Rachel is a Jewish bisexual autistic woman (she/her) with ADHD in her twenties. She loves writing and can always be found with her nose in a book! Her plan for the future is to earn her Psy. D. in clinical psychology. This interested in psychology started as a way to help her understand people better and to figure out what it was about others I kept not getting. It is also something deeply linked with her self-advocacy. There is a gap in communication between the autistic community and providers, and she want to help bridge it and challenge others to see things from different perspectives.
View all postsTraveling With Autism
Posted on
Do you have one of those dreams you’ve long ago admitted might be impossible? It’s often hard to face, but maybe less so if achieving that dream seems even harder.
I don’t know if what I want to talk about in this post is a dream in a traditional sense. It’s not something I’ve wanted since I was a child. Even now, I don’t entirely know that I want everything that would come with it. But I’ve thought about it more and more, and I have to admit to myself that part of me wants it fiercely.
I want to be a travel writer. I want to get paid to go places and write about how amazing it is to go to them. Really, I just want to get paid to travel. But if all I needed to do for that to happen was write about the trip, I would consider it an ideal exchange.
However, people who love travel and would love to get paid for it are hardly in short supply. It’s not usually a job one can simply apply for the old-fashioned way, or one where you can hope someone will offer it to you out of the blue. From everything I’ve learned about it, travel writing is a career you either work your butt off for the chance to achieve or fall into it by pure chance. Neither is going to happen through me just sitting on my own butt, so I’m going to take my first steps down this path just because I can.
I just got it into my head recently that if I wanted to write about my travels I should go ahead and do it already. See where it might take me. Given my family trip to the Jersey shore in July (which I had a very good time on) there was no better time to start than now.
I decided to host the blog on Medium. A lot of places recommend having your blog on your own website, but I know I’m not the best at social media and would have a tough time directing traffic there. Maybe one day I will have my own site, I’ve certainly considered it for other professional reasons, but for now I’d like to host my words somewhere people are more likely to see them.
With this travel blog, I plan to focus on my experiences as a traveler with both autism and ADHD. I often hear other people express surprise at all the traveling I’ve done, especially solo. I want to shine more light on how I did it and how I handled the challenges I faced. Maybe I can help travel seem like less of a daunting, impossible task for other neurodivergent people. And maybe I can help advocate for better accessibility of travel along the way.
Now, do I think my dream of travel writer-dom is that much closer even with this? If I’m honest, no. I’m still committed to pursuing other dreams, to hopefully get a Psy.D. one day. However, I’ve realized that even when something seems out of reach, what’s the point in not even trying? How does it benefit me never to throw my hat into the ring? Even if nothing comes of it, I’ll now know I tried.
Please check out my travel blog here: Traveling with Autism.