There’s a saying I tell people when they are in distress from the ever-proceeding flow of time. “Time is an illusion, only back pain is real.” Admittedly, I didn’t come up with that one. But even in your mind, though the world continues to run circles around you, you tend to not perceive these changes emotionally until you’ve looked back on where you’ve come from.
If you haven’t heard by now, I’ve returned to the United States after spending about a year and a half (or so) abroad in my maternal motherland of Ireland. I had the rare opportunity to sell my house, a bunch of my stuff, and live in a country I’ve dreamed about exploring since I was a child. In my mind, life was too short to leave that personal question unanswered.
In total during my time away, I was beyond fortunate enough to visit almost the whole entirety of Ireland (barring counties Sligo, Donegal, and Derry), a good portion of England and Wales, Barcelona, the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain and France, Andorra, the Canary Islands, Bergen and Oslo in Norway, and somehow, China and Japan.
When returning from my time abroad, a lot of people asked me why I never posted pictures on Facebook, or made more than one blog on my YouTube channel. A large portion of my time in Ireland was discovering myself, learning about the culture of my ancestry, and just enumerating the experience in my mammalian brain. In a way, I never had time to fully digest what I was doing, or what I was accomplishing for myself.
I did, in fact, take hundreds of photos in my time abroad. I had them hidden in a bunch of different Google Photos albums, where I had sent them to my parents and only a few of my closest friends. If you know me, you know that the ambivert in me is happy to chat with anyone who is willing to bare being in my presence. But I tend to play my cards close to my chest as a defense mechanism, and only really talk about myself if I’m socially cornered. Is it healthy? Absolutely not.
And in a way, that’s kind of what I did by not posting anything publicly. I was worried (and I still worry) about how people perceive me. But one of the things that my travels have taught me, is that life is too short to give into that fear. I’ve always loved making visual media, and sharing stories through those mediums.
Since coming back to the states, my brain has finally started to piece together the whirlwind of time that my journey, and have begun to collect my thoughts.
All of the pictures that are posted here, as well as the photo galleries on this site are taken by me, using a Sony α7iii with various lenses. I will be posting the galleries/posts on my blog over time. If you’d like to be notified when these galleries are, feel free to follow me on social media. I’ll post when I’ve put a new gallery up.
Thanks for stopping by. <3 -Nate