Life's a beach

I have handed in all my paperwork (bar a couple of things) so I'm now definitely feeling more and more Latvian and French by the minute... or to be precise vairāk un vairāk latviešu un franču ar minūte / de plus en plus letton et en français à la minute. Isn't Google Translate amazing?

Someone who was reading my blog asked me if I write much yesterday. Without hesistation or much thinking, I listed out all the things which entail using my brain and words (excluding university assignments, shopping lists, random doodling) and realised that I actually write quite a lot in my own leisure and without anyone telling me I have to.

The reason why I'm mentioning this is because I just got an email about a travel writing workshop in London, which then reminded me of something else. An established travel writer came to talk to my class in a publishing seminar a couple of weeks back. Despite the fact that I was stunned by the fact that she gets paid to travel the world and write about it (amazing!), I managed to take one other thing away from her talk. She said that people who write for a living usually do it, not for the [rather poor] money it brings, but because they have to - it's their talent, what they truly love and the only thing they want to do for a living.

Photo from Google - I'll take my own when I'm on a sun-kissed beach.

So this small divergence from thinking about the practicalities of the next 6 months have led me to think of myself as a kind of amateur travel writer (but with no commission whatsoever, just the riches of a once-in-a-lifetime experience). Well, at least I will be when I'm 35000ft in the air... Note to self: book flights.