Confessions of a Travel Addict, the book!

Hello, Invisible Audience.

Yes, I know. I fell off the map, like WAY off the map. And you know what? I'm not ready to come back yet. My life and my priorities have changed significantly since the last time I wrote, and keeping a weekly personal blog is just not on the list at the moment.

However, I have good news! I originally started this blog way back when as a potential marketing arm for a book I was writing called -- you guessed it -- Confessions of a Travel Addict. The blog became much more introspective than the book ever was -- the book is about all the funny travel adventures I've had while abroad, from back when I used to be funny.

At that time, I took all my funny travel stories from my adventures all over the world and made a book of short travel stories that can either be read as a chronological telling, or hopefully each chapter on its own. Then I spent a year researching how the publishing industry worked, and started sending this book out to publishers and collecting rejection letters, like a legit writer.

Then I got the idea for my cookbooks, and I shoved this book with the others I was working on into the electronic version of the closet.

Until now. Now, I have realized that I can't make it to the rest of the writing I want to do and am currently working on -- including the book I started in Panama -- if I don't clear out the backlog and clear out that electronic closet. And since my publishing company is named Travel Addict Publishing, clearly it makes sense that I would self-publish Confessions of a Travel Addict.

So here it is, without further ado, and in multiple formats, no less.

If you have Amazon Prime, you can check out the Kindle version for free.
If you want to buy it on Amazon directly in either the Kindle or Paperback version, click here.

Or if you'd like to buy it from me and get a signed version, click on the "Buy Now" button below. Cost is $12.95 per book. Shipping and handling is $5, regardless of how many books you buy; tax will be added automatically.

If you know someone else you think might enjoy it, please consider passing it on. 

Love and published kisses
Morgan

Don't Date a Girl Who Travels

Don’t date a traveler. If you know what’s good for you and you like your little corner of the world, don’t date a traveler, because she’ll want to pull you out of it.

Don’t date a traveler, because she’ll get antsy when you play video games. She craves real conversations instead of text messaging across a table, even if one of her “must haves” in hostel amenities is free wifi. Don’t date a traveler because she’ll constantly be converting the amount of money you spent on flowers for her into nights of stay at a hostel; she’ll have problems sitting still through sporting events that don’t teach her something she doesn’t already know, and she’ll ask you not if you had fun at a friend’s house, but if you met anyone interesting.

Don’t date a traveler, especially if you’re hoping to tame her. Don’t date a traveler if you’re hoping that by dating her you will give her roots, when in reality she is more likely to want to use her wings. Don’t date a traveler because even outside of traveling she will assess her shoes and yours by their ability to stay on during river crossings; withstand rusty nails found sole-first in the street, and whether they’re breathable in tropical climates.

Don’t date a traveler if your idea of excitement is signing a five-year lease, or taking out a mortgage, because a traveler has seen people with bigger, brighter smiles sweeping the dirt floors in their houses; she has swum with dolphins and listened to coral crackle like Rice Krispies in warm oceans, and she is not impressed by matching sheets or new towels.

Don’t date a traveler, especially if you find yourself saying to her, “When we get married you’ll stop traveling, right?” because that means you never really understood your traveler; you never really listened to the stories she told you about all the stars she could see from the top of the mountain in the Alps, or the way she wished she could cry at the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef but couldn’t stop breathing into her scuba mask long enough to get the sob out. Don’t date a traveler if you aren’t at least willing to let her continue traveling, because it means that you don’t notice that nothing lights up her face or her demeanor like meeting another fellow traveler and swapping notes on the most terrible bathrooms, the worst cases of Monteczuma’s Revenge, which country produces the best lovers and which tiny surf village in Costa Rica boasts the best Mexican food.

If you want to date a traveler, buy a backpack. Be willing to hike in the dark – albeit slowly; she’s adventurous, but not necessarily superwoman – to a hidden hot springs, an untouched powder field, or a clearing where you can lay out and look at the stars outside the city lights. If you want to date a traveler, don’t buy her foot cream when her feet start to get itchy, check your bank account and look for tickets with her. If you love a traveler, be prepared to love someone who can always tell you another way to see a problem – the way they would see it in the Amazon, for instance – and to be reminded that the world is much bigger than the little corner you call home.

If you love a traveler, it’s best if you travel with her, because then you can finally see the world through her eyes: a world full of wonder, of new chances for connection, sunsets from new beaches and mountain tops, new birdsongs, and new cultures that show that the way to happiness is not through something you can buy, but through things you can walk through: rivers, valleys, over mountain passes, amongst the crowds at an Independence Day parade, or weaving in and out of the masked and costumed at a Day of the Dead celebration in a small mountain village in Mexico.

Love and travel addict kisses,

Morgan

I Used To Be Funny

NOTE: This blog was first posted on Haley Whitehall's website on March 3 when I was her guest blogger. I am reposting instead of writing something new because I have an awful cold and can think of nothing to say that does not involve whining and moaning.

