Third post in my Melville Snapshot series. Read posts 1 and 2.
When I first started this blog in June 2010, hardly anyone read it. I blogged mostly for myself and my close friends and family who were curious about my new life in South Africa.
A lot has changed in four years. While I try to approach blogging in more or less the same way that I did four years ago, I really don’t. I have more readers now and blogging has become part of my career. Thanks to my blog I’ve been able to experience lots of amazing, mind-blowing things (my recent helicopter ride over Joburg is a perfect example), and I feel like I have to uphold my reputation as a Joburg-based cultural adventure-seeker. Sometimes I feel like I can’t blog about “just anything” anymore.
But my life isn’t really about helicopter rides and Soweto cycling tours and exploring weird places in Joburg. At least not completely. Truth be told, I’m kind of an introverted homebody. I love hanging around my house in Melville, which I call the Lucky 5 Star Commune, and walking around the garden with the Melville Cat.
This weekend I was doing exactly that, playing around with my new olloclip iPhone lens that I received as a freebie on the above-referenced helicopter ride. I attempted a macro shot of a fly sitting on a tiny wildflower.
Macro-fly Instagram. Shot (amazingly) with my iPhone and attached olloclip.
Sometimes it’s the little things…Okay, I won’t torture you with the rest of that cliché. You know what I mean.
I’m endlessly grateful for the amazing life that I have in South Africa. It’s not always easy, but every minute of it is 1000 times more rewarding than the lives I could be leading anywhere else. Thanks to everyone and everything who makes my life here awesome. Even the fly.
Thanks to @igersjozi for featuring this shot on Instagram today.
How have I never blogged about 44 Stanley Avenue, the coolest shopping and dining complex in Joburg, which is only five minutes from my house?
I guess it’s wrong to say I’ve never blogged about 44 Stanley; I’ve mentioned it countless times over the years (see here and here) when writing about specific restaurants or shops that are there. But I’ve never written a dedicated post about 44 Stanley as a destination and it’s about time I did – especially now, with the holidays upon us.
I’ve been dreadfully uninspired lately, struggling to think of anything I want to blog about despite having a long list of great ideas (many of which you, my readers, provided in September). I’m finding it hard to feel positive about life at the moment. But on Saturday Thorsten and I got the chance to visit Indwe Park, an indigenous garden and sculpture park in Braamfontein, and I knew I had my topic for today.
Given this week’s political nuclear bomb blast, it feels like a weird time to publish a light-hearted post about my recent (pre-election) jaunt through the United States. But I’m hoping you’ve have had enough of the U.S. election horror show – I know I have – and are ready (at least temporarily) for some wholesome American travel adventures. If so, please read on about my four-day visit to Maine, the northeastern-most state in the lower 48, with my sister, Susanna.
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It makes me smile, when I see it.