Here & Where: On The Road & In My Head

Welcome to my blog about travel both internal and external!

My name is Sandy Engel and I am a writer and a traveler. As these pages will show, dear reader, most of my recent travel has been in Vietnam--more than twenty visits since 1998--but I have also been traveling to a number of other locations since I was in high school, which is to say that although I declare in one of the earlier blog posts that Vietnam is my muse, I have to admit that Vietnam is not my only muse.

Travel is not just a geographic going from-here-to-there, but also, when it is going well, it is a matter of significant internal activity.  And so although the first pieces may be about Vietnam, they may also later be about the inner travel that retirement affords as well, as, say, traveling to other locations. Hence the full title of this blog: Here & Where: On The Road And In My Head.

For me the hardest part of traveling is getting off the couch. I always pack at least a couple Moleskine journals and manage to find time to write when I am on the road. At this point I cannot imagine traveling and not writing.

I have lived long enough to realize again and again that people bloom in different times in different ways. At this writing I am in the process of completing a career in higher education and am moving on to other enterprises. If you are looking for the usual introductory info, here it is: I write from New York state and I travel as I can--and often solo for at least part of the journey. I have a Ph.D. in English from a program known for producing (at that time, anyway) good generalists. I was the first in my family to go to college, I am single and childfree, I don't especially like to drive although I have a red Jetta, the decor of my house is somewhere between shabby chic and bourgeois and is happily cluttered, and in my better moments I like to think I know how to turn a phrase. (If you care about these kinds of shorthand identities, on the Myers-Briggs I am INTJ, Introvert-Intuition-Thinking-Judgment, and if you subscribe to the Gallup StrengthsQuest view of the world, I test Strategic-Intellection-Achiever-Maximizer-Deliberative.) I have never suffered fools well, and almost a year ago I stopped wearing a watch.

I am an essayist at heart, I think, and so my intent here is to offer prose and photos on occasion initially and then, later, on a more regular schedule. I can give you the where-I-stayed-and-what-I-ate report if that is information that you want, but that is also available in many other places and it seems to me that other observations might be potentially more interesting. What did I think of what I saw? How did I even see it? And then what happened? These are the kinds of things that interest me as a writer. That said, I would hope that what I post is circumspect and thoughtful enough to not become part of what I think of as the narcissism of the age. I am not one for selfies, but I am one for words and complementary photos.

I intend the writing here--for me, anyway--to feel more like play than like work, and if this blog starts to feel more like work than the right kind of play, I am outta here.

Someone once made the observation to me that people tend to surround themselves with people who support their version of reality, and later he also said that, generally speaking, the more ways you have of looking at things, the better off you are. I like that last part especially. With that in mind, dear reader, I think of you as a combination of many of the bright and personable people I have known. You are intelligent, probably have your share of opinions, and tend to know a lot of people who most likely think as you do. But you are also willing to hear other points of view and to read about things not in your everyday world. So in addition to what I will be posting, I will be asking friends to add the occasional post, with the main requirement being that they write about something interesting, be it their part-time career as a wrestler or stand-up comedian, their hiking in Macchu Pichu, or their building by hand and on weekends their log home. If they are willing, that is.

Travel, then is not just a matter of geography, although geography doesn't hurt.

Also, since I tend to be more essayist than blogger, as a compromise to the expectations of the usual (if there is such a thing) blog reader, I may (or may not, since this is my blog) offer brief information about each entry so as to make it easier for you to read as much and whatever you like. I cannot ignore the realities that the world is increasingly asynchronous and that these days we are all niches in some ways. Who has time to read and how much do you want to read? feel free to skim as you like. I hope you read more rather than less, but you decide. (By the way, for me, the first rule of criticism is to give the writing a sympathetic reading.)

And so: welcome.


Copyright Sandra A. Engel