It’s strange returning to a place that once felt so familiar.

It’s been five years since I sat down in this corner of the internet. Five years since I thought I was ready to start sharing again but little did I know it was the beginning of an incredible lived in, uprooted epic world cultural travel immersion.

I fondly think back to the time when I shared my thoughts simply because they wanted to be written. Way back in 2013 when this blog began, when I felt the call and the pull to write.

Life, however, has a way of taking us exactly where we need to go. Especially if we really lean into it.

Five Years, 45 Countries, and the Unknown

Since I last wrote here was with some updates, Leon and I packed up our lives, sold almost everything we owned, and stepped into the unknown. We’ve spent the last five years slow-travelling the world across 45 countries as digital nomads, living across countries, cultures, and continents. I also have spent time teaching ESL and tutoring/mentoring. Talking to over 2000 people across multiple countries in over 5,000 1 on 1 conversations.

I didn’t just collect passport stamps, I collected conversations, perspectives, contradictions, grief, joy, history, silence, and stories. I have had epic 5 star excursions and experiences and more fondly I have had incredibly diverse conversations and experiences that I never, ever could have imagined.

My journey crossed the lands of epic and fallen empires, culturally diverse people and ancient geography.

But above all my journey was about humanity.

The Search for What Makes Us Human

The more people I met, the more fascinated I became with what makes us who we are.

Why we believe what we believe.

Why societies evolve the way they do.

Why history repeats itself.

Why some people seem willing to surrender their thinking willingly while others spend their lives questioning everything. The further I travelled across the world, the deeper I travelled into the human mind.

Looking Back at 2013

Looking back now, I smile at the woman who started this blog in 2013. Check out my first post or my about me page to read my original intentions for this blog.

She simply wanted the courage to call herself a writer. She was hungry. She felt the faint calling.

She had no idea where those words would eventually lead. Honestly sometimes I still can’t believe it myself.

Where the Words Are Going

Today, my writing has expanded and evolved into something much broader than I ever really imagined but I still centre those same issues and topics that I touched on here as well.

Philosophy. Human behaviour. Relationships.

Consciousness. Anthropology. Poetry. Science.

Space. Creativity. Identity. Death. Meaning.

A focus on the stories we tell ourselves. And more now than ever the stories our current society tells us.

And perhaps the question I find myself returning to more than any other…

How do we remain deeply human in a world increasingly shaped by digital minds?

That question has been quietly following me for years.

Now I’m finally ready to write it.

This next chapter feels different.

Bigger. Scarier. More honest.

For the first time in my life, I feel like it is time to fully step into the work I believe I’ve been building toward for decades.

And that brings me to something I’m incredibly excited and admittedly a little terrified to share.

This August, I’m heading to London to begin pitching my books to publishers.

Just writing that sentence feels surreal.  

The ideas that have lived inside notebooks, phone notes, journals, and countless late-night conversations are becoming real.

They’re becoming manuscripts. Bodies of work. Books I hope will eventually find their way into other people’s hands and perhaps make them pause, question, feel, or simply see the world from a slightly broader perspective.

So, I’m coming home to this space because this is where so much of my writing journey began. I said I wanted to be a published writer. Let’s see if I can do so with these 3 books I have coming up.

Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing essays, philosophical rabbit holes, observations from around the world, theories I’m exploring, pieces of poetry, unfinished thoughts, and the very real behind-the-scenes experience of preparing these books and taking them to London, England.

Some posts may challenge you. Some may comfort you. Some may simply leave you thinking long after you’ve closed the page.

If you’ve been here since the beginning… thank you.

If you’re just discovering me now… welcome.

I’m genuinely glad you’re here.

Let’s see where this journey takes us this time.

Find my other blog and writing here: https://www.closerlives.com/about-us/jennifer-david

Jennifer