There was nothing I could do. The Winds of Gainful Employment were blowing Mom towards cold, snowy Massachusetts. So I packed up my room, held a last goodbye party with all my friends, and flew across the immeasurable miles.

At the airport, I remember thumbing dejectedly through the address book they had given me at the party. I could already imagine the letters I would write : “I hate it here. My new school sucks. I miss you all.” To my teenaged self, this was the end of everything I knew. The end of happiness. The end of life itself. Oh to think like a teenager.

My mother saw it differently. To her this meant a new opportunity, a bigger house and an ambitious leap in her career. She urged me to see it that way too. On the drive from the airport in a rental car (ours was still being hauled across the country in a truck), she enthused about the new friends I would make, how I would love my new school, how we would plant a garden at our new house, full of roses and giant lilies and sweet cherry tomatoes. I didn’t believe any of this. I found the words as untrustworthy as a lollipop proffered by a stranger. I chose instead to look out the window and sulk aggressively at the clouds floating by.

Fast forward 4 years. Not everything turned out exactly as planned. The company hit on hard times and my mother was almost laid off. Our house became the stage of innumerable tensions, as the stress of being a single-parent family piled up and patience wore thin. Amidst all this, I was weathering the unforgiving gale-wind forces of simply Being a Teenager. Suffice to say, those years included some pretty dark times for my family and me.

But a lot of other stuff happened, too, that wasn’t all bad.

I learned web design. I was not particularly outgoing by nature, so friends at my new school were few and far between. The ones I did eventually make were similar to me in that they preferred the company of a sketchpad to that of a throng of other kids. So while our peers carpooled to the mall, we’d go to each other’s houses after school, put on some popcorn, and Photoshop cats. I had so much fun doing it at the time that little did I know it would form the basis for a future career in design and tech.

I met my future husband. Not a lot more to explain here, except that I certainly would not have married him if I had fulfilled my dream of staying at my friend’s house in San Diego for all of eternity.

I was shaped into who I am today. I wonder sometimes what kind of person I would have become if I hadn’t moved. Would I be as critical about the state of the world as I am today? Maybe not. Would I be so good at empathizing that sometimes it hurts? Who knows. The experiences that life carried me through in those post-move years made me, for better or for worse, into the systemically-minded, humor-aware, and obsessively hopeful person that I am today. I have my flaws, and I can certainly try to blame them on the trauma of a late-childhood cross-country move, but I can’t imagine inhabiting anything other than my own imperfectly perfect present-day self.

Had my mother not had faith enough to move us across the country in pursuit of a new job, none of this would have happened. Even though not everything turned out as imagined, her faith in that particular moment—her hope and eagerness to embrace the Beginning of something—propelled us forward into the future.

These days, whenever I start anything new and big, I think back to what it was like to sit on that airplane, flying farther and farther from everything I loved. It couldn’t have hurt to have a little faith back then. I didn’t know this at the time, but the more you live, the more you understand: the future is basically un-plannable. Anything and everything will happen, both good and bad. So you might as well expect nothing but good things. You might as well cut yourself some slack, and ride that airplane with a hint of a smile. And when you land, run forward into the expected greatness, as fast as you can.

Part of Write On!, a writing club started by a group of friends. Theme one: Beginnings. Continue reading posts from Prachi, Colleen, Tom and Tony.

But features don’t a product make. (Who in the what-hey came up with that grammatical construct anyway?) The product can’t merely work well, it has to make conceptual sense to its audience. In other words, it has to fit into people’s lives and reflect their understanding of the world. What I hadn’t realized was how big the gap between working well and fitting into others’ worldviews really was.

We were actually quite cognizant early on of this need for fit. I interviewed people extensively about their existing cooking habits and any outstanding pain points they encountered while cooking. We also did a series of small tests, simple barebones prototypes, amongst our friends. We focused on the part of the idea that seemed most risky at first: the sharing of cooking photos. Would people care to see what their friends are cooking? What effect does seeing those photos have on one’s motivation to cook? The results of these tests were encouraging, so much so that we began to lean heavily towards the sharing aspect of cooking.

At the same time, I was reluctant to let go of my original hopes for the app as a personal central repository of recipes and cooking history. We ended up circling back and implementing a bookmarklet for recipe saving, and a basic recipe box that let you mark recipes to cook next. These features fit into my world view for what this product needed to do, but not necessarily everyone else’s. When the updated web app was released, very few of our friends used the recipe box, or the bookmarklet. They continued to use the app primarily for sharing cooking photos. This came as a disappointment because I was very proud of, among other things, the bookmarklet—it was extremely streamlined and, in my opinion, way better than any of the existing tools out there.

