Welcome

Hi everyone, 

It's been nearly a decade since I've written a blog.  And here I am, starting it up again, as one of my 2024 goals.  It's rather scary if I'm being honest.  But, I've blown the dust off my laptop and massaged my fingers to prepare me for getting back into this...publicly writing thing.  

For those of you who followed my blog back in the day, I used to post weekly blogs called Tour your Town and Travel Abroad Thursdays.  (I also wrote other nonsense and fun stories about life...) 

The Tour your Town post was about a local adventure I would take around my hometown each week.  Doing this helped me find my hometown to be actually quite magical and see what I'd failed to observe day to day for years.  I found myself going to more local events and getting more involved in Wooster's community.  It's easy to overlook the day to day in your hometown while living there.  Every place has its unique starting stories, people have all sorts of memories based on locations, and each place around the globe is special to someone.  This is to remind us of our memories or help us find the magic in living local, wherever that is.

Travel Abroad Thursday's were posts about places I wanted to travel to in the future.  Essentially I was researching my hope-to-travel-to locations.  I loved researching the touristy things as well as finding something unique about the location.  

My goal then, and now, was/is to become a travel blogger.  What was holding me back, then and now, was finances...and an expired passport.  Ugh money....something most of us never seem to have enough of (especially now with the cost of groceries...like seriously!)

I am currently unemployed as I write this.  2023 was a rough year for me with losing the job I thought I would have until I retired (or until I was ready to move on from it).  While I mourned the loss of that job and how that impacted and changed my life, I found another job I would be content at...only for them to sell the business and once again leave me out of work for the second time in 2023.  While I do have a factory job lined up (waiting on drug test and background stuff before I get a start date) to help pay the bills, it is the furthest thing from the kind of a job that I want.  But, the schedule of this job should allow me more time for adventures!

Now that my rambling is done, let me tell you about my plan with this blog.  I'll be starting with a lot of local travel content.  Most of it will be travel locations in Ohio, however I do have a trip planned to Arizona for the month of May, and I'm beginning research for a 2025 trip to Ireland/Scotland/England. No more putting off renewing my passport now!

For the more visual people, I will have pictures on Instagram @gallivantingwithJen but the stories will be here on the blog.  As this grows, I hope to create partnerships/sponsorships with local businesses who would like promotional content.  

If you really feel that tug in your heart telling you to reach out to me now and collaborate on some ideas on how we can work together, please don't hesitate.  Like I said earlier, everything has its unique starting story...and I'd like to make this one worth telling over and over again.

Let's go gallivanting!

Jen