Hello there! I’m Katie-Beth, but my friends call me KB. Her Life in Ruins began when I was in graduate school studying archaeology at Florida State University. I loved what I was studying, but found it hard to get out of the classroom and travel to the sites I’d devoted my life to learning about. I started finding ways to fit travel into my collegiate routine and managed to make it work – though it was no easy feat. Once I started traveling more, I wanted to find a way to share my experiences with my friends and family back home in Kentucky. After many hours of brainstorming, Her Life in Ruins was born!
Her Life in Ruins is my little corner of the Internet where I write about travel, especially to the historic places and sites I’ve come to love so much. Her Life in Ruins connects you with sites around the world, whether it’s historic homesteads in the American South to ancient pilgrim routes in Spain to picturesque ruins in Greece. Through my blog, I hope you fall in love with history as much as I have!
My Story
I’ve always had a passion for traveling. When I first got my driver’s license, I’d go on weekend road trips to places near my hometown in western Kentucky. As I got older, those weekend trips turned into something longer when I chose to study abroad in college. Studying abroad was really when I was bit by the travel bug as I was soon going places every chance I got a break from school (and sometimes skipping classes to go to new places – sorry, mom and dad). Then, the inevitable happened: I graduated from undergrad and had to start taking myself much more seriously than I ever had before. I moved over 500 miles from Kentucky to Tallahassee, Florida, where I had no friends, no family, and no clue about what to expect.
At first, graduate school was terrible. I was stressed to the max, drinking way more coffee than should ever be considered healthy, and had no idea where my future was headed. I cried almost every night and became so sick from stress that I lost 15 lbs. Needless to say, it wasn’t great. I felt stuck, like I was missing a big part of my life. It was time for a major change. I booked a flight to Barcelona two weeks in advance and went for Spring Break with a friend. When we went to board the plane, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: butterflies.
After that trip, I knew I needed to find a way to incorporate travel into my life again. I started planning weekend trips nearly every chance I got – even scheduling my classes to ensure I had either Friday or Monday off to make it work. After taking trips (and a few thousand miles on my Altima), I felt whole again. Since then, I’ve been traveling whenever I fit it in with my schedule and budget, whether that’s visiting the new neighborhood hot spot a few miles down the road or jetting off for a weeks-long adventure overseas. I’ve found a way to make travel work within my routine and I couldn’t be happier!
Why Her Life in Ruins?
I’ve always tried to incorporate history into my daily life, whether it’s through reading, traveling, or admiring a historic building on my lunch break at work. I live for history – which isn’t surprising with my background in archaeology. In archaeology, we’re trained to analyze ruins to gain insight about people who lived in the past. I try and apply that same logic to my daily life by looking at my experiences and finding a bit of myself in each. Stick around while I navigate being a twenty-something, adjusting to the whole being an adult thing, and living as fulfilled as possible.
xoxo,
KB