This was when I encountered my first crisis of self doubt (of many more to come, I’m sure). Yes, the vast majority of projects start off this way—a confident vision, a jubilant birth, a warm reception, and… a quiet receding into the background of daily life. This was little consolation, though, as I watched the crickets chirp on MixPanel and wondered where to go from here.

I couldn’t let go of my original vision. I was still sure that there is a place in the world for what I had imagined. Heck, I grew to use it every day and loved it. I believed this product desperately needed to exist in the world. Plus, I still think that there is some wisdom to the scratch your own itch method of product development.

The challenge then becomes: can you find others who have a sympathetic itch? Or, can you adapt the scratch to a different but similar type of itch?

Deciding which of those 2 paths to take can consume a person. I can’t tell you how many gallons of hot water I’ve squandered pondering this dilemma while forgetting to shampoo my hair.

I have so many more questions now than before I started. What is the core value of this product we’re building? Who are we really addressing? Who is out there to address? Which parts of the vision am I willing to sacrifice, and which ones am I sticking to as a matter of faith? Do we read the lull in interest as a failure of the idea or a failure to find the appropriate audience?

Fortunately, we are still fairly early on in the process, and it is likely that I overreacted, as I have a tendency to. It has been less than 4 months since we started working on this full-time, and we’ve only released to a handful of our closest, most bug-tolerant friends, so our dataset is likely definitely skewed. We are actually sitting on a list of about 100 people, strangers mostly, who have expressed interest in the general idea early on, mostly thanks to Paul Ford and his megazillions of followers. We haven’t brought them onboard yet for fear of deal-breaking bugs like the app crashing when you add a new recipe. The next step is to eradicate those kinds of bugs and then to take the leap into a wider release.

I am beginning to understand what the process of bringing an idea to life is really about. They claim that entrepreneurs must be pathologically good at asserting a vision* when nobody else will believe in it. Conversely, they also say that the best products come out of listening to your customers.* But really, I think people should stop writing these nutty link-bait articles and just write a boring, even-keeled one about how it’s really a mix of the two. Building a brand-new product is neither a matter of operating solely on faith, nor of blindly following the metal detector, but of reconciliation between two forces: the inventor’s and the external world’s. You know what you want. The world will only accept a particular version of what you want. It is your job, as the product creator, to find that version as soon as possible, preferably while you can still afford the rent. It all reminds me of this passage from Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup:

“We adopted the view that our job was to find a synthesis between our vision and what customers would accept; it wasn’t to capitulate to what customers thought they wanted or to tell customers what they ought to want.”

That then, is our job going forward. We’ll continue to build, and refine, and clarify. We’ll release to more and more people. We’ll gauge their response. We’ll rinse and repeat. That is all you can really hope to do, day by day, as you try to build the cooking app that will help the world cook more, cook better.

* I litereally just googled for these things and they turned up. Proof that the Internet is a series of echos bouncing merrily through the wild emptiness of cyberspace.

A lot can happen in four months. One of those things is that I’ve finally gained some perspective on what really happened at the job I wanted so badly to escape.

Yes, I know, it sounds laughably naive, but I really did believe I could change a corporate culture built on a backbone of engineering to into one that was wholly supportive of design… within a year. Maybe it was because I had viewed the company as being small, nimble and clever enough to ride the wave of this new “design awareness” that everyone keeps writing about. More likely it was because I was fresh out of design grad school, and filled with something akin to a righteous fury about how design ought to be practiced, embraced, and propogated throughout society. That’s how things are when you are 26 and just spent 2 years watching TED talks.

Anyway, I was determined to upset the status quo. Almost from the moment I landed, I advocated a more rigorous design process based on iteration and collaboration. I ran user tests on my own to demonstrate the efficacy of data-informed decision making. I critiqued the way people critiqued design work. I gave post-lunch talks about design process. I even got into rhetorical arguments about design and process with higher-ups at lunch time (Hey, they were into it.). Basically, I spoke my mind, knowing fully well that the fate of assertive women is to probably end up being unliked. But I didn’t give a damn because I wanted my message to be heard.

