TikTok sends me “On This Day” videos from a year ago. This one, from yesterday, shows when I learned how to give goat pedicures on a repurposed tobacco farm in North Carolina. (My mother said “That looks hard.” I replied, “Not as hard as the horn burning and castrations!”)
Each day, I get to relive a moment like this from my 10,000-mile/16,100 kilometer Round America with a Duck journey via bike, buses, trains and working on organic farms, and it’s sort of miraculous to me. It’s as if my younger self sent me these little gifts. (You can see all the TikToks from the journey here.)
On this day, now, in 2024, I get notifications about sales and reviews of my Round America with a Duck book, which came out globally two weeks ago (get yours here). Text messages from family, friends and farmers come randomly as they receive their books and finish reading them. Book clubs are choosing it, which is especially nice (here’s a free book club discussion guide). I love this book and have every reason to believe you will, too. And now, I’m pulled forward. So, go, little book, and find your way in the world. What’s meant to be will be. Trust the journey.
Fáilte to what’s next. That’s “welcome” in Irish, a language I am currently learning as I’m already knee-deep in planning the sequel to Round America with a Duck (after a couple of farm workstays here in the USA this spring). That will be my legacy project, the most important project of my life, for reasons I have yet to reveal. I may or may not write about it a bit here, or I may keep this one a little closer to the chest for awhile. A year from now, this is the video from today that TikTok will send me:
I am, once again, at a crossroads —as are you, each and every day. What decision will you make about your journey today? What gifts are you sending to your future self? What are you affirmatively choosing to leave behind?
Round America with a Duck 