflicts I've yet encountered over here. I'm trying to hint that this wont be a terribly interesting blog and I don't want your hopes higher than they should be because for some probably unhealthy psychological reason your approval is important to me. I will probably also lie alot in this blog.