The days dragged on. The work hours ticked by. People heard me, but failed to act in support. Soon enough I ran out of steam. The place I wanted to work, the place where design was understood as a true partner-in-crime rather than a glorified digital appliqué, did not materialize. I couldn’t wait any longer to work in the environment I’ve always wanted to work at, no matter how cushy the benefits and delicious the catered lunch. That’s when I decided I would simply quit, and then use all the money I’d saved up to cook up my own job from scratch. So I put in my resignation, wrapped up my duties, and gave my goodbye hugs.

On my last day of work, people kept asking me how I felt about leaving. Relief? Happiness? Joy? A sense of freedom? I gave them a optimistic smile and nodded to all these things. But the truth was, I also felt oddly deflated. Like I hadn’t done the thing I set out to achieve. Despite all that determination and optimism, I hadn’t really impressed upon anyone the importance of collaboration, or the need to user test. Nothing had changed. What’s more, I had done a lot of what I considered uninspired, mediocre design work. On the train home with my box of things, I found myself angrily tearing up at the thought that I had perhaps wasted a year and a half of my life picking a fight that wasn’t even worth it.

But the thing is… maybe things did change. Maybe I just wasn’t prepared for how slowly it was happening. So slowly as to be almost imperceptible.

I remember a coworker saying to me, “I know you didn’t do as much as you wanted here, but you definitely made an impact on this company and its products.” At the time I dismissed it as a parting nicety. But what if she’s right? That would mean my entire theory of change… had to change.

I think we are often fed this idea of change that treats it like some triumphant hero narrative. It features an individual or small group of individuals exploding onto the scene, upsetting the status quo with their new and radical ideas. It’s a process of upset, disruption, violence even, involving the tearing down of the old to replace it with the new. Martin Luther with his hammer and nail, Mao with his army, Napster with its…. um, freely available Britney Speares hits.

This is the narrative of change I had in my head as I set out to put the D in Design at Fog Creek. I saw myself as doing things to accelerate change, lead change, catalyze change. And in that regard, I failed because there was no one single volcanic event that signaled “Yes, things are now indeed quite very different.”

A more accurate view of what was happening was that I was actually nurturing change. I was planting ideas in people’s heads, and, to take the nursery analogy way too far, watering it with small amounts of Miracle Gro. If you stared at it too long, you would be disappointed by its lack of animation. But a high-definition time-lapse video will tell the truth.

I wonder what the high-def time-lapse video of Fog Creek will look like. Barring an actual seismic disturbance, I’m sure it will be pretty boring. But, it will have its own slow beauty, and might even turn up on some future BBC special documentary series narrated by David Attenborough.

As for me, now that I’m better acquainted with change and its sometimes shy personality, I’m more careful not to dismiss things as “It’s not happening.” I’ve always known change is slow, that it is not going to happen overnight, and it takes a lot of small things to effect it. But I never before had such a visceral experience of it happening (or rather, appearing not to at all). Now I know. And if nothing else, I am the more ready for it next time it appears to not happen.

1. Plan months ahead. Decide on a place, somewhere North-ish, that you would like to go.

2. Buy the necessary camera equipment, like a sturdy tripod, a cable shutter release, and a wide-angle lens. Also buy a ton of warm clothes and a gigantic thermos on Amazon, because who wants cold toes while waiting for the aurora?

3. Do a lot of Internet research on best locations, aurora-hunting strategies, times of day, times of year, and sciencey stuff behind what causes it. Read and re-read to make sure you’ve memorized everything.

4. Wait the several months until the day of your trip arrives. Build up tons of anticipation and excitement.

5. Check the weather the week you arrive at your Northerly location. Realize it’s 90% cloud cover this time of year and the aurora is about as predictable as a drunk raccoon.

6. Set your hopes aside to focus on other things, like the first-caught langoustines of the season, dunked in butter and cheese.

7. Prepare to go home with an empty SD card but a lot of other good memories.

8. Step into your hotel room and see a weird misty band across the sky.

9. Gape in awe from your fourth-floor lookout. It’s only a Level 2 aurora, but it’s still mysterious and stunning. Then flee the city lights as fast as you can.

10. Watch the aurora from a hastily spotted abandoned gas station by the roadside, about 10 miles outside of Reykjavik. Snap tons of photos until the camera battery dies. Realize it’s so cold you no longer have feelings in your toes, but it doesn’t matter.

Because despite all that prep and then understanding and then resignation, you still got to see the aurora on your last evening in Iceland.

After all this, I still feel like there’s more to do here. At the same time, I think I’m starting to really get this place.

