Unleashing Wanderlust: A Journey of Self-Discovery through Writing

“Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears...”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I struggle with this almost every day, choosing the topic and just writing in a flow, undisturbed, shedding the words on paper like layers of skin and experiences galore.

Because life is learning, and we can learn by reflecting. My way of reflecting has always been through writing, like patching myself through pieces of rediscovery, puzzles solved and created on top of each other. Sharing my soul.

Life is learning through experience, though. So I sometimes crave the living part of life, the wandering, the travel, and discovering through experiencing everything firsthand. That's how I rediscover my soul, my inner layers left unturned.

Travel has always been the seed to growing. I see, I feel and I absorb it all. The new parts, the old me, the new ideas, and new meanings. Cultures and fantasies of lust and wonder.

With travel come the various languages and cultures, bringing awe and completing the incomplete version of our imagination and expectations. Keep growing, keep living, and keep alive the spirit of the explorer within you.

When have you last embraced the unknown to reach your full potential? Each journey, whether across oceans or within the confines of your own city, offers a chance for growth and self-discovery. Traveling grows within you and keeps you antsy for more.

I remember my English class, and the obsession of my teacher with having an open mind. I didn't understand it at the time, but now it feels like my teacher was living her life of longing through teaching kids. She would allow us to use our imagination and write fiction or whatever our hearts desired. I even wrote poems and she was allowing it. I felt free for the first time in high school during those English classes.

Those were my first travels, through writing. I remember it all through my soul and skin as if I lived it beforehand. With the geography atlas on one side of my desk and an encyclopedia of cultures and history, I would come up with travels and adventures in South America. I imagined trips in the Amazon forest, climbing the Andes, and exploring the pampas. I haven't reached those places yet in reality, still. But I remember so much through those high school research for my stories!

Now I realize that I was opening my mind to the infinite possibilities that the world had to offer. Slowly, by being curious and researching, I was shedding the constraints of everyday familiarity and stepping into the realm of endless potential, unleashing my imagination.

Just a few years after writing those stories, I left on a one-year exchange program to the USA, in Hawaii of all places.

My first time flying by plane, my first time traveling alone. I was only 16 years old and had no mobile phone in 2001. Google was only starting to get popular in the US and the internet content creation was only just picking up slowly, through online diaries. I got my first bank account and my first kiss in a mall.

I was living it up, feeling cool as an exchange student from Europe, traveling with my host family all around the islands, and also on trips as part of the exchange program. It was all so like in a movie, yet I was feeling it deeply, it was changing me to become myself more than ever.

I wrote five journals during my stay in Hawaii and also started one online diary, my first one. I started getting some idea of what html was, at its inception. I remember writing and reading like tools for keeping up with myself and my development.

The exchange program had a policy of reducing the time for talking on the phone with our families at home because they wanted us to limit being home-sick. I only felt it deeply during Christmas, otherwise, our host family was keeping us so busy with tourist trips and organizing international dinners and events, that I was fully experiencing more than reflecting oftentimes.

So writing for me, in those times, meant connecting my experiences with my growing self, my soul trying to keep up with it all.

As I penned my thoughts and experiences onto the white pages of my journals and digital diaries, I found a sense of continuity in the middle of the ever-changing existence I was fully experiencing.

Each word, each sentence, and each reflection was a bridge connecting my past in my home country with my intense present. I wasn't thinking too much about my future self, yet I was planning to keep on traveling and experiencing the world. I also realized that writing became my tool for self-discovery and growth.

So I kept on writing and polished my style. And I still have so many things to write!

Thank you for reading my story.