About Me

My name is Alyssa.
Traveling is SO important to me because I love seeing new parts of the world & experiencing unique cultures, food, people & history.
When I travel, I feel free.
I feel energized, amazed, reborn.
There’s just nothing else like it.

Over the past few years, I began struggling with anxiety, which made me scared to do really anything in life. This was new to me because I used to be so care-free & confident, like going skydiving at age 19, studying abroad in Scotland for 4 months with no friends or cellphone, and having traveled to 7 countries by the age of 22. I was suddenly so overwhelmed by the thought of being on a plane or being gone from home for too many hours without a change of clothes/shoes/cleansers/deodorant/chapstick, you name it. I started to worry about every little thing that could go wrong, and tried to prep & plan for them ALL at once so that I would be ready to handle everything and anything if needed. Because that’s totally possible…

It wasn’t how I wanted to live. I would pack a bag full of random things that I felt like I would need just to go hang out with a friend for 4 hours. If I went on a 1 week vacation, I would overpack enough stuff for what seemed like a 3 month trip. I would spend all my time before a trip worrying about what could go wrong and planning for it. I would spend an entire flight worrying that the plane would crash. I would spend my whole vacation trying to prevent bad things from happening, only to realize once we came home that I didn’t even get to enjoy the good things from the trip. I started to not want go anywhere anymore out of fear that I wouldn’t even have good memories of traveling. It was a constant cycle of worrying before the trip, worrying during the trip, then feeling exhausted after the trip, having no real memory or relaxing times from it.

For the last few years, I have challenged my anxiety, specifically travel-related anxiety, by rebuilding my confidence & learning how to find adventure in everything, like I could when I was younger.
But I wanted to do something with all of my experience and first hand feelings of dealing with the pressures of adulthood/work-life balance/mental health/making memories/etc. So I am going to use this blog to share my feelings of travel stress as well as how to overcome it & live your life the way you are supposed to live it!