Planning a backpacking trip to Italy and Greece... Where do you start?

Once my sister and I decided we wanted to make this happen, we then realized that we should probably start to put some information together and plan a bit. Since I was living about 600 miles away from her at the time, we weren't able to meet up and put together a game plan, so we opted for the next best thing (and my lifeline all through out college) Google Docs.

In order to keep an excel sheet up to date real time, while we both accumulated information we decided to create a Google Excel Doc where we could both edit it instantaneously. Here is a screen shot of how we organized our budget, our timeline, to do list, places we wanted to see, ect. I highly recommend using this platform to organize yourself a bit :)

Then we started filling it in! I used sites like Nomadic Matt, the savvy backpacker to get averages on how much it would cost for hostels, food, transportation, activities, etc.

And we created a general timeline for ourselves, we don't want to plan everything out to a "T" but we do want to at least have a general idea, and make sure we end up in Athens at the end of the trip to catch our flight!

My sister and I are the adventurous type, so we have been looking for activities like parasailing, scuba diving, and more, in these cool locations, and I have found that Nomadic Matt's travel guides are a really good place to start! I have been looking through the Greek Isles Activities on his site, and then taking it a step further to research the individual companies that we might make a reservation through and also so I can see how much it will cost.

So far this is been the method to our madness I hope it helps you get started in planning your next trip!

With Love, G

Breaking Free of the Rat Race is SCARY!

I moved away from home right after college, and started my first "big girl" job in a "big city" and was headed down the road called "success". Well, turns out society's version of success and mine are quite different, but I wouldn't have known this if I hadn't spent the last year away from everything I love and know.

And now I am trying something new, I am trying to build a career out of what I enjoy, and so far I haven't completely figured out what that means, but I know that what I had can't be it. And sometimes the best way to figure out you want is to first figure out what you don't want.

If you are experiencing anything similar to this I suggest you watch this video!



This is Water from Patrick Buckley on Vimeo.

Everyone talks about breaking out of your "comfort zone" and to break free of being content and safe, well, it is not easy. Who really is every ready to defy everything we have been taught we must do our entire lives? Separating other people's expectations from your own is hard work, but if you are interested in diving deeper into what you really want, think about these questions:

-Write down a list of what you want
-Now look at that list again and think about which of those come from an internal joy and which come from an external source
-Think about what external source caused you to want (or think you should want) those things
-Now focus on either eliminating those externally driven wants or at least toning down your efforts towards them, and focus more of your energy on the ones that bring you internal joy

The steps above are a combination of questions and ideas from a book I am reading called "20 Something, 20 Everything" by Christine Hassler (which I HIGHLY recommend) as well as this article (but don't be decieved by the title): "The Three Most Important Questions You Can Ask Your Teenager" by Michael Mulligan. Honestly I don't think it should be titled that, but either way it has some really great ideas and concepts in the article that I related to ALOT.
Click here to read the full article, and let me know what you think!

With love,  G