My First Travelversary

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

That's right, it's my first anniverary on the road. June 25, one year ago I left Calgary to start this thing and here I am, June 25th again.

It feels strange, my life is moving fast now. Nine more days in Saudi and then it's back to Turkey where I'll get married and make the next big change in my life. I'm looking forward to it.

I've always kind of felt like since I graduated high school in 2000 I've let my life kind of plateau without making any forward movement. Even though I got a university degree, went to SE Asia and fell in love for the first time, I always felt like I was standing still.

But as of a year ago, I'm moving forward again. I've traveled a lot, and in that travel I've managed to make a lot of (in my view) much needed changes in the way I think of myself and run my life. I feel more confident these days, and I've started trying to affect my future instead of just looking forward to it. I still struggle with some things, but the forward momentum is back and I feel good about that.

So what does the next year hold? Well obviously there's marriage. The plan is to work the next school year in Istanbul to save some money. Saudi has helped get all my accounts back into black, but I still don't have a whole lot of extra cash to work with. I think I found a well-paying job in Turkey so 10 months of that should put me in pretty good shape to travel a bit more with Sadife and then take the next step forward and move to Vancouver to finally start my career in film.

That's the plan as it stands right now anyway. My plans have been pretty fluid though since this trip started so I'm not really sure if they'll be the same one year (or one month) from now, but I feel pretty good about them. We'll see what happens.

As for the immediate plan, I am off to a place called Mada'in Saleh tomorrow. It's an ancient city carved into mountains much like Petra. In fact, it was made by the same civilization. It looks pretty spectacular and it's the one thing I'm excited to do before I leave Saudi. I will take lots of pictures!

So I think that's it for me today. I'm looking forward to seeing a few of you guys in Istanbul for my wedding and the rest of you I'll see in another year or so when I get back to Canada!