Welcome to TravelGrief.com!

Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to TravelGrief.com!

The idea for this travel blog stemmed from the all-too-frequent bouts of melancholy that wash over me when I find myself dwelling on: the places I have seen (and may never see again), the places I have yet to visit, and the people and cultures I have encountered along the way, or wish to some day experience in person. The longer I live, the more I see and learn, the stronger the impulse that wells within me to cast aside all conventions, abandon work, home and community, pack my bags, grab the wife and kids, and get the hell out here, seeking an existence more varied, more exotic, and more spiritually fulfilling than the monotonous repetition of the "American Dream".

If you're looking for the purpose behind this journal's existence, there is none. TravelGrief.com exists for nothing more than being a creative outlet for telling stories, sharing experiences, reliving memories, and expressing wishful desires to see and do more than the cages of our otherwise mundane lives would allow. For those of us whom wanderlust is a persistent and nagging companion, ever urging us to turn down that unknown road, cross that lonely bridge, or catch a spontaneous flight to a city you've never heard of before, this is your place. Or I hope it will be, someday.

Here, divisive topics, such as politics and religion, beyond what is required for cultural understanding or discussion and understanding, are discouraged. And racism, hate and intolerance are wholly unacceptable. They are the products of indoctrination, lack of exposure, and ignorance, and they are not welcome here. TravelGrief is a place for recounting stories of the best that planet Earth, and humanity, has to offer: the generous stranger who aided a lost and wayward traveler; an exotic dish or cuisine that opened one's eyes to an entirely new flavor profile; the sweeping vista that stole the breath from your lungs and left tears trickling down your cheeks. Those places, experiences, and people are what we mourn here at TravelGrief. Not necessarily because they are gone, or have passed away, but because their memory haunts us as much as they enrich us. They drive us to seek out for new encounters, that will have similar, heart-wrenching, perspective-changing, life-altering effects on our personas, because we're addicted: to adventure, to geography, to interpersonal relationships, to cuisine, to culture; to planet Earth, its peoples, and all of its wonders.

More than likely this page will be drowned out by the myriad voices screaming for attention and "clicks" on the increasingly-commercialized internet. Maybe I'll burn out and leave it to decay, abandoned to ivy and weeds, without ever having captured the attention of like-minded souls seeking to fill a similar void in their heart. Or maybe a handful of you will find TravelGrief to be a place where you can express yourself, your experiences, your culture, and your hope for a smaller, more interconnected world, where people connect with people, on a human level, regardless of their differences.

Welcome again, friends. I look forward to meeting you, hearing your stories, viewing your pictures, and sharing and experiencing together the mutually-destructive, but also rewarding, uplifting, comforting and inspiring tales of TravelGrief.

- Jason Van Camp
  "Captain Impulse"