Before I Pack My Suitcase
A letter before setting out.
I always hold my breath before embarking on a new journey, because I know the version of myself leaving won’t be the one who comes home.
It never did.
Every trip across the ocean, every breathtaking work of art, every fateful person or book changed me. Now, looking back, I realize it’s impossible to predict how those encounters will change me. I know only that I’m grateful for all the pieces of myself I have found through the fracture.
I was born into a family where one parent is an insatiably curious traveller, while the other is a homebody who rarely leaves home. Don’t ask me how they managed to build a life together, but I’m grateful they did. The amusing part is that I seem to have inherited both.
I’m constantly travelling and moving. Even when I try to stay still, life has other plans. Sometimes it feels as though I’m trapped in a time loop where the scenery changes every day, while the circumstances remain the same.
At the same time, I’m a writer who needs solitude and tranquility to be prolific.
I've noticed that writers tend to fall into two groups. The first stays home, building entire worlds from a single desk. The second travels, discovering meaning through lived experience.
I happen to belong to the second group, and I’ve made my peace with it. In fact, nothing inspires me more than travelling alone.
Somewhere between writing for Substack, exploring philosophy, and finishing my first novel, I realized something…
The time had come to set out on my first world tour.
The Threshold has always been my attempt to turn lived experience into language. If I’m about to spend a year changing my own landscape, then the publication has to change with me.
The regular philosophical essays will continue. But I also want to make room for subjects that are more personal and intimate. The essays I've published over the past month have taught me that deeply focused series flourish best in a smaller, more engaged space. They deserve readers who genuinely want to spend time with them.
So, starting next week, you'll also find essays on culture, languages, and art; a world tour diary; behind-the-essays reflections; and, perhaps most excitingly, the serialized publication of my novel, You Are the Journey.
I'm excited—and a little nervous—about this next chapter. Travelling has taught me that a real journey doesn't always take you where you expect to go. Some places will surprise me. Some will unsettle me. Others will teach me something I couldn't have learned any other way.
The Threshold was created as a place where unfamiliar feelings and intuitive thoughts are given clear language. I hope it becomes something like the first cup of coffee in the morning—a small ritual that quietly changes the way you see the day.
My journey as a writer has taught me that the only way to create a place like that is to be honest—with the blank page and with you.
Also, it feels like a privilege to share my first novel here. At its heart is a question I’ve been carrying for years:
What remains of us when success, freedom, and ambition stop giving our lives meaning?
If you'd like to join me for the next chapter—the next twelve months of this journey—here's the invitation.
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Weekly literary and philosophical essays
Letters from the Road &
The Writer's Notebook
Behind the Essays
~
Weekly literary and philosophical essays
Letters from the Road &
The Writer’s Notebook
Behind the Essays
Exclusive serialization of You Are the Journey
Maybe that’s why I always hold my breath before leaving. Not because I’m afraid of the places I’ll discover, but because I never know who will come home.
A few more lines before I start packing my suitcase...
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I have found that the reshaping process is needed. We shed the parts of us that no longer can stay as part of who we are in order to evolve into what we’re becoming. Even if we’re so confident and comfortable with that version of us. Usually it’s uncomfortable and even scary to move past what we aren’t anymore. My dad use to say it’s not brave if your not scared… I am terminally ill and 3yrs ago I lay literally dying he came in my room to say goodbye to me. He got on the bed picked up my 67 lb body. Like a 5 yr old little girl and cradled me. Weeping. He said Punkin all my life you have told me and everyone who would listen that I’m your hero. He said Punkin right now I need you to do me a favor. Be your own hero. Ok. This is when you need to be your own hero. What ever your facing be strong and believe your not alone or too weak to do it. Because you can. We’re here and we understand. What ever happens we understand. So you just need to know you don’t have to struggle or fight just believe in yourself now ok. Be your own hero. Later I did die. Oddly where I went I said my purpose isn’t done. I did come back. Clearly. But to me it was because I chose in those moments to be my own hero and be here to finish a life’s purpose. Instead of just slipping away into the place we go to.