Why Am I Aspiring?

So it may seem a little silly to have a blog about aspiring to do things or be things. The original intent of this blog was to be a countdown of days until I made the first big trip I had aspired to make in my life: Ireland. But as circumstances began to change in my life the blog metamorphosed into something much more.


A love of travel has always been a fire that burns deep within me. From the minute I knew what the word meant, I knew I wanted to do it. My first trip abroad to Europe only fueled the fire more. I realized what an amazing and vast world there is out there and how much we can learn about each other and ourselves just by making a trip outside the U.S. 


I grew up in a town where most people had no desire to travel. No desire to go anywhere outside our small town. Most people's lives consisted of going to high school, marrying your high school sweetheart and having children down the street from where you grew up. If you didn't do that, you joined the military. I don't want to sound like I'm making a judgement on that, I think it's great that so many people feel such a strong connection to their hometown. I think that's one of things that made where I grew up so wonderful. And even I get older, I find myself feeling a familiar pull back to the town I grew up in. But staying there forever was never the life I saw for myself. For those people, it worked. But for me, not so much. I wanted to get out see the world and I wanted to do it as fast as humanly possible.


Aside from traveling, I'm also a bit of an aspiring writer (I majored in Creative Writing in college), though I haven't picked up a pen in about 5 years. I'm an aspiring humanitarian. An aspiring friend. Aspiring to be in a relationship.


Having been born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, it seems like a lot of my life has been me "aspiring" to do things but not necessarily doing them. Whether that be because of my own fear, because I wasn't raised with the idea of "you can do anything," or because sometimes things literally are harder for me because of my physical limitations...I'm not sure. It's probably a combination of all of those. But I hope that by documenting what I'm aspiring to do, it will allow me to no longer just aspire but to actually do.