We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rose Bragg. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rose below.
Alright, Rose thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?
The travel creator industry often relies on our whimsy and wonder to entice viewers. I know that I myself have felt misled by the limited view created by a camera lens. For instance, “Van Life” is a widely covered topic online and often by twenty something solo women or couples. However, when you actually hit the road as a twenty something with your husband you will swiftly find that your “Van Life” neighbors are more often retired couples in their sixties. Now there isn’t anything wrong with this reality, but the fact that it isn’t obvious even with how widely this topic is covered online shows that there are clearly some blind spots in the travel creator industry. People often cover the same topics, pushing the same narrative and forgetting to cover the obvious truths. I want to make a concerted efforts in my videos to combine the exciting with the everyday. I hope that each time people come away from my videos and try to apply what they’ve learned about a place or a product that the reality feels familiar. I want the legacy I leave to foster trust and truth between myself and my fellow travelers, adventurers and friends.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
On a long walk after a Florida rainstorm I made a confession: I felt like I was living someone else’s life. I had rushed into a corporate job and bought a home hoping these things would validate me as an adult, only to find that other’s validation was not enough to bring me fulfillment. I realized I had let my dreams go dormant, but on this walk I began to remember. I wanted to see the world, experience new cultures and create a long term trip of my own that would allow me to easily get from place to place. My husband championed me and together we decided to set a date, make the goal and prioritize travel.
We created a brand, Braggworthy Adventures, to capture the experience of planning for and eventually taking part in this experience. Braggworthy Adventures took weekend getaways, reviewed travel products and experienced Disney World. The channel has grown and developed into a space to share authentic experiences and travel planning ideas. I don’t use photoshop to eliminate other tourists from my photos and I like to complete an experience myself before recommending it to others. Though I hope someday to lead tours to a variety of destinations, write a book or create specific tools to help fellow travelers (an app for travel planning and/or travel clothing that is versatile and beautiful), the main goal with Braggworthy Adventures is to provide simple steps and real life feedback for people who are tentative to travel.
After a couple years of travel planning and exploring nearby places, we finally started our year of extended travel. Because of Covid things did not go quite as planned, but we adapted and learned how to redesign our originally planned trip into a living idea. We began in a car because the van we had custom built wasn’t working, then we moved into the van for five months, we visited family and island hopped in hawaii for a month and finally we left the United States to visit Kenya, Thailand, Cambodia and Korea.
During this time we filmed, but we haven’t posted videos of the experience yet. I wanted to absorb the experience and have the wisdom of hindsight to properly inform my viewers about the experience. We also wanted to live in the moment and we are incredibly happy to have made that choice.
Now we have moved into a new city, started new jobs and in a way we are back to the start, but because of our experiences we have changed, so everything is different. I’ve learned that there are more options than we realize in our lives and work. Most people forget who is the boss in their own life. People give their power away to their bosses and their routine, like I once did. While I was working full time before I felt overwhelmed and out of control. When I was traveling full time I felt aimless and out of touch. Now, I hope to find balance by taking opportunities to travel while re-entering the working world.
Braggworthy Adventures will also be entering a new age. As I process and edit the moments captured through the last year, I hope to be able to post videos full of authenticity and inspiration so others can find themselves making their dreams a reality.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
There are definitely struggles whenever a lofty or ambitious goal is set. We started our brand years before our planned world trip, a trip that took on drastic changes due to Covid-19. Starting early gave me the ability to focus my passion for travel and practice video making. However, I was also working a 9-5 job and my husband was in nursing school. These competing priorities added extra stress and made it difficult to grow our brand and plan our travels. Despite this, we continued to make regular videos, get featured in articles and pack away savings for our future year of travel.
However, after a lifetime of wanting and years of planning my whole heart fell when it felt like my dream would never be realized. My expectations of how our trip would take place, where we would go and when we would begin were shattered by the new landscape of the world in a pandemic. As a Type-A traveler I struggled against myself trying to make concrete plans in a world that shifted like sand. Finally a moment came where I didn’t give up, but I gave in. I let go of my concept of controlled travel and tried to embrace the opportunities in front of me.
Our year of travel did not begin on a plane to Africa like I had envisioned. It all started in the front seat of my Honda CRV. I had already given up on international travel for that moment and tried to pivot into van life, but my van wasn’t working and all I had left was a car and a list of destinations. That first month, with a cooler of melted ice, a packed trunk, camping on the hard ground and sleeping on the floor of friends places, was one of my favorites. It was the month our trip began and that was all that mattered. Even with what seemed like the universe against us we pushed forward anyway and made it happen. Eventually more and more things began to work for us. We were able to get the van working, even though my husband had to almost take it all apart to find the problem. We were able to get on that flight to Africa and see Asia even though we had to spend hundreds on Covid tests and hours researching entry requirements. We embraced the opportunities we still had and fought to make them happen.
Many people have desires to travel and even without a pandemic they can find obstacles in their path. I hope they know that just because it isn’t easy at first, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. As we share our story of this past year, I want to share with them the grief I felt not being able to meet my own expectations and the freedom I experienced when I met the world on its terms and carried on.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Creating in and of itself is always rewarding, but being a travel YouTuber means that through my creations I get to re-experience some of my favorite moments. The videos captured spark the same feelings i had in that moment and I get to share the excitement and fulfillment I get through travel with others. One of my favorite videos I’ve ever made captures the crystal clear waters of Three Sister Springs and the opportunity I had their to swim with Manatees there. As I watch that video and share it with others, I can still remember the jolt of realizing a massive creature was swimming below me as I struggled to float as close to the surface as possible to stay out of its path. I jump at every opportunity to recommend this experience to others and I love that I have streamlined this recommendation into a video so others can prepare their expectations and make plans to make it happen.
Contact Info:
- Website: braggworthyadventures.com
- Instagram: @braggworthyadventures
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/BraggWorthy-Adventures-Travel/100064300951720/
- Youtube: youtube.com/braggworthyadventures