I’ve been a huge travel blog reader for years, finding solace in reading about other people’s glamorous jet-setting lives while I was trapped in my small college dorm room writing papers on Hemingway and Milton. I spent my time following others’ elaborate experiences, reading through their detailed itineraries and expanding my list of places to see. In essence, I was simply waiting until I would no longer be a passive traveler, but an active one. When I finally got a passport in 2011 and took my first trip overseas to Santorini, Greece, I thought my experiences were too messy, too unorganized, too imperfect to be valid enough to share. Getting lost on an island ten minutes after arriving did little to boost my self-esteem (there’s only so far you can go on a island!). Yet, I realized that because I was always immersing myself in other people’s perfect images of how adventure should go, I became overly self-aware of my short-comings in the travel-writing world…there was always so much more behind the beautiful instagram photos and free travel perks. It took me five years to realize that waiting for the perfect time to start Namastay Traveling was like waiting for an Uber to arrive that I never actually booked (been there, done that). It was never going to come.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2016 that I started to view myself through a new lens. After diving into 12-hour days of an intensive yoga certification process, I began to see my views as valuable not only to me, but perhaps to others as well. The more time I spent on my mat, the more time I allowed myself to reflect on the journey I wanted to take. Both literally, and metaphorically. After all, people don’t practice yoga to get better at yoga, they practice yoga to get better at life. I started to find purpose in the screw ups, in the missed flights, in the accidentally ordering fish eggs for breakfast, or maybe even that one time I took a trip to the beach and forgot a swimsuit. Each misstep broke down the walls I had laid down, brick by brick, for myself. We, as humans, constantly live behind the barriers we build, sticking to our imposed story lines of how we think our lives should look. Yet, little do we realize that the more we push our limits, the less they seize to exist.

And so, it accumulates to this: a little corner of the internet where I can speak to the lows and highs I have not only on the road, but in embracing my new experiences outside of the comparison trap we all tend to fall into. In essence, I will be sharing more than the Top Ten Places to Eat in *Insert Newest City of All the Rage*, but on how to fully immerse yourself into new cultures, new places, and new ways of being. It’s only when we see ourselves in a different context can we truly find who we are to begin with.

As I continue to practice the culture of yoga around the globe, not just the postures, I hope you’ll join me as we reignite the purpose of our daily lives, both abroad and in our own living rooms (or mine, if you wanna come over for tea). Instead of always feeling as if there’s more to see, more to do, more to eat (real talk), we’ll find peace in where we are, and enthusiasm for where we have left to go. Cheers to the beginning of Yet Another Travel Blog.

xx,
Juliette

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