South Korea Journal Intro

Over the last few months, while settling into my life in South Korea, I’ve been seeking a creative outlet. I thought about making videos about my time here or recording a podcast. Well, @jacobonahill and I actually did record a podcast… but the audio was unbearable. Perhaps that was my sign from above that audio is not my calling. Unfortunate because audio aside, that podcast was pretty solid. One full hour of hot takes. Maybe one day the world will hear it.

 

For now however, I’ve taken to journaling. I’ve decided that I want to write once every day for three reasons:

 

1. To document my time in South Korea

This is a unique time in my life that I’ll always enjoy looking back on. I’m sure one day I’ll be grateful that I took the time to write down some of my favorite memories from teaching English here. My journal will essentially act as a time capsule from my early twenties, and that’s pretty exciting!

 

2. Creative Expression

Honestly, I’ve had so many thoughts whirling around my head during my 3-ish months living here. It feels nice to get them on paper. For me, writing is the release of pent up thoughts and emotions that I don’t necessarily get to share throughout the day. Given my rural location, I don’t do a lot of socializing (more on that later), so I think this will be healthy for me.

 

3. Communication with friends and family

The last reason I want to blog daily is to share, in an honest way, my experience here in Korea. Mom and Dad, this one is for you! Due to the time difference (14 hours ahead of EST), it is difficult to find time that works for friends and family to catch up. Additionally, after a long day of teaching, it’s lowkey the last thing I feel like doing. In my opinion, writing offers me a way to communicate, in detail, my experiences and emotions during my time abroad. Whatever I cannot offer through facetime or text can be found here. I promise you, if there is anything you want to know, it can be found in my journal entries.

 

 

That being said, I owe you one journal entry every weekday (I’ll give myself the weekends off). This will keep me accountable and force me to put pen to paper. Not only that, I promise you to keep it real. This isn’t a sightseeing blog where I’m going to tell you all about how pretty the view from the Seoul skytower was (I’m assuming there is one, lol). Or where I’ll talk about how yummy my lunch was. You get the idea. I don’t want this to be a place where I simply tell you what I did. That’s my pet peeve about most travel blogs, and frankly, the reason I don’t read them. It’s not fun for either the reader or, in my opinion, the writer. Rather, I’d like to share everything on my mind from the little things to the big ones in an AUTHENTIC way. No filter, no fake, no B.S. While that may include cool things I saw or places I went, I promise it’ll be more than that. No itineraries, just raw, unfiltered thoughts.

 

Lastly, I won’t put any word counts or restrictions on these journal entries. Some days I’ll be feeling it, and others, I’ll just want to check the box. And that’s okay. Regardless of how I’m feeling, I vow to take a chunk of it and post it on the internet for you. Some days will be more interesting than others, but that’s life, right?

 

I’ll be sharing these posts to my blog, https://www.loadedlocal.com, as well as my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/theloadedlocal. At some point down the road, I’ll start sending a weekly roundup to my email subscribers, which you can sign up for at the bottom of my website’s blog page, https://www.loadedlocal.com/blog/.

 

If you’ve read all the way to this point, thanks for checking in. I’ll see you TOMORROW for my first official entry 🙂

 

Stephen (THE Loaded Local)