About

The last several years have been pretty remarkable.

When I was twenty five, I quit my job at the Bank of England and went travelling. With the money I’d saved, I spent 14 months backpacking around the world, beginning in New York and ending in New Delhi. I wrote about my experiences on the travel diaries “A Year and a Day” and “No Place As Home“, if you’re interested in following my story right from the beginning.

When I was tired of my back pack, I went home briefly to London, then flew back to Asia, to meet up with the girl I was in love with (this moment marked the end of my blog “No Place As Home”). Originally, “Suitcasing” began with my arrival in Thailand (in late 2004), and described my return to China, my life in the city of Kunming, and then my first several months in Taiwan. However, that first year of Suitcasing is now offline. Partly this is because I stopped blogging for a while, and transferring all the old posts to a new site turned out to be rather difficult. Partly it’s because 2005 was a bit of a hard year for me: discovering that love ends, more or less running out of money in China, really running out of money in Taiwan (despite my clever plan to teach English and repair my savings) and feeling very alone. I’m quite happy to leave some of my unhappy 2005 musings off the internet.

I lived in Taiwan for two years, and now I’m very nostalgic for the island. In time, I found a good teaching job, made many friends, found a wonderful roof-top apartment and learned a lot about Taiwanese culture. I also became serious about writing: I taught myself to write a thousand words every morning, and began the long effort to read the classics of literature and philosophy.

In the summer of 2007, I left Taiwan for Syria. I wanted to try somewhere new; I wanted to live in a country where I could write full time and prepare an application for graduate schools in the USA. I lived in Damascus for six months, and then the coastal city of Lattakia for two, did a lot of writing, and learned some things that are hard for me to express. In February, I discovered I’d got into the creative writing MFA programme in Rutgers, a college in New Jersey, and in March I received the great news that in return for teaching writing skills to undergraduates, I wouldn’t have to pay for the course. Now I’ve got four or five months to prepare, and I’m going to spend that time in London, living with my parents and brother.

It’s been a strange way to live, I suppose, and I’ve seen many incredible things in exchange for much doubt and loneliness. I think I realised in Syria that I was ready to stop travelling in very foreign places - I saw how hard it is to forge what I would consider a full life there. I wanted to do a Master’s degree in order to get involved with a community of writers and to spend a couple of years following some kind of a structured programme, rather than continuing my fairly stark, self-propelled way of living.

I’m excited about how my life is going to change once again.

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If you’d like to contact me, leave a comment or send me an email - daniel wallace a t g mail . com.

There is much more that could be said, but perhaps this is enough. I haven’t spoken at all of the many dear friends and loves I’ve found (and lost) over these years: I think of you often.

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Daniel