Have I really been on this planet for almost three decades? It’s hard to believe. I have decided not to look back, but instead to look forward.

Here’s how I’m starting my 29th year:

1. Homeless. I left my last rented domicile on January 19th, 2014, and I do not know when I will have a permanent address again. I buy a lot of plane tickets, bus tickets, train tickets, and there is a sleeping bag in the back of my car. My toaster and my bed and my books are in storage. I live out of bags. My passport lives in my bags. My toothbrush folds in half.
2. Self-employed. I have a job. I complete it from my laptop. I read, write, and edit. I publish and receive payment. I do all of this from coffee shops, hostels, other people’s homes. I pay taxes quarterly. My laptop is insured. I step away from it to watch the sun rise. The waves crash.
3. Loved. Thanks to my previous travels, I have friends around the world. I am going to visit them. I am going to sleep on their couches and wash their dishes and buy them extra laundry detergent as thanks for letting me invade their spaces. My parents receive my mail at their home. My oldest friends write me emails and “like” the photos I post on Facebook of Portugal, India, Chile. I send my grandmother these photos, too, and she tells me they are beautiful and that she is happy for me.
4. Optimistic. I trust people. This means I am scammed in India and taken for a ride (literally) in Morocco, but it also means I am invited into someone’s home in Spain for a meal and taken to see three gorgeous waterfalls in Argentina. I continue to believe most people are good. My mother sits in her kitchen, worried. I sit in the passenger seat, in the stern of the boat, on the back of a camel.
5. Grateful. I begin my 29th year aware that not everyone has the opportunity and the means to do what I am doing. I am grateful for the ability to take my time, to roam, to experience — to give my soul room to inhale and exhale and find something meaningful. I will express my gratitude for this by trying my hardest not to look for anything, but to simply accept the growth that will happen to me this year.

I do not believe anything particularly menacing will befall me upon my turning 30, and I do not have a list of things I wish to accomplish before that happens. I have only the wish I will always have: I hope I spend these months, these days, these moments doing things that make me laugh, meeting people who teach me things, finding meaning, and simplifying my life.

Hello, 29th year. Let’s do this.

lovely Lisboa, my favorite European capital

Lisboa tumbles down its seven hills and plunges into the Rio Tejo.

The steep, winding streets ooze with old-world charm, an atmosphere aided by the system of yellow trams that rattle up and down and around the city. I am in love with it, and my typical M.O. of wandering aimlessly rewards me for hours on end.

Later, the manager of a restaurant in Chiado emcees a fado performance while I eat copious amounts of bread and await the arrival of my entrée. The staff is indistinguishable — waitresses sing, singers bus tables, and one of the cooks emerges from the kitchen and surprises us with a rendition worthy of a much grander performance hall. Instead, the staff scurry around her, delivering plates of bacalhau to diners in the dim, low-ceilinged space.

Our emcee, a short, rotund man with a balding head, claps energetically to get our attention and announce the next performer. He waits until 90% of his customers have actually paused their conversations and looked up at him to proceed.

As I am a solo diner, my table is by the door, and the chair opposite me has been appropriated by a nearby group that continues to grow exponentially. I engage in some friendly eavesdropping, finally giving up my table to waiting customers after my picked-over plate has been swept away and the bread basket has been reduced to crumbs.

The next morning, I stumble upon a big street market on Avenida da Liberdade — furniture, antiques, jewelry. I am intrigued by a sparse booth manned by a well-dressed gentlemen who engaged me willingly in conversation about his wares: boxes, trays, and candle holders made to resemble Lisboa’s black and white sidewalks, which I have been obsessed with since arriving in the city.

After the earthquake of 1755 wrecked Lisboa, they rebuilt it with these patterned sidewalks: black and white to represent a city in mourning, and the patterns each represent something, like the waves of the ocean, the wings of a seagull, or a sailor’s compass.

Though I am not typically a souvenir-purchasing kind of traveler, I acquired a square tea light holder hand-made out of limestone and painted with one of these sidewalk patterns. I have no home, no bookshelf, no mantlepiece upon which to display it — yet — but it remains safely tucked away until I do.

I didn’t have enough time here. I want to spend more lazy afternoons drinking tea at outdoor cafés, getting lost among the city’s winding streets, climbing its staircases, and riding its trams. I want more sunsets viewed from one of the city’s seven hills, watching the red-tiled roofs glow as the sky turns golden, pink, and orange.

on waking up for sunrise in the Algarve

I came to Lagos (pronounced by locals as “Lagosh”) to see the sea cliffs.

I saw them in afternoon light, then I came back for sunset.

The next morning, I woke up early to see them at sunrise, but it was raining when I looked outside.

I got back in bed and laid on my back, covers up to my chin. The room wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm.

I may have dozed, and the next time I looked out the window, the clouds had begun to clear up.

Then, through a gap in the curtains, I saw the end of a huge rainbow.

I leapt out of bed with frantic energy, threw on clothes, and grabbed my camera. I ran down the lane until it turned to dirt and the lighthouse appeared in front of me.

A few days later, I was in Sagres (“Sagresh”).

This is the end of Portugal, the end of the Iberian peninsula, and the end of Europe. In fact, Sagres feels like the end of something — it’s flat, windswept, and has a very big sky. The lighthouse at Cabo Sao Vicente marks the westernmost piece of land in Europe.

Again, I set my alarm and wake up very early, dressing silently and slipping out the door so as not to wake my hosts or their 7-year-old son.

In the dark, I stumble up the land mass south of the docks and wait for the planet to rotate and for the sun to show me the Atlantic Ocean.

And it does.

And I relearn a lesson that the world has taught me many times over: Waking up for sunrise is always, always worth it.

salsa in Sevilla and other incongruities

I am almost too old for all of this, but it is near midnight, and I am in the common room of a hostel in Sevilla run by four British guys. One of them, Sam, has just asked me if I know how to salsa, and I lie: yes. He puts on a tune and sweeps me up, and we fly around the room in a perfectly chaotic tornado of poor dancing and enthusiasm.

A girl named Sarah sits at the computer, updating her Facebook page. She takes a photo of us.

In the morning, I walk past the oldest Gothic cathedral in the world and the Royal Alcázar, covered in colored tile, and find the Metropol Parasol, a.k.a. Las Setas de Encarnación. It’s an odd structure built in the middle of Encarnación Square by German architect Jürgen Mayer-Hermann, and in a city dominated by cathedrals and other old European architecture, this off-white monstrosity is either an eyesore or a breath of fresh air, depending on your perspective.