When I was 8 years old, I dared myself to run away.   I remember packing a small brown-bag with a box of cherry Jell-O mix, a pineapple top my mother saved for replanting, and a few dollars mostly composing of quarters and 10 cents.  I decided that I would take a walk down to the river’s edge and stay there as long as I could.  I didn’t think anyone would notice that I was gone, and if they did I wouldn’t be sorely missed.  A part of me wanted to disappear, but I knew that the only thing my mother would understand was anger.  That day I didn’t bother to run away, but it became the story of my life a person struggling to get away from everything and everyone.  The second time I wanted to disappear was when I lived on the island of Anegada.  I was working with my family, and living a life that was caged and humdrum.  I recall that a former coworker left a calendar with beautiful pictures of different beaches in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Every month had a beautiful illustration of white sandy beaches on Saint Thomas, Saint John, and Saint Croix.  Somedays when work slowed down, I would catch myself drifting into the imagines wishing I was on one of those beaches.  I use to daydream about being on Saint John in a place called Maho Bay.  I would always imagine that I had a job of no great importance that didn’t require any tedious thought process or interaction with people.  I would see myself working at a hotel, a small store or at a restaurant in the kitchen.   I would work the early shift and have very little interaction with a large amount of people, then when my job was done I would slip away into my own world. I saw myself living in a very tiny apartment alone, but content.  I would stay to myself, work, then spend my free time on the beach reading while taking in the beauty of nature and the quietness life while writing all my thoughts.  I didn’t wish to know anyone or do anything but right; all I wanted was freedom to absorb a mundane worry-free life.  I was 18 when I had those feelings of being someone of no great importance, invisible to the others, but in some ways, I desperately want to be seen.  I always found myself looking at that calendar and this made me realized that the best years of my life happened at a moment when I didn’t possess the ability to understand that fact.

Now, what has happened to Mauby today? I still dream of writing and escaping, but I haven’t the courage to do both. This is the first blog that I will dedicate to the introverted, sad, dreamer; who always wanted to put words to paper and write a collection of short stories which is my escape.  I started writing these stories in the fall of 2008 when I was 25 years old. So, far I have amassed about 50 short stories never shared with the world. I am now 33 years of age, and I am already experiencing the feeling of my life slip away, so now it’s time to leave a mark or in this case a little scratch. Now I have started to really travel and share my experience and one day I will share my stories too.

Welcome to Mauby Travel & Tales; a blog about my stories of traveling, food, and tales about my life and the world as I see it.

Mauby’s journey begins!