Living For Adventure

It might have been one of the craziest things that she’d done to date, but Alexandra Morgan was not known for being impulsive without good reason.  Her grandparents had always sighed and called her series of erratic decisions ‘whims’, but that was something she had grown to not mind over the years.  She had been born into a family of wealth – although she’d never fit their perfect mold – and as a result, had never lived up to any of their expectations.  Alex had wanted nothing more than to make her own name in the world for a reason she was proud of, rather than having to be the virtuous heiress that they’d desperately wanted for her to be.  Alex had her own insatiable wanderlust for life, and she intended to see every bit of it out before she’d ever let anyone else tell her what to do with herself.

She had just up and quit her latest unsatisfying job within the past few days; it turned out that her parents had once again gone behind her back to pull strings to have her hired as a junior buyer for a department store.  She had actually been almost happy doing her job until she’d discovered her family’s latest round of meddling, having believed that she’d truly earned this position unlike so many of the jobs she’d had thrust at her previously.  Alex didn’t have to worry about the money, after all – she had a very large trust fund from her grandparents that she wasn’t afraid of dipping into while she chose her next career.  This time, though, her mood had significantly improved when an idea hit her like a bolt of lightning: she had a taste for adventure, and why not use that as the catalyst for her next move?

Alex wasted absolutely no time in signing up for photography classes and purchasing a mid-level digital SLR camera.  Over the next couple of weeks, she learned the ins and outs of the camera and how to use her laptop to make the photos even better before she packed all of her equipment up and threw together a large suitcase.  Purchasing a ticket with cash so that it would be a while before her family figured out where she’d jetted off to this time, as going away when her family interfered in her affairs was something she commonly did, Alex took off for the first destination of many she planned to visit.  She was going to start her own adventure around the world and document it in her own travel blog; this would kill two birds with one stone as providing her with a reason to travel, as well as letting her explore the creative side that her family were so keen for her to suppress.  This particular plan would probably drive her family nuts, but it was what she wanted to do, and Alex always made sure to stay true to her own heart.  Instead of following along with everyone else’s plans for her life, she was going to make her own dreams come true, no matter what her family wanted to say about it.

As she laid back against the plush headrest in her business class seat bound for her first destination which would be Reykjavík, Iceland, Alex could not help but smile to herself.  Getting out from her parents’ thumb for once and for all was going to be incredible; the fact that her mother fastidiously ignored the Internet unless a Google Alert came in featuring one of the family members’ names made it even more attractive to her to do a backpacking blog.  She had a presence on social media, it was true, but hopefully if she kept quiet on that front about her new venture, at least until she was a few destinations into her travels, she might be able to keep a few steps ahead and truly enjoy her new undertaking.

Alex and her mother had always had a complicated relationship, and that had lately grown much more strained; her mother was desperate for her to settle down and marry her own perfect blue blooded boy and start her own life in a mirror image of her own.  Alex wasn’t interested in staying home to raise her own 2.5 kids in a gated community inside a house complete with a white picket fence as her mother wished, though, and she never would be content with a life like that.  Her father understood this, at least to an extent, but he also wished that she would accept her fate as one of the Morgan brood and do the family proud rather than run from her familial duties.  Alex figured that her siblings could do that part for her; she wasn’t close to her younger brother and sister, as they were both living the lives their parents had set up for them.

As the oldest child in her family, she was nearing her 30’s and had no family of her own to show for it; it was much easier to avoid dating rather than let her mother think that she might be able to influence her taste in men.  The few men she’d chosen to date in her teenage years had been quickly scared away once they’d met her parents; she was even suspicious that her mother may have said something about them not being good enough for the family, which should have set off alarm bells in Alex’s head.  It was her secret wish to meet someone who would strike her fancy while abroad, though Alex wouldn’t admit this out loud.  All she wanted to do, at least at first, was to get herself settled into a private room in a hostel and start her journey.  After she was settled in, maybe then she could begin to open her heart and see if she could find someone who had the same ideas on how life should be lived as she did.