Category: Uncategorized

Do it. 

So here I am again. Almost two months have gone by and I haven’t dedicated any more time to this blog until now. Life is definitely catching up with me as I feel the clock ticking away. Every time I come back here to post something I see the countdown I created knock another month off and the panic starts to set in. I try to keep my anxiety at ease by reminding myself that I need to just do it.

I’m starting to sound like an overdone ad for Nike, but it works. When I have those overwhelming moments where everything seems like too much and I doubt myself, I have to stop and say “just do something, anything!”. Any step towards getting myself where I want to be is a step in the right direction. Wasting my time worrying about it is a step in the wrong direction, so I am trying my best to train my brain to do it, whatever it is in those moments where I am completely freaking out.

So what am I doing? Since this blog is meant to recap all of my adventures before, during and after the biggest trip of my life, I guess I should recount what it is I am actually doing to prep for it.

1. Turning people down when they ask me to go out which costs money I should be saving. This one is really hard and is weighing on me so much, mainly because I just started being really strict about it and everyone tries to guilt trip as soon as I say “no”. I am also trying to be healthier and 99% of the time when I am asked to go out it involves drinking. Really not trying to support my bad habits with money I should be saving, but damn I love partying with my friends (*desperately tries to remind self that is it worth it and there will always be friends to drink with*)
2. Collecting information about where I want to go, what I want to see, what the culture is like, studying languages, talking to other travelers and reading other blogs. This is honestly the fun part for me. I really enjoy learning more, and it’s almost like a black hole of information where the more I look the more I find with seemingly no end in sight. Narrowing down the places I want to visit is going to be the hard part
3. Planning ahead for things I will need to sell, bank accounts and credit cards I need to establish, where I will stay before I leave, where I will stay when I return…you know…the little things (*cringes thinking of everything left to do*). This part is also kind of fun since I love to organize and plan things, but this is where I have a lot of self-doubt and need to just trust myself that everything will come together as long as I keep putting in the effort.

All in all, I am crazy excited about the future and I can’t wait to flip my world upside down with this once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Hopefully I will get better at this blogging thing, but I know I just have to remind myself to stop stressing about stuff I am not doing, and just do it.

Screw it. 

When I started this blog, I was trying so hard to write in a specific (and conservative) style that I thought people would enjoy reading. However by forcing myself to write a certain way, I quickly started to loath the ritual of blogging which brought my blog posts to a screeching halt. I would edit my posts a thousand times, question myself, re-write posts entirely, and honestly was just spending way too much time refining everything to be “perfect”. I wasn’t even being a perfectionist for myself, I was doing it for the readers I had and wanted to have. Constantly criticizing my own writing style to make it digestible to the masses. What masses though? I don’t really have a ton of readers, and deep down I don’t care if I ever do!

If this blog was meant to keep track of my thoughts and experiences before, during and after going on the biggest adventure of my young life (which it is), then why am I trying to do something I think people will like instead of doing what I like?!

Once I had this epiphany, a few other epiphanies followed:

1. I don’t care what other people want to read.
2. I’m not blogging to be internet famous.
3. I am writing a personal blog, not a travel or lifestyle blog.

#1 is the most powerful sign that i am ready to stop caring about what people think. Not just when it comes to my writing, but in all areas of my life as a whole. Letting other people’s opinions affect my writing is not going to breed honest blog posts, and the entire point of this blog is to document who I am and who I am transforming into. My blog is anonymous anyway, so why do I care so much!? I am working on letting go of my need to please other people, but it is a process for me that I know is not nearly over. If anything, my process of letting go is just beginning.

#2 made me realize that I need to let go of this idealistic vision of being “internet famous” for my blog posts. There are thousands of blogs out there written by amazing and experienced bloggers. Am I one of those? No. Do I care to ever be one of those? Not really. Would it be kind of cool for my blog to blow up and be recognized by a ton of people? Sure! I want to share my thoughts and experiences so I have something to look back on, so if people find my posts relatable then awesome. Is that the point of my blog and what should drive me to keep blogging? Absolutely not.

#3 was actually a very shocking and educating realization. When I first decided I wanted to blog, I thought it would be a travel blog focused around my adventures of backpacking across Europe. However, after reading another bloggers explanation of the difference between a lifestyle and personal blog was, I realized what I was trying to do was not a travel blog at all! This really is going to be a personal blog, possibly an inspirational blog, and I am okay with that. Really I just want get my thoughts out of my head and be able to come back to them. If someone else likes my blog, awesome. If I meet fellow travelers and want to give them a way to contact me, I can direct them to my blog. Beyond that, I don’t really care about trying to make my blog anything more than what it is right now.

So now that I know how to actually get excited about blogging (by being myself), I can finally say “screw it” and just write what I want without freaking out about it being perfect. So if you decide to follow me…be prepared for messy, funny, weird, grammatically incorrect and eclectic blog posts. If you don’t decide to follow me, I can happily say that I couldn’t care less. Sorry, not sorry.