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WL Reflections: May and June 2018
How much can you change in a year? It’s been more than a year after my reflection in May 2017. I have my journal and blog to thank for keeping track of my reflections and goals of in the past, present and future. As with a lot of things in life, less is more. Here are some things I did the past couple of months! Highlights: I moved to Atlanta! Since last May’s reflections, I have moved out of NYC and onto Atlanta. I have also taken a lot of time to travel and worked remotely in between. I spent 3 months in Vietnam in 2018, and recovered a little…
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Travel Blogging Challenge- Week 7 (Inspiration for Traveling)
There are three types of people: those who travel, those who want to travel, and those who don’t, can’t, and never will. At 23, I’m not quite a kid and not old. People around me are getting jobs, making families, buying houses, etc. I often think to myself… what have I done with my life? What brings me satisfaction? I would like to share my philosophy and story on why I started traveling and what nudges me to keep doing so. Life’s too short. Optimistically, I estimate I will live another 80 years (haha, bear with me). That’s not a lot of time. My family always tells me that that’s…
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Excuse Me, Life Passing Through
2017 has been a year of revelations for me. The year where I finally understand all the things my parents tell me when they say, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” Things that had once been so clear to me aren’t what I had expected them to be. People have changed. My perspectives have changed. My desires and interests evolved. I don’t understand the world as much as I used to think, and now that I have scraped off the tip of the ice berg, there is still so much to learn. Because of these discoveries, my path in life has changed. It’s not a bad thing, because I am…
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Guest Post: The Rewards and Challenges of Quitting Your 9-5 to Travel
I’ve always been fascinated by people who quit their jobs to live in another country, and would like to share stories of people who have created this path for themselves. Today, we have Ares‘ honest reflection on how he quit his job, moved to another country, and found work. At some point in our lives, we decide that we need to make a change. Whether that be work, lifestyle, diet, living accommodations, life choices – the list is endless. Some of us decide we need to completely immerse ourselves in another world, forgetting the past, and looking forward to find what we are looking for. That’s a fancy way of…
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Not Good Enough
I’m not good enough. There are days where negativity bullies its way in to haunt my mind, jabbing at my frustrations of things that I can’t control. It leaves me helpless, my thoughts trapped in a never-ending cycle of discouragement. My inability to do things with my life that I want to because I am restrained by society’s expectations. The incessant need to prove myself. The words that I can’t speak elegantly enough. The constant questioning of whether I’m a productive member of society. Whether I have become lazy. One thought after another, weight added onto my shoulders. I fight to push these thoughts back. Watch a movie. Read a book.…
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Finding Closure: Returning to my Birth Country to Say Goodbye
I left my life, my school, my friends, and everything I knew behind when I was eleven. My parents were refugees from Vietnam, escaping the mistreatment of the communists. They snuck away on a small boat and sailed for seven days on the open water of South China Sea. I was born in a refugee camp in Philippines with poor conditions and corrupt camp officials who pocketed donation funds for themselves. My parents were struggling to feed themselves. At the time, my entire life revolved around getting out of the ditch. Most Vietnamese refugees around us were leaving the camps with an opportunity to seek asylum somewhere brighter, better. United…