There is a peacefulness in this country that I haven’t seen anywhere else. This makes sense for as far as I know, Iceland the modern country hasn’t experienced much discord. It’s so far from any continent that foreign troubles don’t often drift over here. It doesn’t have deep class, race, and political divides, and in fact prides itself on being a classless society. It hasn’t been active in any wars and doesn’t even have a standing military. The only battles the Icelanders have really fought are those against Mother nature and that misty pall she throws over the human soul in the dark winter.

Those battles are universal, and I think that makes the Icelanders easy to relate to. I mean, I constantly have trouble understanding China, my home country. On the other hand, I have had no trouble so far understanding the Icelanders and their lives, motivations, and way of doing things.

For instance, I get the way they use music as a defense against dysphoria. And the way they welcome everyone like they are all tired, wind-swept travelers who’ve come a long way. And the way they are obsessed with cleanliness—no shoes indoors, and everyone must shower before entering a swimming pool. I even get the way they love to swim outside in what New York would consider midwinter temperatures.

(Trust me, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I even went on the water slide 3 times to prove it.)

It’s all to simultaneously elevate themselves from, defend against, and harmonize with the natural conditions that exist here. It’s making a living amongst so much nature without losing a sense of being human.

Sometimes I wonder what our little habits tell us about how we respond to our environments, how we evolved. Earlier in the week I wrote about how traveling presented a chance to reconfigure some of my ingrained behaviors (like compulsive planning). I wonder where my compulsive planning tendencies came from, and if that’s a natural extension of living in New York. Of feeling constantly time- and space-challenged. And I wonder, too, if there’s a way to resist those ingrained behaviors. Or if I should leave them be because they reveal to me what I value.

These are the things I think about as I get ready for going back home.

Tomorrow is our last day. It’s sure to be an incredible one, as so far each day has been more surprising and memorable than the last. But first… sleep. Good night!

1. They say that Iceland is a land populated by elves, trolls and faeries. They also say that most of them are quite elusive but some make their home in the big city, Reykjavik. We stayed there for 4 days at an AirBnB owned by Jónar, whom we never got to meet so I believe he is an elf.

2. The people of Iceland really like Mexican food. You can tell because in the supermarkets there are all kinds of inventive taco shell shapes like miniature trays, and taco sauce in 1 liter bottles. Also, every respectable town has a Mexican restaurant. In fact Iceland has the highest Mexican restaurant to resident ratio, about 1 for every 1000 people.

3. At home they use something called Saganet to connect with one another. It is the most reliable form of communication, even better than email. To connect you must light a fire and then make a request for a story. If the request goes through then you are glued to the screen for the next 10 hours. The story is usually pretty repetitive and deals with a lot of people you’ve never met, but for some reason they never get tired of this. This is kind of like Facebook.

“You look lost. Can we help you? “

4. You will find Iceland is a very sparsely populated country once you leave Rekjavik, and you will drive for hours without seeing another human being. There are, however, lots of Icelandic ponies. They have built up settlements along the highways where they offer gas, food, and lodging to tired travelers.

5. Almost every Icelander owns a lopapeysa, which is a sweater with a traditional collar pattern. They are made exclusively from local wool. Some people take “locally sourced” so seriously that they keep sheep on their roofs, which is why you’ll see so many roofs covered in grass. This is sort of like those extreme Brooklynites with the chickens and bees at their apartments. The sheep need someone to watch them during the day, though, so many daycare facilities around the city have started enrolling sheep as well as children.

6. The Icelandic currency is the kronut, a cousin of the cronut. This explains why food is so expensive here.

These are from the True Facts Bin, so you know they’re true. Next time you visit Iceland, you should keep them in the back of your mind. They will make your stay much more comfortable and enjoyable, if you do.

Icelanders go with the flow

Yes, the weather here is challenging. Yesterday alone we experienced three kinds of precipitation: ice rain, hail, and snow flurries. Out-of-towners see this and get out their umbrellas, but then they look pissed because their umbrellas are turning out to be an even greater challenge than the weather in the first place (Iceland also happens to be windy). The Icelanders know not to solve a problem with a new problem. They just walk around freely in whatever the sky is serving up that day, warmly hidden inside parkas and wool mittens. Maybe they stopped noticing long ago; the cold and the wet, it’s just a different type of air.

