Chronicles of a Shoemaker's Daughter

Since I posted my first blog under the "Post Cards" banner, lots has happened on my two favourite "Small-Island" Caribbean places, and not all of it good. I have been following another blog for the last six months written by an amazing woman who had gone to St. Kitts as a Peace Corps volunteer. Now, she is not your stereotypical, just-out-of- college, "eager to change the world" PCV though, because she is a mature lady (just like me) with a wealth of life and business experience. I thought, when I first read about her and was "introduced" to her via the travel forums, that the NGO's to which she would be attached to work would be very fortunate to have someone with her depth of experience doing community development work with them. Sadly, the other day, I read that she has resigned from the Peace Corp and has returned to her home in the US. I won't get into her story here, but I share the link to her blog, so that you can read about her j...

Well, I thought I would do a "check-in" to bring you up to date on how things are going with managing my "addictions." Alas, I do still spend some time during the wee k on the travel forums. The surgical precision with which I had hoped to move away from needing my travel forum fix, has not quite achieved the result I was aiming for. Lets face it ... it's a cold cruel winter up here right now. Put another way, I am not cut out for the "cold-turkey" approach to quitting ... anything. So, I think I am now aiming for the "Harm reduction" approach, which involves find ing safe ways to deal with addictive or potentially harmful activities. For instance, if you can't quit smoking, replace your strong cigs with a milder brand ... if you are going to drink alcohol, make sure someone else does the driving ... if you are going to have multiple sexual partners, make sure you use condoms .... etc. And if these addictions are getting in the way of l...