Happy 2014!

I hope you enjoyed a festive and reflective New Years Eve!

At Chatham Cookie on Cape Cod, a new coffeehouse discovery this past week.

I’ve put together a list of resolutions for this upcoming year and I’d like to share them.

• Visit Africa.

While I technically set foot on the African continent this past year on my (brief) overnight stop in Egypt, I’d LOVE to return for a longer stretch. My wish list includes Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Namibia, and South Africa. I’d love to do an overland trip to cheaply visit a bunch of these countries. I suspect I might love Johannesburg based on recommendations of fellow travelers.

• Give back in meaningful ways.

My friend and fellow photographer Phil recently volunteered his photo skills at an orphanage in Ethiopia. I’d love to seek out similar volunteer work, either with or without my camera. So much of my travel is purely for my own exploration and I think it’d be both energizing and rewarding to spend some time on the road giving back.

• Reconnect with friends and family I missed this past year while traveling.

I’ll get to catch up with lots of family and friends on the east coast over the next month in CT and NYC, and after that I’ll reunite with my friends and former work family in Los Angeles. I can’t wait to give big hugs to lots and lots of people!

• Learn to play the guitar.

This is ambitious, but it’s a skill I’ve always wanted to learn. There is a guitar at my parents’ house in CT so I hope to try it out in January. I’d love to be proficient enough to play a song or two around the campfire at summer camp in the future.

• Catch up on all the TV shows I missed while traveling.

This includes the most recent seasons of Nashville, Homeland, The Newsroom, and Arrested Development, plus the first season of Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, as well as the upcoming seasons of Downton Abbey and Sherlock. I’ve already caught up on Scandal in the past few days (AMAZING).

• Work to improve my writing.

As I shared the other day, I wrote a piece for The Writer magazine. So much of my blog involves writing glorified captions but I’d like to try more in-depth pieces, either on this site or elsewhere. It’s a good way to push myself creatively and work on finding my own voice.

• Research ways to monetize my travel photography and share it more widely.

This is a big one… if I can make this a reality, I could potentially travel more in the future instead of going back to a more traditional job. This will involve contacting magazines, travel websites, or travel agents about using my images to help them sell their products. Or investigate posting my work on image-for-hire sites. Or looking into self publishing a photo book of my travels. I’ll spend time in February and March researching ways to make this happen.

• Get the word out about my blog and attract new readership.

This is a big part of running a blog that I’ve largely ignored until now. Beyond my usual postings on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter (ugh, I’m horrible at Twitter), I don’t actively publicize my blog. I should be submitting to photo contests and working harder to connect with fellow travel bloggers. But all that takes time and I’d rather focus on cultivating good content… except that content without eyeballs doesn’t mean much. So I’ll work more to get my blog out there in 2014.

• Travel to a place that isn’t currently on my radar.

Yemen? Kazakastan? Mongolia? Central African Republic? The Shetland Islands? I love that this resolution is a big question mark. I hope that in 365 days from now I look back and pinpoint at least one destination that I can’t even imagine visiting right now.

What are your resolutions for the new year? Any travel-related goals?