“Our stories are only interesting because they are our own”

There it is. The lovely pristine white screen as well as the the six months leading up to this trip. Gone. Toast. Terminado.

Unfortunately what else is gone is the originality that used to be associated with a blog. Apologies for my part in this.

The blogs and journals that I enjoy, especially in regard to travel, are about people I care about. They are not randoms who claim to have found the elixir to the so-called boredom associated with ‘normal’ life. All they do is crash on family and friends couches and eat their food. I have never done that. Just ask Grandma. I always use the bed and not the couch.

With the above assertions in mind, these are rough goals of my travel blog for 2014:
Firstly; it will be a way to inform you, my readers (probably 10-20 of you, including Mum and Dad.. ouch), of what I am up to whilst I am in the Americas. That’s pretty obvious. I am trying to keep my social media use to a minimum while I am away, this will be the way I give my travel updates.
Secondly; my spelling and syntax go to s*** when I haven’t written for a while, and, as I intend to do a Masters program in 2015, I thought that a good way to keep my spelling above a grade 3 standard would be to write for an audience occasionally. That is not to say that this blog won’t be riddled with typographical errors, but I will try and keep it in decent shape.
Finally; I think I will find it therapeutic and enjoyable to share what I have been up to. I will endeavour to make this blog interesting, well written, entertaining and relatively factual.

I thought long and hard about the title of this blog. I settled on ‘Hugh’s Lost’ for the obvious connotation that traveling offers a sense of escapism. Also, for those who know me, my sense of direction sucks. Like walk into a shop and leave not knowing the way I walked in kind of sucks. Anybody who has been in a car with me or turned a corner with me will know this.

Posts on this blog may not occur weekly. They may not even occur monthly. I wish I could be that person who is organised enough to brush my teeth every day as well as publish an interesting and well-written piece of writing once a week. But the reality is; I am not. I validate this lack of organisation with the idea that the purpose of traveling is to lose the routine in order to find out what you really enjoy doing, and spend more time doing that. Even if that is to the detriment of personal hygiene.
I guess you could say that this is an experiment to see whether I actually enjoy writing for an audience or not, and the beauty is that even if I do not have an audience I will be blissfully unaware and continue doing what I am enjoying, if I do in fact enjoy doing it.

For the record, my trip begins at 8am Australian time on Wednesday morning when I fly to Argentina to begin a ten-week internship with RACI. It will continue for an undetermined period of time after this as I attempt to make my dollar go further. This is the website of the organisation I am working for in Buenos Aires: http://www.raci.org.ar/?lang=en
I have no idea what my specific role will be yet, but it will test out my ‘intermediate’ Spanish even if I am photocopying for seven hours a day.

So until next time, in a new continent I bid you farewell. Also, just to buff up the blog I will be uploading a couple of stories from my last few times traveling that I wrote 2-3 years ago. I apologise in advance if any material or language offends you, I will try to keep most of the content PG unless the tale is too good not to tell.

Boom. So that is it. To those who read this; thank you. If you thought of somebody who may enjoy reading this and keeping up with what I am up to, then feel free to share it with them.

Thanks,

Hugh

“Not all who wander are lost, but Hugh probably is” – J.R.R. Tolkien