We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Calen Otto a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Calen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

One of the biggest risks that I’ve taken was deciding to ride a pedal bike across the country at just 19 years old on my own as a female traveler. I started the journey with just a $300 Visa gift card, hoping that I could do work exchanges, random jobs, and find free places to stay along the way. To my surprise, I was able to do just that!

Although it was a safety risk and a challenge, I learned so much on my bike trip from VA to CA. It taught me that I can travel on an extremely small budget, something that I write and share about often today. While I wasn’t thinking about my own future successes during this trip, the experience itself inspired me to publish my own budget travel guide to the USA, has allowed me to get speaking gigs, and reminds me just how powerful I am on a daily basis.

Calen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

The Unruly Travel Blog was born after my solo bike trip across the USA that I took years ago with almost no money. I had learned so much on the road that I decided to share it with other people who may want to travel but think that it requires a big income.

The Unruly Travel Blog is a place where readers and travelers can find free advice on how to travel far and with meaning on an extremely small budget. I create blogposts, videos, photos, and even have a podcast to go along with it. Through these mediums I am able to talk about some important topics that interest me in relation to travel: the body, sexuality, gender, eco-conscious living, veganism, and grief and activism. I am also able to highlight the work of incredible nonprofits, activist groups, and wonderful individuals all over the world who are doing unique work in one of those topics. I’ve had so many insightful and wild guests on my podcast that share stories of hitchhiking, building mud homes with their own hands, visiting 100+ countries while vegan, starting plant-based feeding programs that save lives, and so much more. The work that we do individually can be amplified and serve as inspiration for others when shared.

While many people talk about travel, few highlight its intersections with these important life and social justice topics. My blog encourages folks to be ‘unruly’ in their thoughts and actions by rejecting harmful societal norms that aren’t sustainable or don’t make sense to them. My travel guides are all vegan, queer, and budget-friendly, with the goal of making travel more accessible and less harmful than it normally is. While these are free, I also wrote and published The Art of Unruly Travel on A Budget, my guide to traveling the USA as ethically and creatively as possible with little money. You can find it in print or eBook, and it contains all of the budget travel tips and formulas that I wish I had known when I started my budget travel and backpacking journey.

I am incredibly proud of all of the stories I’ve been able to share through my writing and podcast, and it excites me to know that I can continue breaking down norms in the travel space.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

So many people think that if you’re not able to earn your full income as a writer/artist/creator/etc, you’ve failed. But that is so far from the truth. Part of my income comes from my travel blog and freelance writing, while a big part comes from unrelated freelance work. This freelance work that is unrelated to travel has given me the freedom to work remotely, financed adventures that inspire new travel content, and allowed me to make money in a meaningful way, even though it is not connected to travel.

While I would like to have most of my income coming from my travel creations one day, I can appreciate the situation that I am in now and encourage others to continue moving to their remote working/creatively-fueled financial goals even if they’re not all-in from the beginning. We hear so many stories of people quitting their jobs to put 100% of their efforts on their travel blog, creative goals, or other passions and at times it does pay off. But we rarely hear from the people (which is the majority of people) who are slowly and sustainably inching their way there.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I imagine that non-creatives (does that even exist?!) are just people who aren’t allowing themselves or haven’t been allowed to tap into their creative side. Maybe they’ve had to exist in struggle so long and haven’t had room for it, or maybe if they start to feel their feelings and express them through creativity it will become too much. Either way, I wish that those folks knew that the journey as a creative isn’t always a bright and sunny one. Foraging a new path and sharing your inner workings with the public can be scary, draining, and even humiliating at times. Creativity brings out our humanity, and it isn’t always pretty. I ask so-called “non-creatives” to see the bravery, softness, and strength that it takes to tap into and share creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://wanderwoman.online
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unruly_traveller/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnrulyTravel/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFEljaVxBODs9wlFUGhQVFw?view_as=subscriber
• Other: Podcast: https://wanderwoman.online/index.php/unruly-stories/ Book store: https://wanderwoman.online/index.php/unrulystore/

Image Credits
Professional photos by Daniel Turbert Photography