Family – Page 2

Christmas Greetings 2012

For general Christmas greetings and more, visit my Thoughts & Sayings.

I want to depart from travelogues for a few days to focus on my favorite holiday, Christmas.

I love Christmas and its many traditions. The celebration of Jesus Christ’s birth and the trappings of the season hold a special place in my heart. No matter where in the world I live or what cultural events and traditions I observe, Christmas will always be my favorite.

When I was young, I used to draw illustrated Christmas cards for family and friends. In the days before technology made it easier to do graphic design, I spent hours sketching cartoon characters and winter scenes by hand. I haven’t had time in years to sit down and sketch a Yuletide scene — I barely have time nowadays to send out an annual Christmas letter — but I still enjoy looking at cards from Christmases past.

Here are some of them. I hope they make your holidays a little brighter!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a joyous holiday season!

M.G. Edwards is a writer of books and stories in the mystery, thriller and science fiction-fantasy genres. He also writes travel adventures. He is author of Kilimanjaro: One Man’s Quest to Go Over the Hill, a non-fiction account of his attempt to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain and a collection of short stories called Real Dreams: Thirty Years of Short Stories. His books are available as an e-book and in print on Amazon.com and other booksellers. He lives in Bangkok, Thailand with his wife Jing and son Alex.

For more books or stories by M.G. Edwards, visit his web site at www.mgedwards.com or his blog, World Adventurers. Contact him at me@mgedwards.com, on Facebook, on Google+, or @m_g_edwards on Twitter.

Roadmap for future travels

I never seem to be able to keep up with our travels and happenings on this blog. Here we are heading to Namibia for the first time tomorrow, which of course I’ll have to blog about, and yet I still haven’t finished narrating the Kilimanjaro climb I did in January! Life always seems to outpace technology, doesn’t it? Our brains (still) process faster than a keyboard so that our fingers miss out on some of our thought waves. Blogging can never keep up with real life, particularly when it goes by so fast. Too fast lately, it seems.

Over the next couple weeks I plan to write a short series on our Namibia trip — assuming that there are some adventures to be told as we zigzag from Windhoek to Swakopmund and Walvis Bay to the Namib Desert and back on rough roads with a sardine can-sized car rental. I have a couple more installments of the Kilimanjaro series to post, and then I’ll be done. I hope to have the Namibia series written over the next month or so but will no doubt be interrupted by future trips to Lubumbashi, DR Congo, one final trip to Livingstone, and a visit to South Luangwa National Park in eastern Zambia, the last trip we’ll take in southern Africa before heading to our next destination in Asia via North America. In the next six months my family and I will visit three continents and multiple countries en route to our next home in Bangkok, Thailand, which is a great jump-off point for regional travel in southeast Asia.

While all this travel may sound “cool,” “awesome” or “exciting,” it’s going to be a grind. Imagine packing up your entire life — including all that stuff you’ve forgotten in your garage or attic — and moving it cross-country every 2-3 years; then, imagine yourself moving half way around the world and getting everything you own — and yourselves — there intact. When we finally land in Bangkok after having been back to the United States for a short trip to visit family, we’ll be more than ready to take a break from traveling. For a few months at least until we head to Shanghai, China next February for Chinese New Year. During all this travel I will do my best to document it with of course more random posts about issues of personal interest to mix things up.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

Things to Come

Have you ever been in a situation where you know what your life will be like for the next six months, but you don’t know what it will be like in the next six?

That’s the situation I find myself in at the moment. Right now I am living and working in a reality that will change dramatically in less than four months. My family and my life will be uprooted, and we will be in limbo for another month before we find ourselves in a completely new reality. From one continent to another, one country to another, one culture to another. It’s really quite surreal, actually, as if you’re being pulled out of one dream (or for some, a nightmare) and dropped into another. Virtually everything that I know now will be a memory in a matter of months. Some will be good memories, some not so good. The home I live in will change. Neighbors, friends, and colleagues will be different. And although the Internet allows those I know now to stay in touch, many of us will never cross paths again.

I ponder sometimes what life will be like six months from now in a new location, new environment, even a new career. The only constant will be my loving family and my God. They are the only continuity this life brings. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to a change. I am wary of the unexpected and unsure of what to expect in our next life, but I have created an image in my mind of what I think life will be like in the near future. Take this blog for instance. As life is now I only have time to post new entries once a week or twice if I’m lucky. Yet the site is a bit staid because I don’t have time to upload photos or media that would make this page more attractive and attract more readers. In six months, I will be able to make this blog more interesting than it is now, and perhaps it will return to the days when hundreds, even thousands read this blog each day.

But what am I giving up by changing realities? A lot, really. There are things I’m doing now that I won’t be able to do in six months. The question is whether the trade-off is a positive step or something I will learn to regret. The answer I do not yet know, and it lies in our new reality.

Many of my friends and colleagues face similar situations every year or two years. Somehow, most of us manage to cope with the change. While it seems attractive to change your reality — especially if you dislike the one you’re in now — there’s something to be said about stability and continuity. That’s something few can afford in this life.