Long ago, when I first went abroad, I would write hilarious emails home. Even before that, I wrote fairly funny top ten lists over whatever it was that came to mind. It seemed like no matter what I was doing, there was a comical way to look at it and I couldn’t wait to get to a computer to type out my long (overblown) email about Montezuma’s Revenge, children skidding sideways down long ski slopes into lines of people waiting for the chairlift, sheep-turd-tasting cheese or smelly persons.
In fact, I have a whole book of these stories. It’s called Confessions of a Travel Addict. It’s nearly 200 pages of funny stories about traveling abroad, and although I recognize the work as my own, I have come to the realization lately that I probably couldn’t write it again because I don’t write funny things anymore.
If it’s going to be funny now, it’s a one-line status update that has about 15 people chortling, versus emails to 50+ persons that I’d like to believe read and enjoyed them.
So, what’s changed, you ask? Well, me, obviously.
When I first revealed to one of my friends that I had written a book about my traveling, she asked, “So does it have stuff about, you know, how you felt, your emotions, the things you were going through and how you grew as a person?”
I don’t think I laughed at her, but I thought at the time that it was a stupid thing to say. Who on earth would be interested in how I felt about things? Merrily I tripped along, continuing to write funny stories with no meat to them, no context, no person behind this shadow that traipsed all over the place having mishap after mishap.
Now, I realize that there is a time and place for everything. I realize that I may be hard on myself here, but the truth was that nearly everyone who has read my book has said, “Well, there’s not really much about you, you know? Since I know you I feel like I’m taking a trip with you, but if I didn’t know you I would feel like I was missing a very essential piece of the story.”
They’re right. The book lacks substance. And suddenly, that substance is all I can come up with to blog about. Suddenly, even my funny posts don’t seem as funny. All of a sudden, I want to talk about myself in serious terms.
It may seem small to someone on the outside, but this shift seems like a monstrous chasm that has opened up in front of me. I don’t see myself as some sort of bubbly, exuberant bouncy ball ricocheting off walls and screaming “WEEEE!” until everyone wants to shoot me, but neither do I see myself as a depressive lump of coal sitting in the corner, sucking the light out of anything that comes near like a black hole. I feel both these things often – if I’m lucky, I feel these and a whole range of emotions every day – but what I feel more is the change that has come over me in regards of what I want to share. I’m no longer as interested in simply giving the funny story of what happened to the stupid gringa while skimming over how I cried when it happened. A part of me is more than a little alarmed by this. It’s no longer a game to see how loud a person will laugh; now I’m tapping something deeper and sharing because I feel like a have to, and this is what bubbles to the surface, needing to be shared.
I think one of the strangest things about this shift is that I don’t feel afraid or excited about it – I simply recognize that something has changed. I look at it objectively, like a thing that I’ve just found in my house, and I study it, knowing it has a use but not yet knowing what it is. I’d like to think that this means that I’m finally maturing to the point where I don’t feel like I have to mask my emotions and can say how I really feel, but somehow that seems very, um, mature of me, and I can’t quite believe it. So for now, I’m just going to roll with it, and hope that maybe one day I’ll get to the point where I can be funny again and meaningful, too.

Love and not so funny kisses
Morgan

Gringa Faux Pas Part 3

The maid tells me I am very brave for staying out at this house by myself. She is not the first person to tell me this, and I'm sure she won't be the last. Americans and Mexicans alike have said the same thing, although truth be told I'm not sure why. I am living in a beautiful house surrounded by an (almost) invincible wall, with my own guard dog with a deep ferocious bark but cheery disposition, a night watchman, and, for good measure, a big ass machete next to the bed. (The machete was already there, mind you...I would never actually pick a machete as my weapon of choice).
So anyway, she tells me how "valiente" I am, and I tell her all the things stated here about how I really don't feel that brave, and then this supposedly kind-hearted woman throws it in my face: "Bueno, valiente, sí, pero con miedo de arañas."
So okay, it wasn't that big of a spider...but it was a pretty f*ing big spider just the same. I mean, as far as big spiders go, this one was not that big...but if it attacked me, say, it could have easily gotten ahold of and bitten into my big toe.
So what if I'm bad with spiders? So what if, when the maid came in after I'd scaled the wall, the first thing she saw was a tupperware container on the stairs, upside down, with four cans of tuna fish stacked on top so the wily creature couldn't escape to find its way onto my face in the middle of the night? So what if I was going to leave it trapped there all day until the night watchman came back and took care of it? SO WHAT, PEOPLE? WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE I'M CRAZY?

Gringa Faux Pas Part 2

I take the dog on a walk in the mornings, usually after the night watchman has left for the day. I lock the gate in the wall around the house, and usually carry the keys, the leash and my ipod with me on the walk. This morning, however, I decide that I could hide the keys somewhere so I don't have to carry them. I could hide them...on a ledge inside the gate. So I reach up, put the keys on the ledge and try to move them back so they're harder to see. Farther...farther...until they fall down the other side where I can't get them.
The night watchman has a key, but he's gone.
The pool guy, who's coming in about two hours, doesn't have a key.
I am supposed to meet someone for breakfast in two hours.
I don't have the truck key, my phone, any water, or enough sunblock.
I do have the dog, his leash, and my ipod.
I go for a walk (why not, after all?)
I come back and walk all the way around the wall surrounding the house.
I find a spot where I can -- albeit awkwardly -- climb over.
I climb over.
I am opening the gate from the inside -- covered in dirt, leaves and probably bugs -- when the maid walks up...a day early and five minutes too late.