In early November of 2016 I packed my bags, said goodbye to all of my friends and family, and hit the road. Or more accurately took to the air. I knew where I was headed to immediately, but my long-term travel plans were, and still are, up in the air. In late summer of 2012 I began planning a trip to Europe with my roommate and her boyfriend. Originally that trip was supposed to last about six weeks. Over the course of the next year my trip continued to evolve until it got to the point where I expected it to last anywhere between six months and three years. A lot can happen in four years however and my original goal got lost somewhere along the way. When I left home I no longer knew what my travel plans were. All I really knew was that I was going to get on a plane, leave the country I had called home for the entirety of my nearly 29 years of life, and fly to Bulgaria.
Why Bulgaria? Well my friends had just moved to Sofia (the capital of Bulgaria) and they had a big apartment that her job paid for with a spare room ready and waiting for me. So, that seemed like a pretty good place to start.
I have several goals for my life and while most of the time they compliment each other, at times they may come in slight conflict and I will have to substitute one for another temporarily. These goals are not necessarily in order of importance. One day one goal might be more important than another, and the next day they might flip. They are very fluid. Here they are:
Travel (I want to see new amazing places, experience new cultures, and meet new people)
Write (Novels, short stories, screenplays, this blog, sports analyses, poems, songs, emails, notes, gibberish)
Try New Things (All kinds of new things, even if they terrify me, especially if they terrify me)
Eat Amazing Food (Okay, I said there wasn’t necessarily an order to this list but let’s be honest. This is always number one)
Paint (Wish I had discovered that I could actually make paintings I enjoyed earlier in life, but trying to make up lost time)
Create Other Cool Art (all forms; photography, videography, acting, my amazing dance moves, and good music if I can ever learn how)
Spend Time With The People I Love (definitely the goal that comes into conflict with my others the most, but I will do my best to try to balance it all out, hopefully some day I’ll find someone as crazy as I am to share all of the ridiculousness that is life with)
Build A House (mainly because I want a really badass kitchen that is designed exactly the way I want with every cooking implements I could possibly want, and also so that I can have secret passages and hidden rooms because I am a super dork)
Then of course there is my overall goal which kind of encompasses the others:
I DON’T WANT TO LIVE A NORMAL LIFE.
First off, I don’t really believe there is such a thing as a normal life. Every life is unique. What I am referring to though is the good old standard of what people think of when they imagine a normal life. You finish school, you enter the workforce and start a career, you fall in love, you get married, you have kids, you have two weeks of vacation a year, three after ten years, you retire, you go on some cruises, then you die. I am not saying that this is a bad life. I have known plenty of people who did all or most of these things and are really happy. I am not judging people who live a “normal life”. I am definitely not against this life for others, and certain aspects, falling in love in particular, really do appeal to me. I once thought this was what I wanted for myself, however, I have discovered that as a whole this life just doesn’t work for me. Everyone has always told me that I am weird and different, and they are right. I am weird. I am different. I need to live a weird and different life.
To borrow from a close friend, I want my life to be:
MORE EPIC
If you are looking for a lot of historical facts about a place that you want to visit, this is not the site for you. There are plenty of things to read or shows to watch for that, created by people who are far more qualified than I am. While I am interested in history and do like to learn things about the places I visit, that is not what I am trying to pass on to the people who choose to read this. I may occasionally throw in a fact or two that I find interesting or because it is important to the story, but my main objective is to spread the story of my experiences wandering the world and how I like to approach travel. My basic travel style is that I learn a little bit about a place before I go, but I don’t try to learn too much. I don’t plan to enter a city with a laundry list of things that I have to do and see and spend my whole time following an itinerary. Instead I find a couple of the top things that I don’t want to miss out on and spend the rest of my time wandering around, exploring the area, seeing what strikes my fancy and learning more about the place along the way. I will occasionally adjust this if I am travelling with others who have a different travel style, but when travelling alone this is definitely my M.O.. My life is a search for great stories and in my experience rigid plans tend only to make for great stories when something goes wrong and disrupts them.
So, if you are still with me, then read on and I hope you find my travels entertaining and that they maybe even inspire you on your own travels.