Come wander with me

 Recently, I have changed the name of this bog to "Wander with Marc." My initial intent for the blog was to share my travels and hikes online. I was never a full time traveller; I work a full time job that sometimes require overtime. Still, I am not like most Americans who do not use their vacation time at work due to fear of being viewed as a bad teamplayer or not being committed enough to work. On average, Americans are given two weeks of vacation time. Even so, this is not mandated by our laws, and at discretion of the jobplaces to provide this benefit or not to their workers. 

My workplace is pretty generous with their schedule options and personal time off benefits. Initially, my schedule was working seven days on, and then having seven days off. This could give me weeks to go on vacations or excursions. The downside was that it doesnt accrue personal time off. If you are scheduled to work during a week, you are expected to come and work or find someone to replace you. Moreover, for international travels, going away for one week doesn't always make sense. Somtimes the travel between Utah and other place could take about 24 hours. You're losing two days to travel, and have only five days to visit the destinations. 

I eventually changed my schedule so that I work regular 40 hours week from Tuesday to Saturday. This would accrue PTO for me, and I could take my holidays for more than one week. I have accrued enough PTO that I could take off for a month at times. I was then able to visit destinations for a longer period, including a month in New Zealand and also a month walking the camino in Spain. 

In 2020, I had planned a nice itinerary to visit the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) when a new disease was emerging and causing worldwide chaos. The pandemic has caused a lot of places to lock down and try to combat the new disease. I was no longer traveling, and basically was staying at home all the time to avoid being sick.

At this point, I had wanted to talk about many other interests I have, other than travelling and hiking. Talking about languages when my handle name was deafutahhiker didn't always make sense to me. I'm an avid cross-stitcher and the idea of showing my work on an account dedicated to hiking also didn't make sense to me. Other interests of mine includes: history, cooking, gardening, collecting banknotes, genealogy, etc. I decided I would change the blog name to Wandering with Marc so that I could just discuss about anything. 

It's a loose interpretation of the word "wander" where I could wander from different topic to other. It's like the quote: "Not all who wander are lost." Tho my blog would probably be primarily about traveling and hiking, there will be random posts of various themes that I find interesting. This is an invitation for you to come along and wander with me as I trek through this life on Earth. Happy wanders!