Guest Post: Out My Front Door

Today I am featuring a guest post courtesy of Elora from Out My Front Door. She is also featuring me on her blog today so please check it out here! Below you will be introduced to her wonderful blog, her travels and her various literary and creative endeavors. Additionally, she's included her gorgeous photos of San Diego, including Balboa Park, Coronado Beach, and the San Diego Zoo for me to share with my readers. These are all some of my favorite travel destinations also, so I hope you will enjoy them too!

In a Time of Possibilities

Hi! I'm Elora. I'm so excited to be here! I run my blog Out My Front Door. I love sharing my travel adventures, my perceptions of the people, the history of different places, and most of all, telling stories. Telling good ones.

So far I've been to different places in the US, from Alabama, to California, and the Midwest. Currently I'm sharing the different things my family and I did during our Illinois trip last month, visiting places like Antique Archeology, shop outlets along the old streets of LeClaire, the banks of the Mississippi, and a historic preservation called Walnut Grove. Last year we had a family trip to San Diego, and it was a lot of fun to share all the pictures from that trip! It's a gorgeous place that will always be full of memories.

It's my dream to move myself into a position to work on a cruise line, and save up as much money as possible over a couple years and continue traveling, taking my experiences and incorporating them into my writing. I've been writing novels since I was a kid, and since then I've branched out into screenwriting. After my travels (which of course will give me the advantage of becoming familiar with other locations) I want to get into a local film school called Film Connection, try to get the screenplay I'm working on made. See what happens from there. I want the grit of the journey. I just want to see what life is like in different places—what the people are like, what their customs are, what their heritage is. What are their stories? What are their lives like?

In my interviews of other travel blogs, like Alex in Wanderland, The Great Affair, and Hippie In Heels, my readers and I get to see people through the other's experiences of others' culture, through their food, the way they dress, the way the express themselves. That is something that I always find fascinating! Everybody tells a story. Rachel from Hippie In Heels writes posts all the time about how the food, communication, and behavior is different in India (where she now lives). What their lives are like. Their apparel code is different, and she has even incorporated it's style into her own wardrobe. We're talking colorful scarves and billowy fabrics—it's stunning. India is vibrant. It has its own spectrum of colors. When we think of India I'm sure most of us just think burkas, head wraps and the Taj Mahal, but through Rachel I've been able to see more into the people there, their heritage, their customs. Their dress. She even does a series on local boutiques! My favorite series of hers has to be the This Is India one, where she shares random, interesting stories of things that have happened. India is a wild place.

One of the top places I want to see is Africa. It's been a dream since I was a child. And, with all the encouragement and shared options put out there from blogs like Nomadic Matt, Wandering Earl, The Great Affair—the more I see that there are endless possibilities to making that happen. People are doing this all the time, getting out there, backpacking around and actually meeting new people, making new friends, learning new things. They make it possible. There are so many options. Who knows where I'll be next year? Perhaps I'll even finish the obnoxious novel I'm working on. Perhaps I'll be serving people on a cruise ship. Digging my toes into the sand during a break and making a friend from one of the locals. We're all the same in the end, but the excitement is that we never know what to expect. So many possibilities.

  ~Elora

Elora Shore can also be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. Her writing has been featured in various online magazines, and can be seen on Authonomy, Figment, with some published work on Amazon Kindle. She runs her own jewelry shop, Transcendence Designs, where she sells handmade jewelry inspired by different cultures and time periods. She is currently selling on Ebay.