Last year, my site took on a major change - from a free little ditty, dark and unappealing, to a self-hosted site, clean and click-worthy. Today is the start of another new beginning, a switch from a travel blog to something more than tips and stories. Though I'm still available and happy to answer questions about traveling as a young lad or lass, I'm much more interested in discussing angles on travel of a conceptual nature. Confusing, yes. Explanation follows.

My passion for travel comes from an interest in the concept itself. Why do we travel? When are we actually traveling? What is it we seek to learn when we move about this earth or move about our own understanding of this earth? Ya know...stuff like that. And so, I've decided to develop a new site format that accentuates these approaches to travel while also bringing more attention to my archives, on which I've invested much time.

What's New

The Navigation: Instead of highlighting my individual big travel experiences (a.k.a. Semester at Sea, World Traveler Internship, etc.), this navigation brings the focus to the different styles of posts I crank out.

Art + Travel are my artistic attempts to express travel sentiment with video, photo essays, or prose and poetry. And with a tagline like "Capturing the Art of Travel," I wanted to make sure you, the reader, can easily find my own gatherings in this quest.
Conceptual Travel posts bring up "whys" and "what ifs" in the travel realm. These stand to really challenge your own understanding of your nomadic nature.
Info + Advice is to make sure I'm still offering the tidbits of information many of you seek, including Q&As, Street Smarts, and updates on the world of travel and its community.
World Narratives presents the backbone of Nomadderwhere, the narratives from the road. It is here that you can still follow along vicariously to my big journeys around the world.

First Timer's Guide: Many of you are new to the site daily. In an attempt to spell my site out for the new reader, I've made a sum-up document, downloadable and descriptive of my favorite postings and why I have a blog.

Layout: Fewer static pages featured, fewer distractions, more focus on the content - that's the purpose behind the redesign. Now that my job allows me to fulfill interests like video-making and writing centered on travel, doubling up on that sort of work load is difficult for me. Maintaining Nomadderwhere with the same amount of content and quality as I did before has been nearly impossible. Therefore, the new layout is aimed at letting me accentuate the work I've done up to this point rather than highlighting only the most recent and making you wait for the next morsel of content.

Schedule: There will be no more extensive weekly schedule of postings but rather various quality work posted when it's ready.

Changes to Expect

No more Photos of the Day. All my images can be found on my Flickr account.
Fewer featured Videos of the Week. Those that will be published will be dictated by inspiration, not the sun cycle.
Written posts ranging from narrative to conceptual to artistic to practical on a regular basis.

Please feel free to tell me your thoughts on the redesign and the new direction of Nomadderwhere. Contact me or send a video, and I'll be happy to listen and respond.

Thanks for visiting, following, and contributing to Nomadderwhere and celebrating its second massive redesign!

You may have noticed an obvious drop-off in the amount of writings and videos I've created for the website in the last couple months. And this is why:

I'm on Vacation

Since the 3rd of September, I've been on the road with my family and will continue to be until the middle of the month. We drove from Indianapolis to the Atlantic Ocean and have been doing what we Clarks do best: turning into leather bags on the beach/poolside/bar-side. Especially now that I'm in preliminary brainstorming sessions about an eventual relocation, I really appreciate the family time and seeing my niece learn words like "yesh" (a la Michael Scott) and try her foot at walking.

The Mexico Series is Almost Complete

If I'm not eating, sleeping, or throwing my niece in the air, I'm working on the blogs, videos, and photographs for our Mexico series, to be launched on the 27th of this month. The challenge of creating videos complex enough for 12th graders but comprehensible for 3rd graders has been a big one to overcome, especially in cases of history and warfare, when we don't have History Channel-like reenactments or stock footage to use. When it's between paid work that I love and unpaid work that I love (a.k.a. this site), I'm sure you can understand why my allegiances are attracted to one side.

I'm Redesigning Nomadderwhere

Nomadderwhere.com

On September 23rd, thanks to the help of Jenn Vargas, I'm launching the redesign for Nomadderwhere, one year after launching my newly self-hosted site. Because my use of Nomadderwhere is evolving in a very specific direction, I need my site to reflect this change. The content will be geared toward a specific reader, because to try and please everyone is a recipe for failure and exhaustion.

My Best Friend's Having a Baby

Our parents were friends in high school. We were neighbors throughout childhood. We've been friends since our infant years. My friend Hayley is having a baby, and I'm going to be wholly distracted by this addition to the Wabash community.

September is proving to be a busy month, and I'm not getting the opportunities I normally do to create for personal reasons. As I evolve toward the new design on the 23rd, I'll be condensing my posting schedule to be solely about quality than quantity. If you have any suggestions or comments on this move, please send them my way.

I thought it was due time to give you an update. I'm still dedicated to this little property of mine, and it's about to get a lot better.

Welcome to the New Nomadderwhere!