Why Travel is Important to Us (Now More Than Ever)

The Travelbox

Nearly 6 years ago my wife and I started this blog as a way of chronicling all the travels we made. The idea came from an idea our fantastic wedding officiant had of creating a “Travel Box”: a box with a list of all the destinations that we wanted to visit that we could pull from year after year and make plans to travel. This blog complemented that box, as a place we could share our travels and store our memories. Of course, it’s a place where friends and family could also check out what we were up to.

“Me and you girl go against the world.”

Since that time, a lot has happened. I’ve changed jobs several times, and in that time embarked on a journey of self-discovery that has led to me learning things about myself as well as skills to help me with my goals. My wife has gone through several different iterations of her accounting and consulting firm, and that was another journey of discovery that she is all the wiser for. We’ve both gone through a lot of transition in these past few years, and though we’ve done a lot of traveling we haven’t had the time for blog updates.

This will change. As an exercise in both writing and accountability, we’re going to post something here once a week. I want this blog to not only reflect our physical journeys, but also our personal journeys as humans.

Why am I doing this?

It may come as no surprise to people that know me, but I am deeply concerned with the state of the world right now, specifically with the radical and unprecedented changes to our American government. I have no desire to make this a political rant (I do enough of those on Facebook for my friends). But I will say that more than ever I’ve realized a few things:

It’s very important that I focus on mastering industry agnostic skills that are useful for building my own business as well as working for others. This includes project management skills, front-end development skills, and the writing skills that I’ve allowed to deteriorate.
It’s important for me to get back into shape and to stay in shape, both for my health, and in case circumstances require me to rely on physical stamina.
It’s important to practice minimalism, in so much that I can pack light while traveling and have fewer attachments when it’s time to move.
More than ever it’s important to travel to places where people have different points of view. It’s not healthy for any of us to stay in our own bubbles, no matter how right we think we are, or how comfortable it is.

Some of these points are for self-care, and some are for self-preservation. Overall, I want to have the type of life where we have the freedom to go where we want, with as few obstacles as possible. To do that, we’ve decided to focus on the things we can change and influence: ourselves.

Are you on a journey of your own? Let me know in the comments, and if you have any advice I’m open to that as well!

Peace.