… the writing, artwork and journalism I have been producing since 2006. These collections encompass travel blogging and volunteering projects I documented while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova; my art portfolio that includes painting, drawing and sewing projects; short stories, poetry, articles and thought pieces written to promote social activism.
Welcome to my portfolio!
INSPIRATION
“…I have often been tempted to put forth the paradox that any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is only in a few, and those highly favored, that we can pass a few hours agreeably. For, if we only stay long enough, we become at home in the neighborhood. Reminiscences spring up, like flowers, about uninteresting corners. We forget to some degree the superior loveliness of other places, and fall into a tolerant and sympathetic spirit which is its own reward and justification.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson, The Pocket R.L.S. Being Favourite Passages From the Works of Stevenson, 1908
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“… you don’t ever really need a good reason to go anywhere; rather, go to a place for whatever happens when you get there.”
– Rolf Potts, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
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“‘My poor, dear boy!’ observed Glenalmond. ‘My poor, dear and, if you will allow me to say so, very foolish boy! You are only discovering where you are; to one of your temperament, or mine, a painful discovery. The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred millions of me, all different from each other and from us; there’s no royal road, we just have to sclamber and tumble.'”
– Robert Louis Stevenson, The Pocket R.L.S. Being Favourite Passages From the Works of Stevenson, 1908
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“The grown-ups advised me to put away my drawings of boa constrictors, outside or inside, and apply myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. This is why I abandoned, at the age of six, a magnificent career as an artist. I had been discouraged by the failure of my drawing Number One and of my drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.”
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, 1943; translated by Richard Howard, 2000
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“But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world – all, too, travellers with a donkey; and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson, The Pocket R.L.S. Being Favourite Passages From the Works of Stevenson, 1908 (p. 181)
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“This was the way he had to go; he had no choice. He had never had any choice. He was only a dreamer.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
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“You should never let a day go by without taking at least one note, he insisted, even if the fact noted seemed to be totally lacking in importance.”
– Michel Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory
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“I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on a map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe that friend will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that live around him, and then that’s almost as good as being there yourself. You’re in several places at once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the farther away your friends are, and the more spread out they are, the better your chances of going safely through the world…”
– Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox
Sundry Travels 