I'm feeling a little stationary right now. Why you ask? Well, let me tell you. It's a little after midnight on a Wednesday and my roommate leaves for Atlantic City, New Jersey, in a few hours for an extended weekend trip full of gambling and general debauchery (I imagine). My sister will be headed to Reno, Nevada, and Lake Tahoe thereafter with her newly-minted husband for their honeymoon next week.

Other friends of mine have been living it up in Alaska (hey, Emily) for months or in Rome for more than a year (looking at you, A.K.), but I haven't done much traveling recently outside of last month's little journey to West Lafayette, Indiana. And that's okay, but it can make it a little difficult to keep up a travel blog, you know?

This stationary status of mine, brought about by the present strictures of time and money (mostly the money part, though), makes finding inspiration for posts that much harder, which is why it probably seems like I'm all over the place sometimes. Even though travel-wise I can describe myself as stationary, other aspects of my life have been in transition.

Over the summer, I scrapped it out earning some money from a freelance writing gig or two and occasionally from driving for Uber. Somehow, I managed to take a few trips during that time, my Canadian adventure to Toronto and Niagara Falls chief among them. More recently, in the later part of September, I started a new full-time job and I've been adapting to a new schedule (see: figuring out what it truly means to work from home).

With that job now secured, I'll be able to save up some cash money and find time for more traveling in the near future. But for the moment, traveling is on the back burner — and that is not an easy thing for me to swallow. Like the Allman Brothers Band used to sing, I was born a ramblin' man and some of my favorite ways to "waste" time are looking up flights to far-flung destinations or researching all kinds of strange and exotic places on the Wikipedias. I'm always on the lookout for the next adventure.

One of those little Wikipedia research sessions led me to discover the existence of the Pitcairn Islands, a group of four oh-so-isolated volcanic islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that I wrote about earlier this year. Another session added Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States, to my travel bucket list — a list that is almost inconceivably long and always growing longer.

I keep thinking about the New York Times' "52 Places to Go in (Insert Year)" article that comes out every January, how I'd like to randomly select a handful of destinations from that list and make it a goal to get to each one before the next list appears. I keep thinking about taking a train across Canada. I keep thinking about Bocas del Toro in Panama, which is featured in this music video. I keep thinking about which state I'll get to next (Nevada? Maine? Wyoming?).

And I have to keep reminding myself that not all of these things are going to happen right away, or this month, or this year, or the next. I'll get to these places in time. They're on the list and they're not going anywhere, not until I do.

For the time being, I'll keep fantasizing about the next adventure. I'll keep checking Google Flights for the costs of plane rides I won't be on. I'll keep digging through the Wikipedia articles for the most interesting travel facts I can find.

I'll wait. But it won't always be easy.

-LTH