Postcards from Around the World

To the dear readers who recently made contributions to Vagabond Journey I would like to let you know that I have sent you out some postcards from Gyor, Hungary. I thank you.

At the request of a reader – Motorcycle Bob – I recently began accepting contributions of $10 – “1 day of travel” – for the simple reason that, as of right now, my financial fractions are not constant. There is a leak in my pool of travel funds and it is not being filled up as fast as it is draining out. So I put up a little link on this blog and on the pages of Vagabond Journey.com to accept small contributions from readers. In return for a “1 day of travel” Paypal contribution, I send the contributer a postcard from wherever I may be in the world with a little note that shows my appreciation.

I really do appreciate it.

Someday I think I will be able to make up the $10 to $15 a day I need to keep continuously traveling the world and writing about it, but that day is not yet today. I have not done too bad for myself so far – or so I think – and I actually make up a modest portion of my bean money through advertisements on Vagabond Journey.com and writing the magazine pieces. But as I look down the Road I see a point where my pool will be drained dry if I do not up the flow of my income now.

I have no intention of becoming wealthy off of this (the very notion of wealth makes me chuckle a feral sort of giggle), and my final intention is to make the much coveted ten to fifteen dollars a day that will allow me to keep traveling. I think this amount is possible to come by if I keep working hard at this website and travelogue. When I first began publishing on the internet with the intention of supplementing my bean money with internet provisions, I decide that I would give myself two years in the venture. I figured that I would work hard at internet publishing for these two years, and, if in this time, I find a way average $10 a day then I would keep on keeping on.

Woman at post office in Gyor, Hungary putting stamps on postcards for readers.

I had no idea at that time that I would fall in love with this lifestyle. I did not know that at 14 and a half months in I would really come to enjoy publishing words on the internet. This is fun.

“Keeping a good travel blog is a full time job,” once wrote Ubertramp.

I read these words and then feel into a sea of uproarious laughter, for they are true. Publishing this Vagabond Journey website has almost become a full time job, albeit one that, as I have mention, I have come to really love.

I work as I travel every day. I take photos, take notes, write, read, publish, and work (and learn) HTML code throughout the day. I am laughing as I write this, as this lifestly seems to me to be bordering on the ridiculous. But if you, dear reader, ever cross my Path in the flesh, you will see for yourself how odd my days tend to be. I am the man who is standing in the middle of the street who, upon having his fancy struck by some relevant seeming detail, is jotting down notes in his little black notebook like a poetical lunatic and then huddled up in some hollow corner of a flop-house writing about them throughout the day.

Yes, I am an inveterate scribbler.

My friend Bicycle Luke the Fruit Pirate goes to no small length to jest at how often – “Every five minutes” – I tend to have my face skewered up inside my little notebooks.

But this is fun for me. It gives me something to do- a focus to my ramblings, a direction, a path, a line of consistency that I can follow throughout the world. I want to keep doing this.

And mailing out postcards to readers to show my gratitude for contributions is just one way that I can continue assembling the funds to live like this. I could fairly easily find conventional temp employment on the Road teaching English or doing archaeology or any number of other trades, and make far more money and work less than I do on the computer. I have done this for many years. I am an archaeologist, an English teacher, sometimes pretend to be a gardener, and an odd-jobs-extraordinaire, but I do not enjoy these professions half as much as I like writing words.

I would happily write words for a few peanuts a day than make a donkey cart load any other way. This is my choice, my preference, I have other options but I choose this one. I wake up in the morning with a smile on my face.

So, Ubertramp, you are a wise man, this travel writing round is a full time job, but it is also a love and a passion.