I SWALLOW MY DRY VODKA MARTINI, STRAIGHT UP, WITH A TWIST; IT HITS HARD, But WORTH EVERY DROP, KNOWING THAT IF I DRANK ANY SLOWER I'D MISS MY FLIGHT.

I tap my Apple Pay without waiting for a receipt. Moments later, a black car Uber meets me outside the held-open-door of the Four Seasons in Downtown Toronto. The doorman compliments my Italian tailored blazer that I spent way too much money on. However, a compliment from a stranger can justify an entire purchase.

I laugh to myself, knowing that in seven hours I'd be across the ocean, jetlagged and blazerless, 
instead wearing a custom mesh tank top ordered from Korea. Eight hours tops, depending on tail wind and taxi time. It was more hours in a night than I sleep, but if I wave my boyfriend's platinum Amex, I'd get upgraded to a lay flat bed across the Atlantic. I'll arrive fresh and impeccable in Barcelona, ready for another cocktail on the roof top of the
Mandarin Oriental on Passeig de Gràcia.  

Try their Chestnut Sidecar Martini. You'll thank me later. 

My Uber speeds away towards YYZ airport and I fall in love with life a little bit more,
because being a Socialite Wanderer means only one thing:

I'm Stephen. You're welcome.

Congratulations. You met me.

I've literally had that joke on my cellphone answering machine since I was a spoiled fourteen year old. 

Let's get one thing straight first. I was born into a North American privilege yes, but by no means would anyone call my upbringing anything but humble. I was a lot of things, but rich was never one of them. 

I was, and always have been, a wanderer.

That being said, I've earned every dollar I've made, and I've done so in the name of adventure.

My life has been spent venturing to the outside edges of whatever my border was: the furthest reaches of my neighborhood that my bike could take me, to the last station the bus stop could go in our suburban town. But it wasn't until my twenties when I was hired by an international resort chain that I moved across the world. 

I got on my first plane at 20; and when asked if I had a work visa, I replied, "what?”
I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

I've come a long way since 20 and this blog is here to document
the things I've seen written in between the lines of life. 

It's the adventures you have with those you meet along the way that makes it all worth living. 

My voice is raised for the spirits of those that happily pound the urban pavement everyday, earning their dollars for the taste of the air in a world breathed by those who speak a different language than their own. 

Those people who work their own young urban professional lifestyle, and love it, only to spend a week in the same jeans and tank top, on a beach by a fire and a stranger's song on guitar;
For the souls who work hard to sip a wine on the rooftop of an Urban Cityscape because the twinkle of a skyline can be as seductive as the twinkle of the stars.

WITH THOSE VOICES, I SPEAK. 

WITH THoSE PEOPLE, I WANDER.

You Are My Tribe