¡Bienvenido To That Liv Life!
Welcome to That Liv Life. Writing from Costa Rica. I've been spending my days hiking, surfing, and doing yoga. I've been cooking good, clean food, and piecing together the places from where I've come, while distilling the reasons why it's been important for me to start this blog.
(1) I've always loved stories. My favorites were the fairy tales, and I read every single fairy tale in the elementary school library as a kid, even the naughty ones that were mildly inappropriate for kids. I then moved on to fantasy novels.
(2) I've always loved words and language, the irregularities, the sayings, the ways in which I could feel it shaping my brain as I grew up. I feel empowered being able to speak Cantonese with my mom and thrilled about having heard Mandarin between my parents growing up. I learned Spanish in school before I learned English from public television's Sesame Street, in the Brooklyn of the early 90s.
“Rrrrrrroooooooojo,” I remember the distinct experience, 5-year old Olivia feeling her tongue vibrating against the roof of her mouth, imitating the purr that cats make.
Awesome shirt from the 90s, with touchable accent pieces, bows, veils, shiny bead bling, anyone?
(3) I learned to write in middle school, and I grew my love of journaling as a young adult. Focused free writes, as insufferable as they were at times, became a mode of transport for connecting thoughts.
(4) I also love to listen to the stories that people have to share. I try to listen deeply. I enjoy asking questions, recollecting the interviewee's expressions through the sound bytes of their voice played back to me. I'm a journalist at heart.
It's my hope that this blog becomes an avenue through which I can start writing more again, a place to unfold ideas and repackage, a space to exercise one of the most important lessons that I learned as a young writer- that writers practice writing.
The irony is that words, out loud at least, have never been my forté. The words that come out of my mouth during an interview I'm well-prepared for, or the three lines of back-and-forth banter I pull out at a party introducing myself to people- those aren't the words I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the words that come after someone says something unexpected or snarky, the words that are supposed to come after someone says something that challenges your boundaries, urging out of you a response. I'm talking about when he says something to you that makes you bristle. His defenses come up. I'm talking about the inundated words you've been conditioned to hold back, those words that seem to you sad remnants of the values and neuroses of your ancestral land.
This blog is about storytelling, about words, and about freeing those voices. It's about practicing writing as much as it is about writing about ways to travel thoughtfully. It's about fighting for presence when images, sounds, and emotions surface from the bits of life that you've lived abroad. It's about sharing the people I get to know along the way and their stories. It's those I reunite with. It's connection with friends and “family” all over the world. This is me fighting for the kind of adventure that once only seemed the stuff of TV shows. For a first-gen Brooklyn girl, it's about exploring and sitting in every corner, the dark places of her heart, the unglamorous parts of travel and an expat lifestyle. It's the morning coffee after a night out, hitting you hard with nothing in your stomach, no filter.
It's a place for rich imagery described in words, photos, and reviews, little precious gems of culture. It's my way of sharing with you the gratitude and the anguish for what I've seen, past and present. This is less a place to give a potential traveler a guide and more of a space for you to connect, to see through just one traveler's and fellow human's eyes. It can also become a space for you to connect with each other.
I won't be able to anticipate all who will be listening, how they'll feel taking it all in, but know this, that every word will be ORGANIC, authentic, and will often be filled with vulnerability. I'm a human in this great, wide world, trying to be as open as possible, sharing, and doing all in the spirit of learning. I welcome each opportunity to engage, to be authentic to myself, to confront fears, nurture desires, hope, and dream while doing what what I do, living how I live...
That Liv Life.
From Costa Rica,
Pura vida
