Hi! My name is Heather. For as long as I can remember, I have always loved to travel and experience new things. I had the opportunity to travel to Australia as a student ambassador for 3 weeks when I was 18. This was my first experience with another culture and it fueled my love for adventure. I started looking into studying abroad after my first year of college and was planning on going back to Australia the following year when I ran into my husband. My husband shares my desire to travel. He lived in Zimbabwe for a year before we started dating which had made that desire stronger. Together the two of us wanted nothing more than to travel this world experiencing all it has to offer.
Life never goes as planned. We were newly weds, poor college students, and then starting brand new careers. Our family was also growing with the birth of our first baby girl. We were proud new parents, completely exhausted, financially tight, but still determined that we would travel the world…someday.
At about age 30 and with another beautiful baby girl in our lives, we realized that we hadn’t been able to live any of our big travel dreams. We still had small adventures, but nothing like we had dreamed of. While we felt incredibly blessed with our little family, we also felt stuck, trapped in our day-to-day life just watching time fly by.
It was a horrible feeling. It was easy to look online at social media or blogs and find people living out their epic adventures exploring Asia, backpacking through Europe, or whatever place they had chosen. People were just leaving their lives behind and exploring the world, sometimes for years. It looked amazing, but with our kids and careers there was no way we could do that. How could anyone do that?
It was a horrible feeling. It was easy to look online at social media or blogs and find people living out their epic adventures exploring Asia, backpacking through Europe, or whatever place they had chosen. People were just leaving their lives behind and exploring the world, sometimes for years. It looked amazing, but with our kids and careers there was no way we could do that. How could anyone do that?
They can do it because most of them are 20-somethings with no set career, no spouse, no kids, and very little responsibility. More power to them! But this doesn’t always work for the 30+ or 40+ person with a spouse, kids, and a 401K tied to a career that they have worked hard on for the last decade or more. I get it. I get it because that’s where my husband and I lived.
Things needed to change and we decided that we were going to change it. We planned a road trip that summer to Yellowstone and Glacier National Park. We packed up our preschooler and our toddler and we just went. It was a whirlwind of a trip and we all had an amazing time. It was just one week. It wasn’t a year, but one week. That week changed everything. We realized that rather than waiting for the perfect someday to come along, we could start living now. We made a deal right then and there that we would go on at least one big trip every year, one small trip every quarter, and one really big trip, just the two of us, every 5th anniversary.
Now it’s your turn. You can’t experience EVERYTHING this world has to offer, but I believe you can experience ANYTHING this world has to offer. It just has to be your priority. You can still have great experiences and keep your career, family, and home. You can do it, but you actually have to go out and do it. “Someday” means never. If you are waiting until that perfect someday arrives, you are going to grow old and full of regrets about the things you could have done but never did. Time is limited. You can’t buy more. Once it’s gone, it is just gone.
So let’s do something about it! What have you always wanted to do? Where have you always wanted to go? Pick something and start figuring out how to make it happen. Then make it happen! It really is that simple. Do it and then do it again. Do it and you will get to the end of your life content with how you lived. No regrets. That’s the goal.
This website is here to help you on your life’s adventure. Here I will share tips I have learned and ideas I’ve gathered as I set out on my own life’s adventure. I hope that by sharing these experiences, you will be inspired to set out and live your life. Let’s get out there and make some memories! Let’s get out and start Living This World!