I'm going to be completely honest with you right here, right now: I have no clue what I'm doing. I spent my first 19 years thinking I had my life on lock. Then I left the country for the first time in 2016.

Within six months of graduating, I left my well-paying job in healthcare to be a travel agent, invested the small amount of savings I had into starting a travel blog, and started taking trips by myself on a regular basis.

I wanted to keep track of my adventures (and my failures) and, hence, Home Is Where The Suitcase Is was born.

Then we all know what happened in 2020…

After finally feeling like I gained my balance, it turns out I was standing on quick sand (which, sidebar, is not nearly as prevalent in real life as Saturday morning cartoons made it seem). I couldn’t travel, my job was kaput, and the whole world had gone to hell in a handbasket.

So I started over.

In 2021, I moved across the country to Arizona, somehow met my soulmate, and discovered I had an autoimmune disorder that meant I had to be gluten-free for the rest of my life.

Traveling now looks a lot different than it did before. I work in investments and have to schedule all my trips around PTO, and if I accidentally eat gluten, I could spend the rest of the vacation sick as a dog.

I haven’t let that stop me though.

Home Is Where The Suitcase Is looks different now than it did before. Instead of week-long trips, it’s more focused on weekend getaways. Plus I now make sure to include gluten free guides to all the cities I visit for all my fellow gluten-free-for-lifers out there.

Life never follows the plans that we set, one way or another, but we can still play the hand we’re dealt, even if that means finding a different card game. And that’s what I plan to do.

Who’s with me?