A journey through my notebooks

I am sure all my fellow-bloggers will see a little of themselves in Julie Powell. What project can we take on to get us through the next year and serendipitously land us a literary agent and a book contract? Are we not all writers in waiting? Artists in our own residence? Yes, my passion is cooking, I've thousands of recipes in (yet) uncooked from books and magazines...but that's been done now. It still amazes me, that whether people read your blog or not, you are still in a way, published. Self published. For years now I have been writing, filling notebooks and taking one with me wherever I go. But nothing has inspired me more than travel.

I used to sit on my bed in my parents house, tearing out articles on Morocco and India, dying at the mounds of colourful spices and the alien brightness of women swathed in saris. Where golden jewels pierced through noses and ears were commonplace and beautiful rather than a symbol of non-conformism as it is here. I used to pore through them in the privacy of my bedroom when my boyfriend was at football training or out with the boys. He didn't want these adventures. They belonged to me. I wanted more.

I could almost smell the headiness of the souks through the pages and in some way, I think I escaped into them then and there for just a little while. I naively, never thought it a waste to methodically tear and squirrel away these pages. I just knew, one day, I would be there. I didn't know when or how (then again, I've never been into practicalities). I used to rank my top three places, revise them and re-rank them and I settled on these...Paris, Morocco, India.

I invite you to come on a journey with me...through the best years of my life. I knew it then just as I know it now.

"They will be the best years of your life," he said. I wasn't convinced.

"You wait until I get back, I am going to be so wordly".

"You think because you haven't seen the world that I don't think you're wordly?"

I thought I loved that boy and that's why I left.