Personal blog of Yzmir Ramirez

Hey folks, I thought I'd share some interesting travel-related blogs and YouTube channels that I follow:

Blogs

totesmboats.blogspot.com

Ester has decided to live on a houseboat on Lake Union, Seattle. Follow her journey.

rootlessroutes.com

Follow Eli, who in her 50's decided to take to the road on an endless road trip with her cat, and she hasn't looked back. Such a great adventure and awesome photography too.

toeuropeandbeyond.com

Another great travel blog, lots of Europe and elsewhere.

You Tube Channels

vagabrothers

Two brothers travelling the world. Great video quality as well as tons of advice about what to see and travel tips. They've even started making VR movies.

Wolters World

Quick travel advice for countries and cities all over the world. I watch every video but alas, they're nearly all just talking heads with a few travel scenes thrown in. But the advice is solid.

Sailing SV Delos

Absolutely hands down the best sailing video channel ever! A bunch of fun folks circumnavigating the world over the last 7-8 years on a 53' Amel Super Maramu 2000. Go back to Episode 1 (and we're up to like 188 now) and watch them in order to see the evolution of the adventure and the crew. The early videos were primitive but stick with it because now they are some of the best videographers in the business – totally pro-broadcast quality.

Sailing Yacht Ruby Rose

Nick and Terysa sail a 38' Southerner monohull, and have travelled from Europe, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, and are now heading to Bermuda and back across the Atlantic to Europe. Lots of fun and travel videography, and as a Brit, I like Nick, since he's English and curses a lot.

Gone with the Wynns

Jason and Nikki are great adventurers. They started off touring the USA and Canada in an RV, and those videos are very informative if you're considering the RV nomadic lifestyle. A couple of years ago they bought a Leopard catamaran in Florida, learned to sail it (!) and meandered through the Bahamas, down to Panama and Equador, and now plan to cross the Pacific. Great, fun travel videos (it's not all sailing!) with their 2 cats.

Sailing La Vagabonde

Riley and Elayna are an Australian Couple who've been on a round the world sail for years. Currently they're sailing a Outremer catamaran, having gone around the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, but they started on a 45' Beneteau monohull. For the best experience, go back to Episode 1 and watch them all in order.

 

Emergence is out now on Kindle, and paperback in a couple of days.

Buy on Amazon

A dying world has many secrets.

Porl's world is dying. Crops fail. Birds fall from the sky. Is this a repeat of the Cataclysm that decimated the Ancients’ world a thousand years ago?

Porl loves to fix things and is compelled to solve the mystery – and save his people no matter the personal cost. Disobeying the will of the town Elders, Porl uncovers a secret they want hidden. When caught, the Elders banish Porl into the wilderness, alone against the savage Mad-Ones.

As the Mad-Ones hunt him, Porl discovers the world isn't what he believed. The more he learns about the mystical Ancients, the more he unravels an incredible reality he never imagined.

Nothing is what it seems. The harshest truth he uncovers is that in seven days everyone he loves will die. Yet the final secret of the Ancients, on how to save his people, still eludes him…

Stress. Uncertainty. I lay awake until 3am last night, my brain refusing to shut down. It had a lot to think about:

• Project at work not going according to plan, with a deadline looming
• My mother’s health
• A possible relocation to another State and selling the house
• How to get 6 cats across country
• How to get my book in front of more readers
• Is the ambitious plot for my second book going to work

Attempting to calm my overactive brain and put these worries into perspective, I discovered two very important revelations, that I think many of us overlook in the rush of our daily lives:

1. I have a house, a wonderful wife, adorable cats, food on the table, and a good job. I’m not starving in the Sudan, fighting for every grain of rice, witnessing human rights violations every day. I have reasonable health, a great family, good friends and some of the highest freedoms on Earth. I’m not in a 3rd-world jail, homeless, alone in the world, or at death’s door. I have a ton to be thankful for, and I am.
2.  Life should be an adventure. Life is precious, and shorter than we would like. Instead of spending it worrying and stressing, we should be enjoying it, getting everything out of it for ourselves and those around us. We never know what tomorrow will bring: it might be smooth, it might be rough, but it IS an adventure.

No longer will I stress the list above, instead I shall embrace it. That work project is a fantastic challenge. That relocation is a chance to get out of a rut, to see fresh things and meet new people. I must trust my creative mind to come up with ways to market my book. Being a writer is a long-tail game, and I’ve only just begun. I WILL make my new book the best it can be. Patience and perseverance. None of us is an expert out of the gate.

A previous post: How stressed are you about your writing?

Carpe Diem.

Are you stressing? Are you failing to see life for the adventure it is? Please share.