my story

Hi, I’m Callie.

As of December 2016, I am no longer in the United States military.

Starting on January 13, 2017 in Mexico City, I am going on a trip through Mexico and Central America.

But let’s start at the beginning.

I was born in a suburban neighborhood on the east coast of the United States in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But my parents and three siblings moved to San Jose, Costa Rica when I was four for my dad’s job.

The next six years of my life, the childhood wonder years, were chock-full of amazing experiences in this country that is now so ingrained in my spirit and my soul:

countless encounters with macaws, howlers, tucans, sloths, tree frogs, tarantulas, iguanas, watching volcanoes explode before my very eyes, eating tamales at Christmas, trekking through the wet and muddy tropical rainforest, cloud forest canopy ziplining, black sand ingrained in my finger nails from building sandcastles, climbing the mango tree in our backyard, staying in a tree house hotel, watching a sea turtle lay eggs, getting crushed by the waves at Tamarindo…

All that before I was ten. I still think of those six years as some of the best of my life so far. I mean, how am I supposed to live up to that kind of fun?!

This, to the best of my knowledge, is where my wanderlust comes from.

The longing to be anywhere but “home.”

I simply just don’t want to live my life in one place. How can I, when the whole world is out there?

This is why, as I’ve come to realize, travel is my passion. It allows me to visit foreign places and meet interesting people whose lives are so mindblowingly different than my own. I get to see this from my own perspective. I love when my eyes, ears, fingers, and nose get the chance to intake all the sensory details. This is why I save my money for that plane ticket that I crave while other people choose to use their spending money on cute clothes, a nice dinner out, or the latest iPhone. I try my best to choose experiences over things.

So I didn’t end up spending the rest of my days living out pura vida in Costa Rica. When I was ten, we moved back to Pennsylvania– this time to the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where I went to middle school, then high school. Still, I was constantly drawn to anything related to being abroad. In addition to literature and English, my favorite subjects were geography, international relations, world history, geology, Spanish, German, and Arabic.

I distinctly remember staring at tree branches out the window of that forsaken precalculus classroom, dreaming of all the places I could be other than behind that stupid desk. I read travel blogs, watched Youtube videos, tuned into the Travel Channel, found myself obsessively watching recorded episodes of House Hunters International— all in an attempt to escape reality. It was just like when I was little, pouring over atlases or reading picture books about the different people that live around the world.

Soon enough, I was 18 and it was time for me to decide what I wanted to do with my life.

I knew that whatever I did, I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing: party in college for four years, attend a few classes, get an alcohol addiction, get a degree in something I was mildly interested in, get a 9-5, get married, have kids, then finally retire somewhere warm with that money I’d been saving my whole “life.” Or at least that’s where I could easily see my life turning out if I didn’t take direction and make choices to lead me to where I wanted to be.

And where did I want to be? Eventually living somewhere overseas. Fluent in Spanish and hopefully a few other languages. Having read hundreds of good books. And those are the only things in life I was, and still am, sure about.

So I chose the military. The Coast Guard to be precise. I was enlisted for a year, then went to the Coast Guard Academy. Besides the amazing friendships I’ve made, the best part of being in the military was being able to save enough money to travel. On the Coast Guard’s dime, I traveled to the west coast of the United States for the first time and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.

But I didn’t love it. Something was missing. Halfway through my second year there, on my way to earning that prestigious title of an officer in the United States military, I did something that most people would perceive as crazy. I dropped out.

Before making that decision, I contemplated where I wanted to be, week after week, day after day, waking up at 0550 and changing into uniform for 0620 military formation then going to sleep well after midnight due to endless mountains of homework in classes that I had little to no interest in.

What I’d been searching for was the same thing I’d always wanted: to pursue my passion of travel. It’s what keeps me going. I don’t want just one or two weeks of vacation a year on beautiful beaches somewhere warm or short, expensive trips to enchanting European cities. That’s what I had while in the Coast Guard which, don’t get me wrong, allowed me to travel more than I’d ever traveled in my life. I would use the breaks I had to blow a ton of money on really incredible, yet really short, trips to various places. But that’s not the type of travel that I crave.

I want more than just a vacation: I want a lifestyle with international travel at the core of what I do. I am not sure what that means yet, but that’s what I’m working on figuring out.

That’s why I created this blog.

During those dark days when my mind would wander to all the places I could be in the world, I needed something that would allow me to escape. Grasping for something to keep me sane, clutching for a purpose, I blew off studying and wrote about places I’d visited. Hence the name Inconsistent Voyages; I wasn’t one of those travel bloggers that has their life of year-round travel figured out. I was just able to go on trips a few times a year on my breaks.

My voyages weren’t consistent. They still aren’t.

Right now, I’m just working on figuring it all out.

I guess I’m sort of one of those twenty-somethings who has “dropped everything to travel the world.”

Well not exactly. For now, I’m just going on a trip through Mexico and Central America for a few months and seeing where I end up after that. I leave on January 13th. I’ll try to keep this as updated as I can while I’m on the road. I’d love it if you follow along.

I love airports, the ocean, books, honey, and journals.

I hate flights home, sailing, math, mayonnaise, and journaling.

Click here for a little bit more about me.