Uprooting your life after over a decade of calling a place home is worth talking about, but it is not really the point of this post. For one, I am tired of talking about it. For two, the permanence of this move is unclear. Someone called it a test run and that is what I am rolling with now.

We still have our house in Bamako. Or rather, the first floor of a house. We gave quite a few things away, but we didn’t begin the process of trying to sell some of the more valuable items, appliances etc.

It is a great house. Highly affordable. A slightly over-paved courtyard, but otherwise lots of room to run around. I really started to appreciate the roof this past year.

And there is a great community in our neighborhood despite an exceptional amount of mostly non-violent theft that goes on.

I wrote in my last post about the reasons for the move. Nothing has changed on that front. We are going to go back to Bamako in July and will make some decisions then. Despite everything, I love Bamako and miss it every day.

But the real reason for this post is to announce the resurrection of this blog. I am going to start posting. A lot. Well, relatively a lot. The writing may be terrible. I am not going to labor over any of it. I am just going to let it fly.

The guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn once said, “I don’t play with a lot of finesse. I usually play like I’m breaking out of jail.” And there you have my plan with the writing on this site. Bonne chance to all of you.

And why am I writing like this? Despite not having a real job, I seemingly have no time. So my writing can hardly be anything other than my brain shitting itself all over the internet. That sentence is unfortunately an example of what most of my writing will probably be like now.

And why am I writing at all? I actually really enjoyed this, many lives ago. I imagine I will enjoy jailbreaking my thoughts without agonizing over the words even more.

I also miss connecting with people through this blog. Long ago, it happened quite often. Amazingly, this blog led to many cherished friendships.

In Bamako, I spent most of my day in a bar/restaurant and then returned home to a house that contained the population of a small city. As an introvert, I was at max human interaction. I craved alone time and savored it whenever I could. Going out? Making new friends? These were the last things I wanted to do.

Now I am in a foreign land with no friends (mild exaggeration). Will someone hang out with me please?

I also have an ulterior motive. I am trying to profit from this blog. I am trying to sell you something. And that something is scooter trips. And maybe some postcards.

Don’t worry, I won’t mention them every day. And I do plan on posting every day. Don’t hold me to it, though. The posts will be shorter than most everything I have written on this site. You may welcome that news. Most people don’t have time for reading this kind of thing.

And if you really have no time and/or you will most likely never visit this site again, yet you still want an every now and then update from me, I have started an email list. Yep, I’ve done it. Let me have it. Or sign up here:

* You will need to confirm that you actually want to join this list. If you don’t see that confirmation email, check your spam folder. Hopefully I won’t be spending all of my time in there.

I already had a mailchimp account for Scoot West Africa and Postcards from Timbuktu. Why not one more list?