It's a Year Into this S**t Show...How's Everyone Doing?

Since the start of this pandemic, I've been cursing it and everything negative it caused.  The isolation, the not being able to see friends and family due to the travel ban and Canadian Travel restrictions, the loss of work, the loss of money, the not being able to travel due to travel restrictions and the constant bombardment of Covid-19 this and Covid-19 that.

Yes, it's been rough in so many ways, but I'm starting to see the good that has come out of it.  It's been almost a year since the lockdowns, isolation and mass covid travel restrictions became a part of everyday life.  The first few weeks was a constant string of bad news.  First my beloved cat Captain Jack passed away followed by the news that the project I was working on was stopping along with my income.  Than the worse shooting in Canadian history right here in my quiet, peaceful home province of Nova Scotia.  All this combined with the bad news coming from all corners of the world made me anxious and even depressed.  

As the months passed, there were ups and downs, goods and bads and all sorts of emotions and hurdles and new developments.  But it's only recently that I've started to realize that, despite all the bad, some really good things came out of all this. I should have seen it earlier.  I should have embraced those doors that were opening up to me.  I should have appreciated the things that were transpiring.  But my eyes were closed and my brain was focused on the changes, the losses, this new normal that wasn't at all normal...at least not the normal I was used to.  But who defines normal anyway 

I feel like I've been more fortunate than a lot of people on one front.  While many people I know were upset because they couldn't visit restaurants, bars and movie theatres anymore, nothing changed for me.  I don't go to any of those places often anyway.  I am an outdoors person. I will pick a picnic in the woods or a hike along the shore over a restaurant meal or movie theater outing any day! 

I don't know when it hit. I don't it hit all at once. It was a gradual thing.  I started to lighten up a bit, think a little more positively and that's when things started happening.  Or maybe it was me just becoming so comfortable with all the negativity around me that It started feeling normal enough for me to start thinking straight again.  Sounds weird but everything is weird these days.  I still can't make any sense out of anything anymore but at least, I am moving forward in some way and I'm not in the very dark place I was a few months ago. Loss of employment and sense of purpose will do that to a person...but a new-found purpose can do wonders for a person.  

<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-4842661604044584" crossorigin="anonymous"></script> 

I'm currently freelancing full-time now.  No, I'm not getting rich of it.  Not even close.  But, I'm doing something I love, I'm filling my time with purposeful work and I'm making enough to get by.  I also must say that I am quite proud of myself for remaining independent and for being resourceful.  Not many people can say that they have a talent outside of their regular work that they can use in a pinch to survive.  I feel very grateful for that.  My writing was once a hobby but now it's a lifeline!  So many new doors have opened up, many new connections have been made and I've learned so many new things!  The best thing is I'm still writing about travel despite the mass travel restrictions.  While I'm not writing about my own travel since I'm under Canadian travel restrictions, I'm writing travel content for other sites.  In my free time, I take courses and work on my social media channels and, from time-to-time, I write a blog filled with updates that will soon turn onto blogs about my own travels. Hoping  we can return to normal soon as I have many trips and adventures planned once the travel ban is lifted!

As for current adventures, we finally got enough snow here so I could get a day of snowshoeing in.  I Don't know how long the snow will last with all the rain and freezing rain we seem to get in the winters now but if I get out once, that's better than nothing since I didn't get out at all last year.  I stay pretty close to home for the most part though.  Every few days, I'll walk at Dominion Beach to see if any new and interesting debris washed up and to visit my friends the foxes, seals and eagles.  I'm itching to go further and do more but until Covid takes a hike, I'm content getting some things done around home! That's one good thing about the travel restrictions - I'm spending time completing some projects around home that I would otherwise not get to!

Sure I'll Take a two-day Stay at a Resort in Italy...Now I just have to get Myself there!

I enter a lot of contests. Some of them are simple and only require a form to be filled out with my contact information; others are more challenging and require me to actually do something for my entry. I prefer these more challenging contests. Sometimes the challenge is to submit a photo and other times, the challenge is to submit something in writing. Recently I entered a travel blogging contest that offered a two-night stay at a resort in Italy as the prize. I composed my entry and hit submit and forgot all about until a few weeks later when I opened my inbox to see the headline “you won” on one my incoming emails.

