Note: This post comes from a journal entry I wrote in May 2018. As I sit in the cafe where I’ve decided to spend the afternoon relaxing with a beer and decompressing from the past two weeks, I’m thankful to have a jacket. Cusco sits at 11,000 feet — twice…

Fourteen Lessons I’ve Learned From Five Years of Seasonal Work I’ve spent the past few years living in different places and working in different jobs. In 2017, I filed my taxes as a ski photographer in Colorado, a hiking guide in Alaska, and a deckhand on a sailboat in Hawaii. …

Ahhhh, New Year’s Resolutions. They come around every year, at that wonderful time at the beginning of January when we take stock of all the things we’ve failed to do in the year gone by. It’s an opportunity to make amends and change our ways. Like most people, I take…

I never had any formal training as a journalist. I’ve written blog posts, travel narratives and one-off freelance assignments for years — but I’ve never worked for a news publication or gone to journalism school. Paid work as a writer is hard to find, and I’ve spent many an evening…

Dirty thirty; it’s finally here. It’s an age that I’ve given very little thought to, though this morning it’s obviously on my mind. Like many people in their late twenties, I’ve said that age is just a number — one that doesn’t correlate to how I actually feel. But it’s…

LAHAINA, HAWAI’I — I live in a small, box-like room on the island of Maui, just three blocks from the beach. You probably have an image of this in your mind — palm trees gently swaying in the breeze, with the ocean quietly lapping at the soft sand into which…

LAHAINA, HAWAI’I — Rare are the days when my alarm doesn’t go off well before the sun rises, so a morning to sit, enjoy a cup of coffee, and relax is one that I cherish. Saturday morning found me enjoying the quiet of my communal living room, reading The Sixth…

At this point in my Instagram-consuming career, my feed is curated to the point where almost every image is a professionally composed photo of a beautiful natural destination. Yet recently, one stuck out from all the rest — a drone photo posted by the National Geographic account featuring three brightly-clad…

I move a lot. I love to travel, and the majority of my life can be packed up in a bag and carried on to the next place I’ll call home: a new town, brimming with possibility. The drill is familiar by now. I meet new people, scoping out acquaintances…