I’m from small town Iowa. I grew up out in the country, and was homeschooled for the first five years of my education. I feel myself drawn back to the nature I grew up around, but I’m so glad I got out and experienced the world. And as you can guess it has had an impact on what I want for my future.

While I’m a huge homebody, I crave and appreciate travel. It’s something that I will never stop doing, whether that’s local or abroad. And while I know my “responsibilities” will change over the years, especially if we have children, I know that won’t stop the travel. We’ll just adapt as we go along.

I don’t want my children to be “spoiled”, and I don’t want to give up on travel after I have kids. Plus I want them to experience the world, and I know that there is so much they can learn from it.

I love Iowa as a home base, but I absolutely love being able to escape the winter blues as much as possible. Like just about every other person out there I am effected quite a bit by weather. I need sun, I need warmth, I need blue skies. And there’s not a whole lot of that here in Iowa over the winter months.

We were able to do it this past winter and I hope it’s something that works for us in the years to come — escaping the winter and moving to a warm place for a month or two.

And I love the idea of putting my kids in international schools, or homeschooling them while we travel.

There was one morning where I was sitting, working in a coffeeshop in Ubud, and a mother asked if her and her son could sit at my table with me. It was a busy little cafe, where the tables filled up quickly. Of course I said yes. At one point she was talking to her, probably 8 or 9 year old, son about their flights back home, and she asked if he wanted to stop in Thailand on their way back through or come straight back to Indonesia. And he chose come back to Indonesia without stopping in Thailand. I just loved that they were having such a mature conversation, that he had the wherewithal to know what he wanted, and that she was including him in the decision making.

There’s an awesome looking Green School just south of Ubud, that we didn’t get the chance to tour, but will look into next time. And there are different schools like that around the world that call out to me. I would have loved to have those different experiences growing up.

Traveling so much has instilled this need for the freedom and flexibility to keep doing it. Something I haven’t perfected but am working towards fitting cohesively into my lifestyle in the years to come.

Because what works for me is to continue to work as I travel. And this means some semblance of consistency while traveling as well as a stable internet connection. (Seriously, you take for granted good internet until you don't have it).

And that means not having the desire to have certain things back home. I still have no need for a vehicle, and while we’ve talked about the desire to eventually buy a plot of land and build a house we’re not rushing into it. And there are other material “luxuries” that I see no real need for. Fancy clothes, shoes, purses, etc, which fits perfectly into my love for minimalism.

I’m really excited to see how travel evolves for me over the years, the different places I go, and the experiences I have.

What is one way in which travel has impacted you?