About Deb

Deb’s Already-in-the-Bucket List

 in About Deb / Deb's Travels

“Bucket list” — a list of the things we want to do before we kick the bucket.
I never made one, but one day I got to thinking about the things — outside of the scope of family, formal education, and career — that I’ve already done in my life.

So I started my already-in-the-bucket-list, and frankly, I was amazed at it.

Some of these may have been on my bucket list had I ever made one. Others were simply interesting opportunities that have presented themselves during the adventures of my life so far, mostly during my various travels.

What would you do if you had unlimited time, money and resources?
What have you already done?

I bet you’ve done something that’s on someone else’s bucket list!

Deb in Ledak India

The apprehension of the unknown in travel 4

 in About Deb / Deb's Travels / Mindset

Faced with the impending finality of giving up the apartment that has become my comfortable home over the past year, I am once again feeling the constriction in my throat and bouts of fear of what is to come. I am again starting to wonder if I’m crazy and if I should just stay comfortably where I am.

The reality starts to hit me whenever I leave “home” for the unknown. Where am I going to stay? Will I be invited into peoples homes? Will I be safe? Am I crazy for doing this?

For the most part on this blog I have shown you the places I have been and they are indeed exciting. If I have invoked your wonderlust or wanderlust, then I have done a good job of showing you how exciting travel can be. However. I’m not sure whether I have shown you the other side, the uncertainty of it. If I haven’t, I owe it to you to do so.

My practical traveler’s thank you to hosts 2

 in About Deb / Deb Fixed It / Deb's Travels / Misc

As a guest in people’s homes, it’s a given that I bring food or a gift for my hosts. But for the longer-term visits, I typically try to contribute to the home in some way as a special thank you. Sometimes my host/hostess knows. Other times they have no idea unless they notice the difference later on.

Sometimes it’s just cleaning floor molding and cabinet doors. Once I recaulked a bathroom. Once I repaired a large hole in the wall…

The tub with the new silicon sealant.

Living the downsize: from 2 bedrooms to 65 liters 2

 in About Deb / Deb's Travels / Mindset / Packing

This time 4 years ago I lived a typical American life in a two-bedroom condo. It was home to my furniture, photos … two dressers full of clothes…. kitchen full of fine appliances…home office.

Now I’ve virtually been living out of a 65-liter backpack. If something fit into that backpack, I don’t take it with me.

Sometimes I miss my old stuff but If I still had it I would need to still have a place for it to — and I would not have had the freedom to be in whatever country I happened to be in at that moment.

The truth is, we really need very few physical items to be well-dressed, clean, well-groomed, and comfortable. And your perception or definition of “very few items” will even change as you live the downsize.

How I came to be traveling now and for so long 1

 in About Deb

What would you do if you’d hit or neared 50, had always wanted to travel the world, and didn’t even come close to having the resources to do so.

What if… for too many years, all of your work and earnings had gone into keeping a roof over your head without allowing you the luxury to go out from under the roof to enjoy your own town, city, state, country or planet?

That was me.

So I jumped on the next best event that came along. Instead of moving to a new apartment, I moved into the world.
If I didn’t have to spend so much money on rent I could travel.
It costs less to rent a dorm room any place in the world than it did for me to rent my apartment for any given night! So the money I saved in rent would cover my travel costs.

Welcome to my life of travel.

Life before these travels

 in About Deb

Once upon a time I was a successful young professional living and working in NYC. I loved my life and the perks of being in the media in NYC. But the world beckoned loudly, and even more so as I traveled Israel and then coming out of Egypt and upon my return to my homeland of NYC. So I left and traveled — for three years.

I independently traveled the world solo starting in the mid 80s when each traveler’s notebook of people we met was our own couch surfing site.

Then I settled down to a life as a world-renowned book/magazine/web author, instructor, and consultant in the field of Macintosh and Web. This was the comfortable home and life that I left to travel again.