This month, InsideJourneys inaugurates Friday Focus, a series of interviews with writers and travelers. October’s Focus is on Nigerian born writer/photographer and editor for Matador Goods, Lola Akinmade-Åkerström. Lola holds an MSc in Information Systems from the University of Maryland and has a solid background in Geography. She specialized in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for 10+ years and her affinity for the geosciences and maps meant she was born to...

Writing to me is like using playdoh. When I write, I play with words, string them together, like a necklace to make beautiful sentences. Writing to me is like using the color wheel. Nouns are blue, verbs are red, adjectives are indigo, adverbs are orange, prepositions are violet, articles are brown, conjunctions are green, and interjections are yellow. Writing to me is music. When done right, the words flow together...

I spend a lot of time in my head so when I’m having one of those days, one where my brain is so stimulated, I can’t write what I want, its paralyzing. I had this week all laid out. Starting today, I’d write about Paris. I was excited by the ideas that were coming, made notes, selected the photos but now that I’m to start, I haven’t been able to...

I must admit, I wasn’t sure I could do it – post everyday for a week, let alone a year but I was willing to try. I like a challenge. But I’d taken on challenges before…. I don’t think of the year. I think of a day at a time. Sometimes, ideas come quickly and often, other times not so. Sometimes, I bang out several hundred words in no time...

Is this content block? For the first time since I started this challenge to post everyday in 2011, I don’t have a topic I want to write about. I have a few ideas but I haven’t had the time to develop them as I’m in the middle of two writing projects – one with a fast approaching deadline. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that the ideas aren’t...

Exactly a month – 31 days – ago, I responded to the challenge to post everyday for 365 days. I did it on a lark. This blog was registered back in 2007 and though I write (almost) everyday for work, I hadn’t been able to muster up the energy or enthusiasm to post even once a week. That is, until I saw the challenge. It said to me: Dare to...