Iceland really knows how to keep warm

They say everyone here is a musician, because it’s dark half the year and, presumably, there’s nothing else to do. But I think what’s more accurate is that the long, sun-less winters have made the people of Iceland (and the other Nordic countries) very sensitive to their interiors—in both the physical living space sense, as well as the human heart sense. Right now Reykjavik is celebrating its Design March festival, and I got a taste for some of the local design sensibility. It seems that Icelandic furniture, clothing, and decorative arts all feel very joyful, and earnest. In New York, the design scene feels like it is constantly chasing after awards or recognition or some kind of heroic problem-solving status. In Iceland, it is more important to spend time reflecting on one’s self, one’s surroundings, and expressing one’s love for an idea. In the process, they are brightening up the long winters a tiny little bit. This feels to me like essential design, design born out of necessity. Not design as a means to making a name for yourself, but design as a way of surviving.

A model train set made out of driftwood and bone, all local materials found in remote East Iceland. Part of the Austerland (Design from Nowhere) exhibit  currently at SPARK Design Space.

Iceland is boring

There isn’t a whole lot to do here, and that’s actually nice. They say traveling is a good time to think, and in Iceland, you get lots of space to think in. There is just enough stimuli, enough newness, to lead your thoughts in a productive direction, but then it’s up to you to keep going with it. Back home in New York my thoughts tend in a thousand directions at once, and I have to build up mental barriers to new stimuli so I can stay with a single thought long enough to see it bear fruit. I’m not naturally very good at this, and the barrier-maintenance can get exhausting. So this is a good place to recharge, and re-learn the art of stillness.

Icelanders make yarn sexy

While everyone else in the world is knitting weird hats in primary colors and selling them on Etsy, Icelanders are producing gossamer, drapey shawls, dresses, and coats from local wool in gentle neutral colors. Not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with weird hats in primary colors (I may own one or two), but Iceland’s fashion designers and grandmas have collectively taken something that everyone else thinks is a quaint DIY pastime and turned it into something contemporary and classy and New Yorkable. Well done, grandmas, well done.

People still know how to do this, but they aren’t doing it as much anymore. (This is from a dress worn by the first female president in the world, Iceland’s Vigdís Finnbogadóttir.)

Icelanders love ice cream

Finally, Icelanders are tired of what the rest of the world thinks is proper winter behavior. Two of the most popular things for locals to do here year-round are go swimming and eat ice cream. It’s usually too cold to swim outside, so they swim in heated pools… which are still outside. And they’ve decided long ago that it’s never too cold for ice cream.

1.

As a child of the suburbs, I grew up in a car. it was an indispensable tool for living. My mother would take me on 40-minute weekly pilgrimages to the nearest Asian supermarket, extended road trips to visit national parks, day-long hauls to visit friends in neighboring states, and everything in between.

Back then, I experienced the car as a bumpy metal confinement cell. The perpetual question on my mind and tongue was: “Are we there yet?” What I really meant was, “Can I get out of jail now?” The answer was usually “No, be quiet.”

2.

I never learned how to drive properly, getting my license finally the day before I turned 21. This was after 3 failed attempts to pass the US road exam in high school, two of which resulted in firm scoldings that greatly dampened the appeal of driving for me. The driver’s seat was where you sat if you wanted to frustrate and disappoint someone.

Finally, in college, my then-boyfriend-now-husband taught me how to tolerate driving again, and in a friend’s borrowed automatic, I shakily passed the exam. Since then, I’ve somehow managed to avoid driving completely. This means I am probably now just as terrible at driving as I was at age 16.

3.

In a country where, for many, the car signifies freedom and status, I’ve managed to experience it as the complete opposite: a source of restriction and shame.

But I’ve come to realize there’s a third way to experience the car, one that puts me on way better terms with it: visit a heartbreakingly gorgeous country, and the car becomes a picture frame.

You may never want to give up the passenger seat again.

Snapped haphazardly with a 70-300mm zoom lens, 1600 ISO, F5.6, and 1/4000 shutter speed as we zoomed past.

So why not embrace your addiction? I mean, come on, happiness. Besides, you can use your newfound connectivity to mess with your friends’ site analytics data:

So without further ado, I give you three random tips on refusing to disconnect:

1. Get Cheap Cellular Data on Your Locked iPhone(s) In a Foreign Country

Step one: buy a cheap Android smartphone. There are tons on eBay. Step two: go to the foreign country. Step three: spend $15 on a SIM card (in Iceland, that buys you a cellular phone number + 1gb, plenty for a week). Step four: Put it in your Android and set it up as a tethering hotspot. Boom, instant connectivity for all your iPhones, anywhere with cell reception!

