It’s funny, really. How much everything connects. The different eras, hobbies, and pastimes of your life. For me, it’s traveling and storytelling.
Storytelling, it makes sense since I am a journalist. Storytelling is quite literally what I do. But it was actually the love for traveling that came first. The thirst for adventure, the desire to explore new places, meet new people, try weird food, experience different cultures, and take risks. Seeing the world was the first thing I knew I was genuinely passionate about.
I was lucky enough to do a good bit of traveling growing up with my family. Then, in college, studying abroad in Florence allowed me to visit a handful more cities and countries across the pond.
Even as a child, I immediately felt the need to document these trips. At 13, I started making travel videos, shooting clips and editing them to a fun song and sharing for my friends to see. It expanded from travel videos to, well, life videos. End-of-the-year recaps became my specialty, and I haven’t missed one in 10 years!
It’s not lost on me that storytelling is what I get to do each day as my job. I just got back from a trip to Iceland with my family, and it was magnificent. While yes, I was trying to “unplug” as one is supposed to do during time off, but I couldn’t help but want to document everything. I had so many questions, like: the lambs hanging out in the fields, what’s the story of the farmer who raises them? The Icelandic waiter at our dinner, what was it like to grow up in a country with a population only slightly larger than Sussex County?
The same sense of curiosity that traveling has always sparked in me is now something I get to experience every day. Visiting a new Delmarva town, learning a fresh topic, meeting new people, hearing their stories, and of course, telling them. - Emma Aken