“You won” is something I often see in my email and 99% percent of the time, it is one of those scam emails. But I always open them up just to be sure and scan them to make sure they are in fact scams. As always, I opened this one, scanned it and went back to the top to reread again slowly because something caught my eye. I recognized some things in the email and it all came back to me; this was about that contest I had entered a few weeks ago. I was being informed that I had won two free nights at a resort called La Francesca in Bonassola, Italy.

I’ve been thinking about doing a multi-country trip in Europe for some time now but never got around to it. After confirming my information and getting in contact with the resort owners, I really started putting a plan in motion. I even went as far as choosing the dates that I would be in Italy and corresponded with the owners of La Francesa to inform them of my plans. It wasn’t until I received an email back with a pile of information about the resort including the fact that many of their facilities were now closed because it was the off-season. Those two words “off-season” caused my plans to crumble. I had forgotten that it was almost winter in Europe. I emailed them back and informed them that I would not be going in December but rather next spring or summer when the weather was warmer and there was more to do….and proceeded to book a week-long vacation in Barbados instead! 

I Can Proudly Say That I am Now a MatadorU Graduate

Well, I finally did it. I completed the MatadorU Travel Journalism program in Travel Writing. I have to say, I feel mighty proud of myself considering when I signed up for it quite a while back, it looked like I would never get through it. With a full time job and other obligations always getting in the way, I didn’t really get much done with the course until recently when I found myself unemployed and with a lot of free time on my hands. Yes, it took me a while to complete but its done now and I am quite pleased with how the whole thing went.

When I first signed up for the course, I was a little skeptical. I had read all the good reviews about it and knew that many travel writers recommended taking the course but I really wondered how much I could possible learn that I didn’t already know from years of reading up about the travel industry and travel writing. By the time I reached the second chapter in the course, I realized that there was a lot I didn’t know…and needed to know. And now, I feel so much more knowledgeable about the business of travel writing and more confident about my writing and in promoting it.

For the small enrollment fee of $350.00, students get access to the whole curriculum, assignment feedback from editors and lifetime access to the entire program. Each chapter ends with an assignment that allows you to incorporate all that you learned. Curriculum chapters include
1) Researching and preparing for an assignment
2) Adding multimedia to your storytelling skills
3) How to monetize your website
4) Guidebook writing and press trips
5) Narration

Once you sign up for the course, you can take as long as you want to complete it and once you’ve completed it, you will receive a printable certificate and the option to post a banner stating that you are a MatadorU graduate to your blog or website. You will also have access to some bonus materiasl such as a list of paying travel writing markets and some informative videos.

MatadorU also offers courses in Travel Photography and Travel Filmmaking and you get a discount if you sign up for two or more at a time. I wish I had of done that when I signed up but I wasn’t interested in taking any of the other ones. Now I am and I think I will soon be signing up for the Travel Photography course!

Another Day of Grace - The Humble Beginning......

For the first time since I started this blog, someone recently asked me how I came up with the name "Another Day of Grace". Well, I have to admit, I can't really take full credit for the name because the idea for the title was actually pitched to me by a friend. I can, however, take credit for my middle name, which happens to be Grace. The suggestion really jumped out at me and, although I prefer to take credit for my own work and come up with these type of things myself, I was unable to come up with a more suitable name for my first blog. And so Another Day of Grace was born....

I started this blog back in November of 2008. I didn't know a thing about blogging and frankly, I wasn't all that interested in blogging. But at the suggestion of a friend who thought it might be good to at least start one so I have a place to showcase my writing and photography skills, I began the process of setting it up and trying to find loyal readers. When I go back to those first posts, even I can see that this blog has come a long way from that personal diary peppered with random posts about anything and everything that, at best, occurred every few weeks. It was only recently that I decided to take it a step further and try to specialize a bit more and since my main interests are writing, photography and travel and my life pretty much revolves around those three things, I have decided to try and focus my blog around those interests. After all, they are all intertwined. I travel, I take pictures of my travels and I write about my travels so it seems to be working out quite well!

Anyone who has been following me for some time has probably noticed that I've made a lot of changes in the last few months and my posts have taken on a different direction and feel. I am still making some changes here and there and probably will be for the next little while.

That being said, I am thrilled to see that I will soon be reaching the milestone of 60,000 visits to my page. Not a whole lot considering the period of time we are talking about but a large amount of those visits have been in the last year so I guess that is a sign that people are finding me and seeing my work! With that milestone approaching soon, I would like to thank anyone who has taken the time to visit this page, to comment on my posts and for sharing it with others. I take pride in my work and thoroughly enjoy it and I am only glad to share it with the world!