Hey there, my name is Megan Elise Varela and I have wanted to travel the world for as long as I can remember. I used to obsessively flip through my family’s TIME and National Geographic magazine subscriptions on our living room floor and dream of being an archeologist.   Those dreams enhanced a passion to create. I would carefully cut out the best photos from those magazines and make dream boards and write essays about the places I would go someday when I was tall enough. (I assumed it was like roller coaster rules…).   Much to 7 year old me’s disappointment, I never became the female Indiana Jones. But what I did do was fall in love with the vibrancy of world cultures.   This love guided my degree choices in college and even led me to work in central China for a year. In my 26 years of life, I’ve visited 13 countries and 5 of 6 continents (yes, I eliminated Antarctica, you geography experts!).   In all of those countries, I kept extensive journals. My hopes and dreams, accomplishments and failures, have always been documented in journals. Those little books became a safe space for me to express myself and explore my own brain whether I was traveling or at home.   As I grow older, I love looking back on those journals and seeing where I was at in each point in time. It’s like re-reading your favorite novel where you remember the plot, but not always the details and you love the story even more the second time around.   My goal is not just to share my travels with you, but to share the tools I’ve used to get there and how I’ve learned to document those formative, special moments and the joy found in the day-to-day moments.   Here, you can expect to see articles about both local and international travel, be given the tools to plan your own excursions, discover journal writing inspiration and prompts, and get to know me a little better through my marriage, lifestyle, and passion to create.   Even if you’re not an avid traveler, writer, or homemaker, I hope that this blog encourages you to live your life with boldness and authenticity for yourself and the future you hope to create.