2. Free GPS

Your phone actually has a GPS chip in it that is completely independent from the cellular antenna that receives call and data signals. As such, no phone company has control over it, and you don’t have to pay to use it. (I finally realized that’s what the G in GPS really stood for.)

All you really need for that GPS chip to tell you something useful about your location is a map onto which your phone can place the ol’ blue dot. Fortunately, there is a free app called MapsWithMe. It lets you download OpenStreetMap data into your phone before you leave the mother country. Then when you’re driving around, you can always tell where you are.

So next time a car rental company offers you “fully integrated GPS navigation systems” for $11/day, feel free to laugh like a crazy person and run out of the store.

3. Convince People at the Airport to Give You Their Outlet

This tip I got from my friend Jess, who is a far more seasoned traveller than I. You should always travel with one of these:

It takes up very little room in your pack and guarantees that you will always be able to charge your phone/laptop/roomba, even when all the outlets are taken. Electricity is cool like that.

My name is Tinabeans, and I am an addict.

]]> http://tinabeans.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1513 0 http://tinabeans.com/blog/?p=1510 http://tinabeans.com/blog/?p=1510#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2014 20:37:55 +0000 http://tinabeans.com/blog/?p=1510 Read more →]]> If there is one thing I kept hearing about Iceland while researching for this trip, it is this: Do not come with any expectations, and you will be fine.

Usually, this is said with regards to the weather. It’s a warning against the siren song of those dazzling clear skies presented in promotional photos. In reality, your entire week can and will be cloaked in rain and fog, because that’s just what Iceland is. Don’t expect good weather, don’t expect to see the aurora, and you won’t leave feeling like your time there was a total waste.

Check, I said to myself. That’s easy. I know Iceland has a lot more to offer; I’ll just focus on that instead.

But that’s just expectation-abstinence for beginners. What happened next puts you to the real test.

Because you can look forward to pretty much everything going crazy and doing its own thing. Once you land at the airport, you’ll discover the website lied and there is no where to buy a SIM card. You will go to a mall to find it but it will be closed. The restaurants you were looking forward to eating at will also be closed (or altogether vanished despite the website’s claims). You will be unable to visit museums, either because it’s changed its names 3 times and Google doesn’t know what it’s called anymore, or because it doesn’t exist. Craziest of all, the town will be completely asleep and unaware of the fact that you exist and are hungry, so you will spend about 3 hours wandering through deserted streets with other bemused tourists, gazing hungrily at the window displays with their unfulfilled promises of waffles and hot chocolate.

I’ve lived in New York for 3 years and not being able to trade money for food whenever I want… I… I just don’t know how I feel about that.

Of course, there are basically two ways to react to this first day: be a New Yorker, or be Icelandic.

Before coming here, I read a blog called I Heart Reykjavik, in which an Icelandic native explains the concept of Þetta Reddast. This translates roughly to “everything will be all right.” The writer observes that, in Iceland, time is seen as almost circular. Missed opportunities can always reappear. Mistakes can always be amended. Late meetings can always be caught up on. It’s remarkably Bob Marley-esque, for a remarkably un-tropical area of the world.

Her theory for why this is so all goes back to the weather in Iceland. It can change so fast from agreeable to deadly that Icelanders have grown accustomed to dropping everything to save their sheep from an oncoming blizzard. Planning is futile. Good reflexes, creativity, and problem-solving in the moment are more important.

Once I remembered this concept and pretended to be an Icelander, the day took a turn for the better. We ditched our original lunch aspirations and discovered this bizarre and delicious shawarma place that put pizza sauce on their shawarma rolls, to good effect. We wandered into an underground museum that showcased an actual, recently excavated viking settlement.  We explored not one, but TWO Icelandic supermarkets (I have a crazy, unexplained passion for foreign supermarkets). And we finally landed that SIM card.

One of the things I love about visiting really different places is how it offers you a totally clean behavioral slate. Here is this unfamiliar new environment, with its own rules and challenges. You don’t know it yet, and it doesn’t know you. This is freeing. You don’t have to be your usual cranky, jaded self, or whatever behavioral coping mechanism you evolved back home. (Just, you know, speaking unspecifically here.) You can learn, adapt, and act differently here. And, if it’s better, and you like it, you can hope to carry a little bit of that back home.

I will be in Iceland for the next seven days with my husband, and I will attempt to blog every single day. This is an experiment, to loosen me up, and ease back into writing more. I won’t be obsessed with quality, so much as quantity. Consider yourself warned, and wish me luck!