Seeing the world is vital for shaping your perspective. Those who stay home every day miss out on a lot of life. Getting out there once and a while to refresh yourself is like a drug. All it takes is one hit and you’re hooked. I know my first foreign experience was certainly what opened the floodgates to my passport running out of room for stamps (or in the case of Japan, those weird sticker things).
But sometimes life gets in the way, and so when you can’t travel, there are travel bloggers, always there to relay their own adventure stories during the times when you can’t go out and make your own.
What is travel blogging?
Travel blogging can be anything from a hobby to a professional career. Many of the more well-known bloggers, like Dan Flying Solo have had their articles or photography published in professional outlets like National Geographic or the Travel Channel.
People who run travel blogs are constantly on the move. It’s almost a nomadic lifestyle. They share with their audience everything from beautiful photographs to money-saving travel tips. And in the heart of their stories, you can often see how travelling has shaped who they are. Many travel bloggers have a story — a before and after if you will. And the decision to give up a piece of their old life and replace it with worldly discovery is the catalyst that changes who they are.
Here are some of my favourite examples of how a breath of fresh, foreign air changed someone’s life for the better.
Travelling as medicine
People often worry about making sure they’re one hundred per cent well before they make any travel plans. For some people that means putting their dreams on an indefinite suspension. When it comes to mental health, some travel bloggers, like Lauren Juliff, have proven that not only is travelling with conditions like anxiety doable, it can actually be beneficial. Travelling the world seemed like a crazy idea when Lauren told her friends and family about her plan. She was suffering from continuous anxiety attacks. But just a few months of adventure on the road had calmed her anxiety and helped her acquire new coping mechanisms for when it did rear its ugly head.
She was forced into situations where the only option was to cope (like being thrown into the deep end of a pool). Through this, Lauren learned that she did, in fact, have the capacity to find actionable solutions to things that gave her anxiety. She took those skills with her for the rest of her life.
Travel as a career
Phoebe Lee and her significant other, Matt, are also prominent travel bloggers. They have been running Little Grey Box and loving it for years. But it wasn’t always like that. The two of them were originally very “ordinary” people. Phoebe loved writing but had never truly thought of making it into any sort of career. She and Matt were working steady but uninspiring jobs and thinking about the whole young adult checklist: marriage, mortgage, etc. Then they both had an epiphany. This wasn’t the life for them. They wanted to do something exciting and unique with their lives. And at the drop of a hat, they took to the world travel blogging instead.
Through determination and talent, they made a successful career out of it. They left their stale office jobs behind; now every morning they wake up excited about their futures and what they’re doing. They escaped the mundanity that they just didn’t fit into, and encourage everyone else to also follow their dreams.
Staying connected
These travel bloggers are always on the move. They hop from state to state and country to country, and they need to be able to update their blogs wherever in the world they may be. But roaming with their home data plan would be a financial nightmare. You may be wondering how they can update their Instagrams from all over the world with no hassle.
Once a cell phone is unlocked its SIM can be switched for an international SIM card like those offered by BNESIM. An international SIM card for travel bloggers cuts out roaming charges in foreign countries and ensures continual connectivity and Internet access. Travel bloggers are never caught dead without an international SIM and some prepaid data to use on it.
Get out there
So there you have it. Travel blogging in a nutshell. It’s not the path for everyone (I imagine society would fall apart if we all gave up our desk jobs to do nothing but travel) but it’s a beautiful journey for those who undertake it. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with a little “travel blogging lite.” So maybe you can’t quit your job, sell your house, and take off for the Philippines. You can still indulge in world travel from time to time, and see it change your life as well.
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