Where in the world are Tyler and Makenna?

Fact: Traveling is fun

Fact: Taking a sabbatical is rewarding

Fact: Traveling for months at a time takes a ton of work to keep things running smoothly

Quote from Tyler, to Makenna: “I concede — you were right and we definitely should have found a way to plan this out better”

In case you were wondering if our blog posts were getting sent to spam or if you accidentally unsubscribed, don’t worry, you didn’t. While we have been traveling for ~6 months now, unless you have texted us or seen our Instagram recently, you may think we're still in Norway 😅.

We are actually in Denmark / Italy / Switzerland / Peru / Argentina / Chile / Mexico / Japan / Thailand / Vietnam. It’s been a whirlwind the past 6 months with some amazing memories made along the way across 3 continents and 12 countries, but one thing we have learned is traveling nonstop isn't a whimsical expedition. We’ll admit it, we’re higher maintenance now than in our early 20s, and that comes with some extra baggage, both literally and figuratively. Though our 30 year old selves would argue it’s necessary.

Along the way, we’ve been crossing off bucket list items, spending our days eating pastries in Copenhagen, strolling the streets of Kyoto, or attempting to befriend every alpaca we could in Cusco.

Tyler is embracing his inner coffee-connoisseur and trying as many coffee shops as he can find; he claims it’s good for his soul even though the budget disagrees. Makenna had the bright idea that her 30,000 photos and counting could make a meaningful offset in the coffee budget if she posted them to ShutterStock. Last we checked, $0 earned.

We walked into this experience believing that we could do it all — read the news each morning, get through the books we had bookmarked over the years, workout everyday, keep up with social media, write blog posts once a week, and find the perfect balance of planning ahead yet also having spontaneity in our travel plans. What came to be is a less than organized cycle of traveling for 2-3 weeks followed by the reality that we have nothing planned for the next leg of our trip, and then spending 48-72 hours in a mad dash to update the budget, book flights, sort out accommodations and visas, and write down as many recommendations from friends, family, TikTok, and ChatGPT as possible. Then, in the jetlagged hours when we should be sleeping, we scroll through our photos and post what we can to Instagram.

We’re still having a great time (see pics below), but it's not without its fair share of stress to keep everything moving without too many hiccups. We’re “taking a break” and will be back in the US from January through early March before our next leg of the trip to Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia.

We’re excited to get caught up on quite a few backlog items:

• Trip planning so we can be logistically worry-free when we land in Singapore
• Seeing family and friends (+ a few weddings between January and March)
• Turning our rough journals and notes into actual blog posts
• Starting to seriously explore what’s next for us once this year long sabbatical is up (hint: we're both exploring starting a company and have business theses cooking up behind the scenes, but more on that another time 🙂)

In the meantime, here's a few photos from the last ~6 months of what we’ve been up to. For real this time, expect a flurry of blog posts from our scratch pad of thoughts coming soon!