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Thursday, September 15, 2016

I Want to be All of You Combined: Four People Who Have Inspired Me


This blog post is in response to Natalie's 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 6.


When I think about the people that have opened my eyes to a freedom lifestyle, I think of four ladies. Not only are they rad travelers, but brave creatives. These women are: Shay Brown and Cassie Torrecillas, Christine Gilbert, and Megan Falley.

My introduction to living a traveling girlboss lifestyle started with Shay and Cassie of Bucketlist Bombshells. I gave more of a backstory in this post, but long story short, they work from their laptops giving them the ability to live anywhere at any time. This excited me and that's when I took their Work Online and Travel the World Course. I still haven't completed it fully, but I am chugging along every day.

What inspires me about Cassie and Shay is they had the courage to make the steps toward the life that they wanted: to travel around the world. I have always wanted this, but never thought it was possible because of the "typical" path to success: go to college, graduate, and get a job at a company. Not work for yourself like Cassie and Shay do. So they listened to their dreams, set out to Mexico, and started freelancing. They've traveled to Thailand, Bali, and so many other beautiful places.

As for Christine, she amazed me as I read her book Mother Tongue, where she told her story of jetsetting around the world with the goal to learn three major languages by immersing her family in each culture. Christine, her husband, and her son went to China, then to Beirut, and finally to Mexico where they studied Mandarin, Arabic, and Spanish. Each journey had its ups and downs, but my goodness, what an awesome experience!

Like I said in this post, I started studying Russian after two of my coworkers from Ukraine began teaching me basic words like thank you and please. To be honest, it's hard! Thinking of learning three languages seems overwhelming, but also extremely exciting. But like Christine, I have always had a pull to experience the culture of countries around the world. So Christine took the dream out of my head and lived it. But her doing it has showed me it's doable and with enough courage, I could do something similar.

And then there's Megan Falley, a powerful poet. I saw her perform last October and fell in love with the way she could illuminate problems in society and call them out on their bullshit. She is the author of Red Head and the Slaughter King and a few other books of poetry. After the reading last year, I was able to meet her. She told me about packing up her car in New York and traveling across the country performing in venues all the way to California. As a Write Bloody author, it is required to do 20 shows, but Megan decided to make a real trip of it. Lucky for me, she still enjoys it and I was able to experience what a difference she makes through her words.

Not only is she brave because of the topics she writes about in her poetry, but also with her ability to pick up and go for it - reading around the country. She is truly an inspiration for a poetry lover like me.

So what would I ask if I had one question for these four ladies? I honestly don't know. Maybe something as generic as What is your biggest piece of advice? or maybe something like What do you tell yourself to stay motivated when you're getting tired? or What was the biggest and most influential step you took to live the life you dreamed of?

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