And I’m off!

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I’m sitting in the Toronto airport in disbelief. In the last 72 hours, I put everything I own into cardboard moving boxes, shipped a handful of clothing to Los Angeles, sold all of my furniture, and loaded a 14 foot uHaul filled with all of those boxes (plus a few suitcases) and drove it from Boston to a storage facility in Middletown, Connecticut. I can now confirm that my life fits neatly into a 5 x 10 foot storage room — a very surreal feeling. I painted my gorgeous turquoise and hot pink walls back to a sad, dull, white, donated a slew of stuff to Goodwill and Pine Street Inn, and said goodbye to some of my best friends and the city I’ve learned to call home over the past 6 years. It’s so surreal that just a few months ago I was dreaming of quitting my job and traveling the world, and now the day I’ve been anticipating is finally here.

I spent my quick hour and a half flight up north to Canada (and yes, it is backwards that I had to fly north to then just fly straight back down south, but these flights were $500 cheaper than the other option, so I’m just as happy this way!) reading my Peru guidebook. I can’t wait to spend 11 days on my own, exploring the country. I’m especially excited to spend some time in Cusco — I’ve heard nothing but fabulous things, and I can’t wait to get there.

Thanks to my online media classes at Northeastern, I remembered how to create a personalized Google map project, so last week, I made a fun one for my trip with all the destinations I’ll be visiting. Not too shabby for 5 weeks! My itinerary isn’t completely solidified yet, but my basic plans are as follows:

May 20/21 – Fly down to Santiago from Boston

May 21 – 24 – Greeted at the airport by Alison & Ignacio! Then spending time in Santiago exploring/relaxing.

May 24 – In the evening, fly out to Buenos Aires with Alison

May 24 – June 9 – Spend 8-9 days in Buenos Aires, with two sidetrips – one to Uruguay to see Montevideo and Colonia, and one to Iguazu Falls to hike and explore.

June 10 – First thing in the morning, fly back to Santiago, spend the day relaxing/doing laundry and possibly meeting a family friend.

June 11 – At 8 AM, fly up to Cuzco, Peru via Lima. Spend the rest of the day adjusting to the altitude and exploring.

June 12 – Spend the day in Cusco. Possibly take a half day tour of the four Inca ruins sites surrounding the city. Get to the tour offices for my trek pre-departure briefing.

June 13 – June 16 – For four days, I’ll be hiking, rafting, biking and ziplining my way from Cusco to Machu Picchu. This trip is going to be a huge personal challenge in terms of all the physical activity, but I absolutely cannot wait. I won’t be too out of my comfort zone since we’ll be staying in hostels every night, which I’m definitely thankful for! I booked the trek with a well known tour group, Green Toad Bus Tours, you should click that link and check out my trip — it looks phenomenal!

June 16 – 17 – I’ll spend the rest of the day I arrive back from my trek plus the 17th

June 18 – Through the same tour company, I’ll be taking an 8 hour bus ride (don’t worry, we stop four times for lunch and visits to ruins and tour sites on the way down!) to Puno, on Lake Titicaca. The ride is part of a bus hop plan, which takes you from Cusco down to La Paz in Bolivia, with stops in Puno and Copacabana.

June 19 – Spend the day in Puno, with a half day trip out to the Uros Islands, a floating island in the middle of the lake. Then I’ll hop on a 3 hour bus ride to Copacabana and cross the border into Bolivia!

June 20 – 21 – I’ll have a day and a half to spend in Copacabana, probably checking out more floating islands on Lake Titicaca and doing more exploring. Then on the evening of the 21, I take another short bus ride down to La Paz.

June 22 – June 24 — Three days of exploring La Paz that I absolutely cannot wait for. On my to do list is more research on this leg of the trip since my guide books don’t include Bolivia, but I got some great advice from a friend who was there and I’m very excited that I’ll have the chance to be in a fifth country!

June 25 – I will spend the morning in Santiago, then head to the airport to get on my Air Canada flight to Los Angeles!

Goodbye, Boston

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I am doing the unthinkable.

Well, that’s a little dramatic. But I am taking a huge risk, one that many people, including my parents, think I’m insane for taking.

Today, I put my two weeks notice in at work — without a new job offer. I rented a uHaul, reserved a storage unit and began to list all my furniture on Craigslist. I organized a goodbye party with friends, booked a Zipcar for a donation trip to Goodwill, and began taping up boxes.

As a Northeastern University graduate, I was driven toward career goals from the moment I stepped onto campus at age 18. Completing 3 co-ops and watching older classmates graduate to secure jobs in our field, Northeastern students are compelled to do the same — searching for employment the second we begin our senior years, ensuring that when we walk out of Boston’s TD Bank North Garden on the first Friday of May, we have a solidified answer to the dreaded “what are you doing after graduation?” question we all came to despise during our last semester.

And as a class of 2011 graduate, I did just that. A month before graduation, I secured two jobs — both of which were at companies where I had co-oped. I joined the working world three weeks after graduation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so thankful. I can’t tell you how many people I know who are my age, or older, frantically searching for jobs, especially in the journalism industry. And here I am, giving up two of them.

TechTarget has been an incredible working environment for me to learn and grow. My time there taught me what I am passionate about, where I really see myself in 5 years, and that, most importantly, I still have a lot to learn. I acquired valuable online media and journalism skills that will serve me well in my career, and I formed friendships and working relationships with dozens of wonderful people.

Blogging for Boston.com as a nightlife writer has been, literally, a dream come true. I have the city of Boston at my fingertips, have had the opportunity to connect with some truly incredible people, and a perfect excuse to spend multiple nights a week out on the town. There are billions of young, aspirational bloggers out there, putting their posts onto the interwebs, but I was lucky enough to have Boston.com in my URL, and to have weeks where some of my posts saw upwards of 10,000 visits.

So why give that up?

At nearly 24 years old, I have the travel bug. I want to get out, I want to see the world. Upon moving across the country in 2006, I’ve strived to ensure that I have lived my life with no regrets, but one of my biggest thus far is not studying abroad for a full semester while I was in college.

Alison, one of my best friends from high school, has been living in South America for the past year and a half, and has decided she wants to spend a month traveling in the southern hemisphere before moving back to the US. The cards fell into place and I couldn’t resist. Did I mention she speaks fluent Spanish?

So after much debate and contemplation, and a few tears, I’ve decided to take the jump. On May 20, I’m flying down to Santiago, Chile to explore her new hometown. From there, we will be traveling through Argentina for 3 weeks. She has a trip planned with her parents at the end of June, so we’ll part ways and I’ll spend 10 days in Peru (in Lima, Cuzco and at Machu Picchu) before I fly back home to Los Angeles. I’ll spend a few weeks at home in LA, possibly do a mini west coast road trip with a friend from college, then fly back east to New York City, which I’ve officially decided will be my next home base.

I’m nervous. Actually, to tell the truth, I’m terrified. All I can think is “What if I’m destined to be unemployed for the rest of my life?” But I know that’s not true. And, more than anything, I’m excited. I can’t wait to travel in South America, in countries that I know close to nothing about. I’m excited to experience the culture, to be immersed in Spanish, to actually see Buenos Aires and Iguazu Falls in person, and not just in photographs. No one I know has ever said they regret taking time off to travel, and that’s exactly what I plan to do. Take in the world, learn to live out of a very small suitcase for a month (that will be the real challenge), and learn that much more about myself.

Of course, I’ll be blogging the entire adventure, so be sure to check back here for posts, pictures, and updates of my travels. I’ll leave you with some inspiration:

‎”You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” — Steve Jobs