These days ...

Yesterday was a satisfying day.
One where I spent an hour interviewing a city tourism marketing executive about Antwerpen and was delighted to discover that there are yet are more secret things I haven't quite discovered.

One week from today and I will have touched down in Italy, all going well but this morning it's about negotiating with my body regarding the bone-aching nose-sniffing cold that could be arriving.

And tomorrow ... tomorrow I finally have the money to purchase the beautiful, rather sexy lens I fell in love with so long ago. I go on from the purchasing moment to photographing a couple who won a photo session with me in a raffle.

The last few weeks have been difficult.
I have been questioning all I am doing, whether I was good enough to continue while wondering if I had the strength to push on down this totally wild path that I had decided to travel alone.

My new website is more than halfway completed ... the website I'm hoping to launch from the quiet of Italy.

Italy, that country I love so very very much.

You see, I have these friends I might just adore (if they allowed adoration and I can already see them sweeping away this crazy talk - her with a wave of her hand and a laugh and he, with a few practical words that make sense) who offered me space in an apartment in Italy; much-needed time and space from the crazy insane life I have here in Belgium.

I'm going there to explore the city I've read about forever, to use my camera extensively, to load and launch this new website, to write ...

Gert has great faith in my writing and believes a book might even begin over there, in that place where there is the possibility of silent times if I choose them.

I'll be on a coast and my soul is so hungry for the seascapes I took forgranted back home in New Zealand.
Took forgranted?
Maybe not. Where ever I lived back there, I always had a river, lake or beach that my dog and I owned ... there were the Clutha and Arrow Rivers in Central Otago, then Anakiwa up in the Marlborough Sounds. There was the two massive bodies of water called Lake Te Anau and Manapouri while I lived in Te Anau and finally a return to the beaches of my childhood, with a new soul beach called Long Beach.

Let's see what I find in this Italian city that is so steeped in history while maintaining something of its connection with Nature.

So the next week is about filing and packing, about backing up and finding that perfect suitcase on wheels for all of my equipment but with a pouch on the front for cabin baggage necessities like that book, this passport, that ticket.

Italy is calling ...