These are the places we visited in Greece, Turkey, and Albania

In our planning and daydreaming Erin had mentioned that one of the things she wants to do in her lifetime is to write a travel guide. We came across this awesome greek guy’s website where he basically has spent his life visiting all the greek islands and writing about them. It was pretty amusing and informative, and pretty much exactly what we were looking for.

A thought tickled me, and I realized with a shock what a brilliant idea it was. It was more of a decision than an idea, it was so perfect: to make travel guide websites. It’s the perfect life! To actually be able to do full-time what we are already obsessed with. Traveling, exploring and experiencing new places, utilizing photography and web design.

With a new zest for life, we are taking baby steps toward this dream of a career life. As an initial experiment, we have started a blog/travel guide for our home town and area. Our goal is to visit as many places as we can and compile travel info and things to do for youthful people travling on a college student’s budget. Our niche is outdoor adventure travel for the frugal nomadic type.

We are already familiar with our favorite activities and hang out locations, but how much fun will it be to explore and discover those places we aren’t familiar with! You can read and follow our adventures at nwolympicpeninsula.com

And it was like :O

And then it was like 8D

Only then was it able to appreciate itself, and it’s role as a finger. It also stopped bugging the fool out of all the other members who had been telling it all along that it was a finger and not an arm.

And before it lived happily ever after, it spent a good amount of time learning how to use it’s fingerly strengths and abilities that had gone neglected while it had been trying to be an arm. It lived a good and fruitful life in the freedom of being the member it was made to be.

The End

This is an excerpt from an attempted blog post, which was originally about Living a Traveler’s Lifestyle. My first attempt sounded rather like a college assignment, and the second attempt resulted in a rather dramatic telling of personal life struggles and victories. Ah, what would it be, to have the gift of balance?

Looking over both attempts at my post, I noticed a tragic lack of God’s truth in my questions and reasonings. Reconsidering the whole mess from a better perspective, something else snapped into understanding for me. I’ve been wrestling with a ‘faith block’. Not on a grand scale, but in the little things. How can a person trust God to have given His perfect Son to save their soul, but can’t bring themselves to trust Him in the random little things? How can you have faith for eternity but not for the moment?

To summarize my long-winded attempt at the “traveler’s lifestyle” post; I’ve discovered that I’m currently living the life I’ve believed I should want and be satisfied with, while my heart is withering away inside me despite my attempts to convince it that big dreams and whimsical adventures are too big and indefinite and impractical. My heart’s response to this is “EXACTLY!!” and I’d just keep arguing back. The real discovery here is that I’ve been living as the person I’ve believed I should be, and stifling the desires and strengths of the person I really am. Let me tell you, there is such liberation in accepting yourself as you are.

As I was pondering this new self acceptance, the realization dawned on me, that maybe my ‘faith block’ is because I’ve been trying to draw near to God as the person I thought I had to be, and I wouldn’t let go of it when God would work in me to strip it away, instead shrinking back from Him and not able to get any closer. This was one of those realizations that practically counts as a decision, because its so definitely true. He is so good. He waits for you, for when He knows the time is right, but it doesn’t stop Him from loving you the whole way, even during the times you are rejecting Him. Draw near to Him, beloved, and He will draw near to you.

My resolution to remind myself of this new direction (and my original point from the beginning) is to completely change my lifestyle, adopting the lifestyle of a traveller. What this means to me is living with fewer possessions, less vanity, and less entitlement. And of course, traveling more. Not that I will never settle into a home, but that I will place less value on securing a comfortable ‘nest’ full of possessions and security. Just like the Israelites lived as nomads in tents as a reminder of the promised land, I want to ‘travel light’ through life as a reminder not to settle for comfort, and not to be anything less or different than what I’m meant to be. I have yet to discover exactly what that entails, but I am now on my way!

(Garage sale, anyone?)

• View my TripAdvisor profile
• Create your own travel map or travel blog

Having worked with TripAdvisor enough at work, I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to actually sign up with a personal account. I suppose there is no motivation to, since you can view all the reviews and information you like without an account, unless you are a frequent traveler and like to leave reviews. But a smart move on TripAdvisor’s part was to team up with Facebook’s Instant Personalization campaign – now I really want my own TripAdvisor account to create my own Personalized Travel Map and view all my Facebook friend’s Travel Maps. A good and effective marketing move.

That is the beauty of web design and development… there is always more to learn, always something new to discover!

Alfred
alfredapp.com
Works basically like Spotlight on Mac, but also searches sites like google and wikipedia and twitter. Still in beta.

Dropbox
dropbox.com
Online file storage. You can share or access your files from any computer.

Evernote
evernote.com
Note keeper. Take text notes, record audio notes, take a photo of a post-it note, organize it. It’s rad.

Jing
jingproject.com
Makes taking and sharing screenshots and videos easy.

Grooveshark
grooveshark.com
Works like Pandora, except you can upload your own music, and you can actually create and save playlists.

Tinysong
tinysong.com
Works like tinyurl, except you enter the name of a song, and it generates a tiny url to that song on Grooveshark.

Delicious
deilcious.com
Online bookmark organizer. Straight forward and easy.

WordPress
wordpress.com
An excellent cms for websites as well as great blogging software.

One of my favorite photos I’ve taken, along with the ones of his precious delighted face as seen front and center on my homepage.

I’ve jumped up off my creative derrière and have quickly thrown together for myself a website, which is now motivating me to go forth and create fresh new content to fill it with! In a roundabout way, I have Twitter to thank for it.

www.lisalidback.com

Beyond just being inspired, I think I’ve discovered my niche. Although it’s really too early to say, I do know that I’ve been deeply inspired by the wave photography of Clark Little, and recognized several elements about his very specific niche of photography that I’ve always had a keen interest in: water, light, and places. And the biggest plus: getting to travel!