The Wayfaring Stranger: A Beginning

I’m Tommy – the Wayfaring Stranger, traveling through this world, visiting obscure and not-so-obscure places, and refusing to let this be a world of woe, but rather making a home out of every place I visit.

Today, I’m in Phoenix where the sun is bright, and there’s not a cloud in the sky. As my fourth straight month on the road is well underway, I feel like I’ve finally reached my promised land – Phoenix, Arizona. Really? Yes! This oasis in the northern reaches of the Sonoran Desert is exactly what I need.

At the end of 2017, I was thrust into a great American road trip. Already planning to travel for most of 2018, I had intended a trip to Australia and Southeast Asia, but a family crisis made me stay in the USA. So for now, my journey around the world is on hold. Instead, I’m experiencing America. I left rural Northeast Georgia at the end of December, and I embarked on a journey that led me further and further west before ending up here, Phoenix, my desert oasis.

I’m no novice to traveling around the world. I spent the end of 2017 living in Greece, and I have had the opportunity to travel to some pretty exotic locales. At this point, I’ve visited 25 countries, and 49 US states. However, I realize that I’ve only scratched the surface, so I have a lot more to go.

So, I’ll tell you about some of my most exciting or even most mundane travel experiences, and I’ll also let you know what I learned from it. Think of it as an 80s sitcom – there was typically a learning experience (think of the important life lesson from Jessie Spano on “Saved by the Bell” – no one was taking caffeine pills to stay awake after that!).

For now, I’m sitting at a beautiful pool, thinking about the simple things, the boring things, in life. The past year I’ve lived has been nothing but excitement, rarely sitting still. But now, there is nowhere else I’d rather be…chilling at a pool, contemplating my next adventures in life. Worrying about if I should find a “real” job, or if I can just figure out a way to travel, learn, and write.

I’ve missed the simple things. I’ve missed going to the gym on the regular, so I’m doing that. I’ve missed watching my favorite shows, so I’m hard-core binging Survivor and The Middle. I’ve missed cooking, so I bought all the ingredients to bake a pie. I’ve never been a pie baker, but I want to use this time to learn a new skill.

I’m also going to make this city home. Maybe it’ll be home for a month, or a few months, but for now, I’ll make the most of it, and I’ll write a proper post on this dynamic city (the fifth largest city in the USA, and the only capital city with over a million people) – my promised land for now.

But I’ll stay the Wayfaring Stranger. In each place I’ll be looking to prove that the song was actually wrong – it’s not a world of woe, and even though the path may at times be rough and steep, it’s home. All of it – I’ll find my home in each and every place I visit.

The funny thing is that in each and every place I visit, I actually do think about what it would be like to live there. Sometimes it really does seem like it would be a world of woe to live in certain parts of the globe, but that’s what I’ll write about, and maybe you’ll visit there one day too so you can form your own opinion.

So keep reading. I’ll be writing about home and making pie, and eating pie – maybe it’ll be delicious, or maybe it’ll suck, but it’ll be mine, so I’m the only one to blame.