Why Blogging is Bad for (at least one type of) Traveling

Traveling alone used to be a kind of total isolation; it was about being taken out of context; about self-reflection, self-examination; about checking out how I'd behave in a different environment, without familiar things and familiar people.

This time though I've noticed, with readers of this blog in mind (however small the readership may be), it has been a little different. It has been more about crafting words than weaving thoughts; It has been more about being concise and to the point than about being in-depth-- my thoughts are not as free to wander, worrying about sidetracking. I am still connected to my own world through the net, and therefore have been looking at a foreign culture while still referencing my own (and my reader's) context, instead of being at lost, completely out of my comfort zone, and therefore able to encounter a self that I'm completely unfamiliar with.

But then again, this time, I'm organizing my thoughts as I travel, and I get to share what I saw with my friends. Unlike before, when it was difficult to talk about things I've experienced during my travels, because thoughts were not compartmentalized and put to words as things happened, and because things were so unexpected, and therefore too personal. --Those previous experiences remained something I keep to myself, something only I can understand, eventually turning into a memory that seems a bit surreal probably because it's been a bit romanticized.