About Vignettes
I consider myself lucky. I‘m fortunate enough to do something I love, while doing something else I love even more. Sure, it’s not without its stressors or tense moments, but working as a traveling designer, I realize that I certainly can’t complain about where my work allows me to go.
As a result of all the time I’ve spent traveling, especially time spent on my own on flights or on trains, on walks back home thinking about my work or time abroad, missing my fiancée and wondering how she’s doing, I often wonder whether anyone else feels like they’re never really ever only in one place, but mentally exist somewhere in-between. Perhaps it’s a result of moving from place to place rapidly in a short period of time, but I always feel like, though I only ever exist physically in one location, I exist mentally in another, somewhere between here and there, wherever there is — a memory of a place I’ve recently visited, or a feeling that I’m a visitor in my own country. It’s not easy to pin-down, but it’s a feeling that makes me look at other people on the street or in their cars and ask myself whether they have ever felt the same way. Have they ever traveled outside of their country? Have they ever felt like they carry the mindset of another place with them and are slowly trying to adapt to where they are without really wanting to change that mindset?
It’s very easy to get caught-up in the romanticism of it all, so, to keep things from getting too existential (and perhaps also to ensure that I don’t sound too crazy), I’ve decided to write down a few of my wondering thoughts about living in different places around the world as a series of small “vignettes.” These will probably just take the form of observations about different things I’ve thought about, no different from what anyone else in my position might be thinking if they were there, but I hope it lends some insight into how people work and live all over the world, and how, no matter how far apart people may be, how similar we all are when you really get down to it.
