Why You Need to Leave Your Hometown. Immediately.

Take the leap, you won't regret it.

I got inspired to write this blog because I have been thinking a lot recently about the beauty in travel. The more I think about it, the more I realize that often people are closed off to all the different lives that they could live. Too many people I know have never left their hometowns, have lived the majority of their lives within the same 100 miles. I didn't think much of this before, but after getting a taste of what the world has to offer, I cannot unsee it.

I truly believe people don't understand what they are missing out on. I'm here to convince you to get out.

Why?

You might be thinking, Clara, how the hell am I suppose to just uproot my life, maybe my job, maybe a partner, maybe a comfortable routine I've become stuck in? For what? The promise of adventure?

Yes.

I cannot promise you stability, or safety, or love, but I can promise you adventure.

Is It Really Possible?

Hiccup #1: I'm Scared

Hiccup #2: There's No Time

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Is It Really Possible?

Yes.

I have heard the excuse many times: I'm not rich. I can't travel.

I used to believe the same thing. I remember in high school, I'd watch my peers take family trips to places like Europe and Hawaii, places that at the time traveling to seemed extremely unattainable. I was jealous. My family was well off, but we have four children. My parents were not about to drop 15k on a trip to Europe for a family of six. I grew up believing that these places were just for people with money to experience.

As I got older, I realized that I can truly do anything that I set my mind to.

When I was about 12 years old, I began my fixation with Italy. I can't tell you quite where it stemmed from, but I loved everything about it. The older I got, it kept growing. It wasn't just that I wanted to go on vacation there, but I truly had an overwhelming feeling that I had a life there that I needed to live out.

Before I graduated high school, I knew that I was going to study abroad in Italy. I didn't quite know how I was going to pay for it, but I was absolutely determined.

Up until my sophomore year of college, I was insanely frugal. You could ask any one of my friends - I would go out to ice cream with them and not buy ice cream because I didn't want to spend $5.

It was when I got my first (college) job, serving and bartending at a restaurant on campus, that I really started to see how much money it was possible to save. By the December before I left to go abroad, I had 22k saved up, sitting in my savings account.

I spent every penny of it, and then some.

But it was worth it. Unbelievably worth it.

I realize many people have more expenses than the average rent/food/bills, but I'm going to use this blog to share cheap travel hacks, ways to save money on the go, and still have the absolute time of your life doing it.

Hiccup #1: I'm Scared

Deciding to follow your dreams is absolutely terrifying. I won't pretend it's not.

My dream was to allow whatever life I felt I had in Italy play out. My dream was to travel, experience the world, different cultures, a different life.

In order to make that happen, however, it required me to leave the life that I had here. It didn't even really hit me until I went home for Christmas break, about two weeks before my takeoff. I was absolutely ridden with anxiety.

I was leaving my friends, my family, and (the one that hurt the most) my boyfriend. I was leaving the comfort of them and the life that I had built here for the complete unknown. It was terrifying.

I didn't know what I was walking into, but I knew that it was going to be the greatest adventure of my entire life, and the promise - no, even just the possibility - of that was more than enough.

I took the leap, and you can too. I promise it is so, so worth it.

You will regret 100% of the things that you don't do. Do you really want to be wondering "what if?" for the rest of your life?

Hiccup #2: There's No Time

This is another one of my favorites. You don't have time to travel. You're busy. You have a lot of shit going on.

I believe you. But I need you to believe me: we are not meant to live our lives as a constant cycle of going to the office, staring at a screen for 8 hours, coming home at night and watching an hour or so of TV, eating some good food if you're lucky, going to bed, waking up and doing it all over again.

Oh, and I can't forget getting plastered with the same people every weekend in the same place.

That's what so many of us have gotten sucked into, and perhaps it's comfortable, but it's not living. You're just existing.

Traveling has brought me to see that the beautiful things in life are outside of all of the work and the meetings and the deadlines and the business of everyday American life.

Beauty is found in noticing the small things around us, the sunlight and the flowers and the small interactions passing on the street. It's exploring and meeting new people and connecting with someone from across the world. It's in making someone smile. I cannot describe the magnitude of connection and love I have in my heart for the people that I met traveling.

I can't say enough about experiencing the world in a different way every day.

Break the mindset. Break the cycle. Don't get stuck. Leave your hometown.