Howdy!  Today is my birthday and I’m preparing for a quick weekend trip to one of my favorite towns in the world (since the Euro is so low against the dollar at the moment).  Birthdays are a great day to celebrate life but also to take a step back.  So, I want to share some things with you, I guess a State of the Blog post.

a town with houses and mountains in the background

St. Gilgen, Austria (where I’m heading this weekend)

State of the blog

A reader contacted me a few weeks ago and, during our conversation, indicated that she admired how I always seemed to know the right thing to do and never seemed phased when things have gone wrong on the road and how she “wished she could travel like me”.

While I was flattered, I had to tell her not to believe all of it!  I don’t know everything about this, I don’t know everything about every program or the best hotel in every city.  I’m learning, just like all of you are.

I’ll say it again: I don’t know everything about travel.  I’ve made tons of mistakes.

On the road, in some of the nicest hotels and locations in the world, I’ve been: lonely, scared, depressed, broke, confused, bewildered, lost, you name it.  I even slept on a bench in St. Thomas one night during a mileage run that went terribly wrong.  Leaving Dallas for somewhere in the world where I don’t speak the language and/or don’t understand the customs is stressful for me, and it doesn’t fix anything!  Who I am when I’m at home is who I am when I’m on the road, and I imagine you’re the same way.  Traveling will not replace someone, it will not fix what’s missing in life.

Just a reminder that you’re reading a highly editorialized version of my life on this blog, simply because the happy and awesome stories tend to do better than the “I Went to This Place and Didn’t Really Enjoy It” or “I Just Don’t Want to Travel Right Now” ones.

I want to help more

So much of this blog has been pictures and stories about what I have done in various places.  Photography is a becoming a bigger and bigger passion in my life and I will always love sharing photos with you.  I also do really enjoy traveling and still want to share stories with you.  But I want to help more.  I want to tell you how I searched for the specific flights I chose and how I booked them.  I want to tell you what went wrong on trips so you can learn from my mistakes.  Most importantly, I want to feature: you, my readers.  I want to learn about where you’re from and share it with the world.  Look for an announcement very soon on that front.

 

I am today and will always remain thankful that you’ve stopped by my blog and have come along on some journeys with me.  In the year ahead, let’s go to where the world waits!

a man smiling for a picture

Your author

(EDIT: I received some pretty immediate feedback worried that I was depressed or something similar.  I’m fine!  I just wanted to break through the perception that I do everything right and all of my trips go perfectly every time and I know everything!)

 

Blessings,

Andy Luten
Dallas, Texas

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