There are plenty of stories of people who chuck everything to pursue their dreams and live a wonderful and fulfilling life doing what they love. I am not brave enough to jeopardize my current income for something I have no idea will bring success. The dream, of course, is to travel extensively and write about it. It’s easy to get tempted when you hear about all of the success stories, but I can’t help but wonder how many people have failed for every person that has achieved their dream.

Maybe this is something I can do if I plan on early retirement decades from now. To be happy doing this, I only want to have enough income to fund my travels. I’m not looking for fame or wealth. It would be wonderful to take a trip somewhere like Madrid and visit the museums, the cafés, and lovely restaurants and write notes in a journal. After the trip, I can flip through these notes and watch as the people I meet along the way give birth to characters I can then get a little creative with.

Perhaps I should start doing that with local experiences, but I’m afraid that if anyone close to me reads these embellished experiences, they might read too much into them. Perhaps I overthink, and I should go for it.

I don’t have any travel plans yet because I’m being very conservative about relaxing precautions toward the pandemic, but I do have my Hollywood Bowl tickets bought and an LA Opera subscription through June 2022. So perhaps I’ll look there for some embellished experience material.