by Jeannie on June 13, 2013
Ever since Facebook introduced email contact through fanpages, I’ve received a ton of them. Maybe you sympathize or despise my popularity, but what I normally do is delete these pesky messages. Typically it’s a spammer or some aggressive business demanding I ‘like’ their page. Thank god for that delete button.
About a week ago a woman named Andrea contacted me, asking some general travel questions. She’s starting to plan her own journey and was seeking advice.
I usually pay attention to these messages and answer them privately, hoping to help ease concerns.
Then a eureka moment sounded off in my head. I decided that answering her questions directly on the blog might also help others.
I’m not so advanced in this field that I believe questions of this nature are stupid. No question is stupid and it’s best to remember that at one time, I was an Andrea.
I had a wide range of questions and concerns, from safety issues to packing efficiently. The unknown of what a country can bring, plagues us along with the logistics. It’s only human.
So Andrea, this is for you!
Keep Reading!
by Jeannie on May 24, 2013
Once upon a time I was a zero. Just a faceless office drone making fresh pots of coffee, typing out minutes of meetings and filling staplers with little pieces of metal.
Then bout’ three years ago I came up with this unbeatable idea: BE A STAR ON THE INTERNET! Okay, let me reverse that a bit. I actually decided to sell everything I owned to travel this wild, quirky, unexplainable world.
My cherry red couch became a cherry red backpack, then I finally chose to become an Internet force. This blog was birthed to share my honest thoughts on being a mature woman who travels a lot and alone.
As I began to navigate this crazy Internet existence it became clear to me that I had to adopt some kind of brand.
Be something. I looked around at this idea of image and soon enough, I found myself making connections. My image was making friends with other images. People I may never meet in person, but when I do there’s always a tangle of nerves in my stomach.
Keep Reading!
by Jeannie on May 20, 2013
Every content creator from bloggers to businessmen have their tools. Lately I’ve become wildly enamoured with Instagram.
There is something exotic, almost inexplicable about a moment. How it trickles into being. A surreal sense that something is happening to you, part of your brain is watching it happen and then your memory fires to capture it.
That’s Instagram. It’s the kind of tool that’s a revolving map to those collective moments. How they all add up to where you are and what you’re experiencing.
I recall many a time when I’d encounter a person or a scene, turn to the air and ask “Did you just see that?” The stubborn air always kept silent.
Now you can see it. Share it. And ‘like’ it. Instagram may seem narcissistic, a venue for bad photographers to look capable or full of pointless dog photos, but I enjoy its immediacy.
As a traveler, events accelerate so quickly for me that it’s comforting to know when I’m decrepit and my mind is fading that the things I experienced are archived. That they did exist.
As for the company itself, creators Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram on October 6, 2010. By day one, there were 25,000 users signed up. By February of 2011, Instagram was valued at 25 million. Their product kept growing as Twitter and Facebook users uploaded the play-by-play of their lives at an exponential speed.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook had been watching them since the beginning and always anticipated the two companies melding together. By the time Facebook was ready to buy, 30 million iPhone users were using the app. I highly recommend reading a Vanity Fair feature on the inception and denouement when Facebook finally purchased Instagram.
On a deeply personal note, I follow certain people who take freaking stunning photographs or tell a story or simply prod me to take better photos.
The five I love right now…
Keep Reading!
