“Oh, wow! It’s hot, maybe I should take a break and have some water. No! I took a break two minutes ago, keep going. Don’t stop, the faster you walk, the quicker you’ll get there.” 
     For some reason on my backpacking trip to Thailand, my friends and I thought it would be a really unique and fun idea to take a three-day trek through the jungle about two hours outside Chiang Mai. As I hiked up the “baby” mountain, I was instantly regretting this decision. Only 30 minutes into the hike, I was drenched in sweat, I could feel the leeches that had crawled into the crevices of my hiking boots, and my 10 liter backpack suddenly felt like someone had packed it with bricks, “Did I really need to pack bottles of vodka?” There was no use for the voices in my head to answer, “because the answer is always to pack more vodka.” While I was free to complain to myself, I wouldn’t dare let any of my friends hear me. I was here to prove my friends and family at home wrong. I wasn’t just a princess; I could live on the strange food, sleep under the stars, and survive without my curling iron.     After an hour of hiking, we finally arrived at the village we were to stay in for the night. But first, I had to take care of business; these leeches had to go. You would have thought someone was shot by how much blood there was. Leeches have a chemical in their saliva that prevents your blood from coagulating/clotting and scabbing. Some people bled for over an hour.  But it wasn’t anything the vodka in my backpack couldn’t take our minds off of. Thank Buddha that I had brought the vodka. 

     “There are no buses back to Punta del Este today, I’m afraid you’re stuck here.”
     I look down the barren, dusty unpaved road weaving unevenly between the colorful shacks. The early afternoon sun is cutting across so it seems even more desolate than it is. The huts are in all states of construction, with stuff scattered about, as if everyone just suddenly dropped everything because there was a beautiful swell, and went to surf. 
     But it’s the off-season so they’ll be back only around October.
     Too bad. It’s idyllic now. Only a few more open cafes lazily playing some reggae could possibly make it better.

1. Keep your tenses CONSISTENT!
     There’s almost nothing more painful for my eyes than when I read an article that flip flops back and forth between past and present tense. If you want your story to be told as if it’s happening “right now” and want to put your reader in the moment with you, tell it in the present tense. Otherwise, stick with past tense! Read through your story once you’ve finished and make sure that all of your tenses correlate.

2. USE the spellcheck button — it’s not there to just look pretty!
     I feel as though this is rather self-explanatory. But once you’re all done writing, click that cute little spellcheck button (if on Windows or type ⌘; on mac). Sure, my job is to edit submissions, and yes I can fix misspelled words, but misspelled words not only make you less credible as a writer to Brandon and I, but they stand out like eyesores to me. 

     As the lift of Maryland's only ski resort, Wisp, shutters up the mountain, I choke back a lump of fear. The last time I went skiing, I lost control after hitting an icy patch on an intermediate slope near Axams, Austria and slid into an older gentleman, almost sending him and myself over the edge of the mountain. I haven't had the courage to try skiing since. Yet, 10 years later in the deepening twilight of an Appalachian winter evening, I'm ready to try again. I'm ready to reclaim the mountain.
     A sharp wind cuts my face, numbing my lips and making it hard to talk to Jim, our instructor from the resort's Adult Ski and Ride School. As we sit three abreast on Chairlift #3, he counsels us on our next moves. I'm to ski to the right, he's to ski to the left, and my husband, perched in between us, is to ski straight ahead towards the easiest of the lift-accessible slopes that Wisp has to offer.

     On an early August morning, I walked with my parents 10 minutes from our hotel to the airport in Tallinn, Estonia. As we kissed and hugged, my mom reminded me of my promise to be home for Christmas.
     “Yes, Mom, I’ll be home for Christmas…” I said unconvincingly, even to myself.
     I waved goodbye as they disappeared through security. Soon, they’d be boarding a flight to Copenhagen, and eventually continuing onward to the US -- our trip together quickly filing itself away alongside other past, pleasant memories.
     As I walked back to the hotel alone, I instantly became more self-aware. With every step, I felt myself armoring back up to super-traveler status, kinda like the meticulous and magical way Tony Stark suits up to Iron Man.
     The determination of an explorer. The tough skin of a renegade. The courage of a lone journeyer. The introspection of a pilgrim. Even on the short walk back to the hotel felt like I was blazing new paths (probably because I somehow took a wrong turn and actually went back a different way).

     It was a lazy afternoon in Barbados after a morning of filming kite-surfing at Brian Talma’s Surf Club in Silver Sands on the South Coast. A few rum punch at Miami Beach in Oistin’s seemed a fitting way to end the day. Foam and surf were licking the shore line with mellow reverence as I enjoyed the company of some friends from Europe who would be leaving the country soon. They were merely on a vacation unlike my stay-cation, and they were sad to go. The afternoon sky turned to amber and we said our goodbyes, echoed by the mournful coo of doves that skittered under our picnic table searching for scraps of fish cakes. Waving farewell and standing to stretch my legs I realized the rum truly did pack a punch!