It is now early 2024 and Eric and I have spent the last few months doing some extensive traveling.  As I write these blog on my old snowflake ubai, I can’t help but see new evidence of the sameness of snow all around me. Here, I want to again break with the orderly chronology of the blog and share a few of my current thoughts on that old ubai — there is no such thing as a special snowflake, snow is just snow…

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Eric and I are finally living ‘the dream’: After years of hard work, saving and planning, we have embarked on our grand tour of the world. We are wandering, unfettered, across counties and continents, currently in our 3rd week in Japan having arrived after 3 months in Europe. This is the fruit of our effort, this is just the kind of life we imagined; we are always so eager to explore what is new, to experience what is different.

The problem is, the more we travel, the more different places I go, the more I am struck by how life everywhere is basically the same. Life is the same and it is un-fucking-believably hard…

When I am at home, a lot of the mundane details of my life, of what life actually is, are easily ignored. With a fridge filled with my favorite foods, its easy to ignore that I a a slave to eating, that nourishing this body is a chore. With a comfy bed, and a safe place to sleep, it is easy to take for granted that having shelter is a  privilege, not a given. With all my belongings stored away in a closet, I forget that to enjoy the comforts, utility and safety these belongings bring, I am forced to bear their burdens as well.

Now though, on the road, I see just how much of my life revolves around meeting my most basic needs. I get up and I begin my day by planning how/where I will go for food. What can I find to eat that is healthy, that agrees with me, that isn’t just junk restaurant fare. Here in Japan, the sugary diet is hard on my blood sugar, it takes time, and lots of google translate, to find ingredients that suit my health.

Once I have food solved, I need to ensure I will have shelter; in Japan, mold is a problem at many hotels and I am severely allergic to mold. After the first few times I woke-up in the night unable to breath from mold, I realized I could no longer just book hotels ahead of time. Instead, I have been researching online to find possible places to stay and then showing up and asking to see a room before I book. Sometimes it takes half my day just visiting hotels and checking them out; my standards for shelter have gone from seeking comfort to being willing to settle for safety rather quickly.

When I began my travels, I had a big bag and a little bag, filled with all that I thought I would need to ensure my safety and comfort. Quickly I came to see that dragging a big bag onto trains, and subways, through streets to different hotels, its a burden. I winnowed myself down to one tiny carry-on –filled with medicine and 2 changes of clothes, cursing the fact that my health and warmth prevented me from getting rid of anything more.

I  always loved to travel because I crave what is new. In my heart of hearts I believe that lurking, just around the corner, just at the next street, just at the place I haven’t gone before, is something exotic and exciting, something that will bring me joy and satisfy me. But what is over there is just the same as what is over here, and if what was over here were so satisfying, why would I be so eager to go explore elsewhere?

Now that I am traveling so extensively, I see that outside the frame of the Instagram shots, past those few moments taking in the sites, day-to-day life is the chore of survival. It may be croissants in Paris, or rice in Japan, but everyone, everywhere, is slave to food. Simply put, snow is snow everywhere. And me, everywhere I go, its guaranteed to be more snow.