I’ve been thinking about it for a while– about starting a website, collating a decade’s worth of solo travel & writing in a digital archive.
I knew too, that this digital archive already exists in a way– except that it hasn’t been updated for years.
I started this blog in 2010, and in the mad fodder of stereotypical young adult angst posts, were entries documenting my writing process, my inspirations, my travels. Unfortunately, the last entry in this blog was made in 2015, making it a good five years since I last touched this space.
So I dusted the cobwebs off this blog, looked through all the entries made from 2010 in a bid to clean up the gunk. Cleaned up the formatting. Reminisced about old times.
I am 31 years old this year. It is interesting, seeing these old snapshots of myself, taken a whole decade ago when I was 21. A younger time; a more restless, self-centred, and ignorant time, if I were to be honest with myself. Some entries, I deleted. Others, I switched to private mode. The rest, I retained, in an effort to preserve some historical/sentimental mementos of my youth.
Many things have changed after I stopped updating this blog in 2015. Inside my little bubble universe, I got a new job, travelled to many different countries, got comfortable with adulting, something I didn’t think I was capable of. And while my writing is still a slow, ongoing process, I am glad I kept at it, even though there were many times Real Life & Work rendered me too busy to do writing on the side.
Outside my private sphere, the world is different; kids are more worldly compared to me at their age. We’ve talked about tolerance for decades yet nationalism and rhetoric hatred is still on the rise; we’ve talked of saving the planet yet governments are still cutting down swathes of rainforest and sending their trash to other countries.
Moving forward, I am looking to populate this blog with more regular updates about my travels and writing. It may be that I will have more travel-related entries; after solo-tripping for so long, I do have many stories to tell, including my disastrous climb up Mount Merapi, and my gun range visit in Siem Reap. I can’t wait to get started.
ally chua 