2018 Travel Year in Review + Travel and Blog Goals for 2019
Every year, I do an annual travel year in review and mention my goals for the upcoming year. This one recaps all of 2018!
Here are previous “year in review” posts from 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014 if you're interested!
This post will recap:
Where I traveled
Whether I’ve made progress on my goal of visiting all 6 inhabited continents in my 20s (a goal I made back in 2014)
Work + Travel Notes from 2018 (if you’re curious how I travel and make money)
2019 Travel Lineup (do I even have travel plans yet?!)
How you can travel more in 2019!
Where I traveled in 2018
San Diego, California (home)
Orange County, California
Palm Springs, California
Las Vegas, Nevada
Malibu Wine Safari, California
Mexico City, Mexico
Connecticut (Yale University) to teach a summer program
New York City
San Francisco/Bay Area to work a conference
Los Angeles and San Diego, California to attend conferences
San Jose, Costa Rica
Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica
Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica
Bocas del Toro, Panama
Playa Venao, Panama
Panama City, Panama
San Blas Islands
Cartagena, Colombia
San Francisco, California
Orange County, California to see family for Christmas
San Diego, California (home for the new year!)
New countries visited: Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia
Other countries visited: USA, Mexico
Work + Travel Notes from 2018 (if you’re curious how I travel and make money):
Zip lining at work in Panama! (Don’t mind my crooked helmet, haha)
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that one of my best tips for traveling more (or “getting paid to travel”) is to create a work + travel lifestyle.
Basically this means that you are able to both work (make money and/or have amenities covered in exchange for work) and travel (to those really awesome places all over the world).
I decided a while back that creating a lifestyle that includes travel as a key component was important in this time of my life.
Here are the work + travel opportunities I held in 2018:
Location-independent work:
Having a laptop + wifi connection means my office can be anywhere around the world
Travel blogging/business: This blog is something I’ve always loved doing! It’s a lot of work, from writing blog posts and weekly #MotivationMonday emails, posting daily content on Instagram, and all the other behind-the-scenes aspects that come with blogging.
I’ve loved seeing this community continue to grow over these years, it’s amazing! I do earn a partial income from this blog now - I’d continue blogging no matter what, but it’s great to see a return on investment. I wrote a post on how to start a profitable blog if this is something you’re interested in!
Freelance work (online): I do marketing, social media, and project management for a few different companies remotely as a freelancer, which allows me to live wherever and travel whenever.
I’ve been doing this for a little over two years now and keep up with it while traveling. It’s really nice to be able to travel for longer periods at a time and not have to choose between work and travel!
Short-term work + travel jobs:
We ended the semester with Global Degree in the San Blas Islands, one of the most beautiful places in the world
Teaching at educational conferences: Every summer for the past five years I’ve been part of the faculty for career-themed high school leadership conferences in the USA, Europe, and China.
I spent all of July 2018 working one of the conferences at Yale University in Connecticut. As usual, it was rewarding and exhausting but I truly enjoyed my time there with our awesome staff and students!
Working at an international leadership conference: Yes, I worked another conference, the Hive Global Leader Summit, in the San Francisco/Bay Area in August for five days. It was my first time working with this company and it was an amazing conference with strong, heart-felt leaders and entrepreneurs from all around the world. If you feel called to attend a conference like this one, I highly recommend it!
Working as an Academic Coordinator with Global Degree Academy: When GDA needed additional staff support for the last 5-6 weeks of the semester in Central America, they asked me to fly out and meet them in Costa Rica to travel with the students through all the locations in Costa Rica and Panama.
I helped with logistics, did some personal development workshops, and also did role planning/setup to build out what the academic role will look like in the future.
Literally getting paid to travel was amazing, and I felt like I was making an impact while doing work that felt fully in alignment with who I am as a person. It doesn’t get better than that!
One of my top travel goals is to visit all six inhabited continents in my 20s. How am I doing?
Five out of six!
In 2014 after having been to North America and Europe, I made a goal to visit all six inhabited continents in my 20s.
While I don’t see counting countries/continents as the end-all-be-all to “having traveled the world,” I felt it was a nice goal that would keep me traveling and seeking out new destinations instead of revisiting only my favorites.
2018 was exciting because I made it to a new continent - South America! I also made it to Central America, which was a region I hadn’t yet been to either. I have three more years to get to Africa before my 20s are over and am feeling fairly confident that will happen next year.
2019 Travel Lineup
Releasing baby sea turtles in Costa Rica
Last year I planned on visiting places in California, Europe, Connecticut, New York, Arizona, and Seattle in 2018.
While I made it to most of those places in California, as well as Connecticut and New York City, I did not make it to Arizona or Seattle to see family for the holidays (they came to California!) or Europe (I left my old full-time job with the Europe opportunity to go back to freelancing full-time in March).
My reach/goal destinations in 2018 were all over the place from South Africa to Malta to Central/South America and Asia, but I’m happy to have made it to Central/South America!
Do I even have travel plans for 2019?! Yes and no. My plans are somewhat vague for 2019.
With the spontaneous invitation to work + travel with Global Degree Academy at the end of 2018, my mind was very much focused on that role without much planning ahead.
However, there are some destinations I’ve started to plan with friends or blog collaborations, so I’m hoping 2019 will be an exciting travel year!
Likely places I’ll visit in 2019: California, New York, Nashville, Spain, Portugal
Goal places to visit in 2019: Morocco, South Africa, Malta, Oktoberfest in Munich, New Orleans, Peru, Vietnam
What does 2019 look like for you?
If you’d like to travel more, create a work + travel lifestyle, or round out your goals in all areas of your life, check out my free goal planner sheets here. They’ll help you plan out your year, gain clarity, and come up with a strategic action plan to make it happen!
Cheers to 2019, let’s make it amazing!
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