"I am a wanderluster."

That week before I leave town is always the roughest week of my life. (Okay, okay... That's a bit of an exaggeration. So sue me.) I'm the kind of person who writes down the days I'll be out of town in just about every available spot in my planner, not to mention the countdown running constantly on my Twitter. I have an obsession with getting out.

That's the thing that a lot of people don't understand when it comes to wanderlust. Yes, I absolutely love where I come from. I was lucky enough to be born in a picture-perfect definition of Suburbia. It's got the small-town (where everyone knows everything about everybody else's business) feel with just enough going on to keep you entertained on a Friday night. So yeah, it's pretty great.

The problem I face is that "home" for me isn't just about the house I grew up in. It's not the town I know like the back of my hand, the state that my Social Security Number assigns me to, or the country I file my taxes in. It's the emotions, connections, and sights that pull me out of the hole I sometimes dig myself into. It's about the feeling where my soul leaps from my body at the sight of unfamiliar territory. That's what wanderlust is to me. It's a state where I find who I am in places I've never been, in the faces of people I've never met.

If you're a traveler, you've had a tiny nibble of the seven course meal that is Wanderlusting. You don't have the fever, but by all means, you're more than welcome to catch it. There's a beautiful feeling when you find your purpose in life, and mine is pretty simple: to spend my life searching for things I can't explain in places I've never been.