This blog post is dedicated to the 22-year-old Sierra who is going to look back at this post in five years and be so grateful she documented how she felt at the beginning of this journey.
As I write this post, I am preparing for my first trip as a travel writer to Maui, Hawaii! I have always dreamed of visiting Hawaii and in a few short days, I will be on my flight to Maui to see what the 50th state has to offer.
With all of the excitement of starting this journey and exploring what it is like to be a travel writer with a chronic illness, I am also filled with worry, stress, and a ton of anxiety. As I have begun to build this website and business, I am learning how many different pieces need to fit together. There is so much preparation involved when trying to plan a memorable trip, brainstorm content ideas, and manage a chronic illness. Like, how will I manage the long TSA lines in the airport? How will I be able to think of content ideas after using all of my energy to get from point A to point B? How will I be able to make this blog interesting to a variety of people and get viewers to my website? These are a few of the thoughts I have racing through my mind as I prepare for this trip.
Right now I have roughly 30 tabs open on my computer with different places to visit in Maui, my newly built website, YouTube (where I have been looking up how to do everything related to blogging), maps of different places, emails, and so on. As someone who gets overwhelmed by disorganization, you could say I am feeling like a hot mess right now.
I feel like there are about a million things that I need to get done before I leave for Maui. Not only am I trying to plan a really fun trip, but now I am learning how to balance the fun of traveling with the work side of creating content and learning how to run a website.
Trip anxiety is nothing new to me, as I am an anxious traveler especially on planes and when doing anything new and out of my comfort zone. I think this blog will help push me to conquer some of those anxieties so I am able to create the content I yearned for when I was couch-ridden and just wanted someone to relate to.
It is such a weird mix of emotions I am feeling right now as I launch Chronically Exploring. I feel scared, anxious, hopeful, excited, and stressed out all at the same time. I feel these emotions towards lots of different parts of this journey like the trip itself, and with the beginning of this website.
I hope you will join me on this journey as I explore the world with my chronic illness and document all the tips and tricks I learn along the way to help make traveling with an illness easier.
-Sierra
Itís nearly impossible to find experienced people on this subject, but you sound like you know what youíre talking about! Thanks
Thanks for your blog, nice to read. Do not stop.