Why the Lists?

For starters, I love lists. I, J, am one of those terrible Type A people who think that packing for the vacation rivals the vacation itself. My dopamine levels are never higher than when I am making a list. And record keeping is right behind list making as far as banal tasks that I love to perform goes. Documenting our reviews of things that we’ve tried or places that we’ve gone forces an intentional and thoughtful reflection, and gives us the opportunity to relive these things again and again – a win-win!

Why Make it Public?

A little bit of narcissism, maybe, a little bit of convenience, a little bit of accountability. All I know is that I love to write, and I don’t do it nearly enough. If I tell my friends and family that I have a blog and that they can expect regular posts about our adventures, then I have someone – possibly many someones, but at the very least just my dad; shoutout to my dad – that I am accountable to. It will force me to put pen to paper (or rather fingers to keyboard) and actually hammer out a narrative in a way that keeping a private journal would not. And if I do amass a following larger than one father, then having a single place to direct people for updates will keep me from repeating the same information across multiple text threads and phone calls. As for the narcissism, well, this is the Internet and I am a millennial, so we’re pretty much all narcissists here. But I’m not my own therapist, so that’s where that analysis ends.

What Will You Post About?

Well normally, I would post about just the big stuff – big trips or vacation, life events, etc. But the experience of 2020 has taught us that you can still have a very full life even when those big things are put on hold or happening with less frequency. And as someone who lives far away from their family and a fair chunk of their friends, I can personally attest that sometimes hearing about the small stuff does big work to connect you to the people that you are missing. So in this blog, I plan to post about all stuff – the big stuff and the small stuff – that M and I review in our daily life. We’ve got some big travel plans coming up, which is why this blog came to life when it did, but we’ve also got thoughts on other parts of our life together that will probably get their own posts as well. What you can expect from every post after this one, though, is a summary at the end sorting our experience into studs and duds. Enjoy!