I’m back!

Thank you to all of you who previously followed fithippietravels.blogspot.com and fithippieadventures.blogspot.com and encouraged me to return to blogging after an extended hiatus.  I suppose blogging is narcissistic by nature, but for me, it’s a way to stay linked with friends and family, and to connect with others who share similar experiences and interests.  Not only am I a collector of experiences, I’m one that loves to share them through story-telling with words and photography. 

Why now?

I recently retired from a life of service in the armed forces, so, for the first time in my adult life, I “own” my schedule.  I loved my time in unform, but my career consumed most of my emotional energy and focused my creative efforts on producing outcomes.  I felt a void in expressing my appreciation for beauty and excellence, to indulge my curiosity, and to pursue my love of learning without the goal of productivity.    

Why a public blog?

It can be awkward, and somewhat vulnerable, to share your life in a public forum, so why do it?  Until I left for bootcamp several decades ago, I didn’t know anyone who was raised differently from the way I was raised, so I didn’t even know that there were different ways to be raised.  Until I met women who worked outside the home in occupations other than nursing, teaching, or clerical work, I didn’t know there were other career options available to me.  Until I lived in another country, I didn’t know that there was another worldview other than American.  Until I went to college (graduate school really), I didn’t know there was a framework for critical thinking and that I could, and should, question and challenge dogma and social norms.  In a nutshell, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  My hope is that by sharing my eclectic, albeit limited, collection of life experiences, that I may introduce a different perspective to others.

Beyond staying connected and sharing a different perspective, blogging affords me a filter through which to recognize and appreciate the beauty and adventures woven into my everyday life.  In my previous blogging experiences, I developed a tendency to view mundane occurrences as a story waiting to be shared.  An ordinary thing that might happen every day ignited a quest to find out the context surrounding the common event and to create an interesting narrative from it.  Sometimes I succeeded, and oftentimes I fell short, but I enjoyed the mental exercise of creating stories all the same.  I hope you enjoy the stories and photos to come.