The Blogger That Never Blogged

Out of the seven posts I have on this sad excuse for a blog, almost all of them were written around the beginning of 2018. It has been over a year since my fingers have fluttered across the keyboard, which is strange since it has been what is assumed to be my most exciting year yet. I guess that is what I needed; I lived life, went to school, changed my major, had several breakdowns, made new friends, got myself up several times, and I kept going. All of 2018 and now almost a quarter of 2019 has literally flown by. Most of the year I was not even in the United States; I spent my summer studying in Italy then quickly proceeded to pick myself up and temporarily live in England while studying at Oxford. I remember thinking to myself that my blog was bound to take off since I was traveling so much; I planned all of the outfit tips I would have, destinations I would persuade readers to visit, and advice on all the life lessons I was sure to learn whilst abroad.

But that didn’t happen; before I knew it, I was home from Italy and missing all of the pizza, then I was whisked away again. It sounds glamorous, and I know that this life is one I am so incredibly blessed to have, but I put so much pressure on myself for it to be and appear seamlessly perfect. I wanted to have a European fling, eat and drink as much as I wanted without gaining weight, take amazing photos and write about all my ventures, everyone waiting on my next post. Instead, I realized life isn’t a trendy closet and amazing pictures, and that the most incredible things you could do, the most amazing life you could live, will never be as fascinating as you imagine it. But that is the best part of it all, it’s not how I imagined it. It was real and it was raw, I made incredible friends and learned not to care about my appearance or social media presence. I ate so much incredible food, learned to like beer, and visited twelve countries. I ran out of money, I got tired, I got homesick. But I was also inspired, inspired by the people I met and the cultures I encountered. I was inspired by the late-night adventures and the art that was my surroundings. I had a lot of extremely high highs, but also extremely low lows. But that’s life, no matter where you are in the world, no matter what you are doing or how you are living, nothing is going to be the Hollywood movie that you expected.

I look around my room and see all of the photos and souvenirs from my travels, and I see how this journey provoked the evolution of myself. I am not the picture-perfect Instagram famous girl who is paid to travel, I was just a student who was just lucky enough to do what several students do and go on a study abroad. But from that, I was set on a trajectory different than what I would have planned for myself, what my parents have assumed, and very very far off from what I had ever thought possible. I can’t wait to share my experiences with you, even though they will all be several months late in the after telling. But isn’t that what marks an experience well had? Who has time to tell their stories while the action is occurring? This past year was one of the best years of my life, and it goes undocumented, because I really got to live.