Why a Travel Blog? Part II Becoming a travel advisor, growing a travel agent team, and evolving Travel with Life®

I left off with Part I of why a travel blog four years ago, in June 2022. While not my intent to go quiet that long, a lot has happened during this time, including growing a team with my agency, Engage! Trave Co.

Over the past few years, new clarity has evolved, and I’m thrilled to finally be re-launching this website as a component across all my businesses, focused on putting good into the world. And using my skills to serve others. That’s you!

Here’s where I intend to focus:

• This blog is where I will share about travel in general, my travel journeys, insights I can share with others, and about running a travel agency serving clients for individual and group travel. This will be the main place I share about Travel with Life: real travel for real life, including information on traveling well with chronic pain and chronic illness.
• Katiejamieson.com is where you can further connect with my Travel with Life® community, eventual podcast, and related writing, speaking, business, and life topics. I get a lot of questions about how I run my businesses, and so I will focus on those items there.
• Engagetravelco.com is where you can book your vacation with our team. That’s how to connect with us for travel planning services, where we write about vacation destinations, what it’s like to work with a travel advisor, and other updates specifically related to our travel agency work. We are based in Minnesota, have a growing team, and send clients to destinations across the globe. We would be honored to serve you with your next vacation! And if you are interested in becoming a travel advisor on our team, we would love to connect with you!

I hope you will connect with me. You can sign up here to get updates from this blog in your inbox, along with other Travel with Life® topics.

So what’s next?

When I named this blog Voyage la Vie, I picked it to honor the women who inspired me to travel. In my not-quite-correct French, it means “travel with life.” I didn’t fully know yet how much I’d grow into it.

I wrote Part I of this post and then went quiet for four years. During that time, I built out several business projects, including the beginnings of growing a team with my travel agency.

Five years into my agency, a growing team, and sending clients all over the world, paired with over 20 years of experience planning meetings and leading nonprofit teams, I’m ready to use my skills in new ways to serve others.

And part of that will be what I write about and share in this space.

After working through a lot of business foundation projects and growth in the past few years, I experienced one of the hardest years I have had medically (and not my first time dealing with hard medical things). In the middle of it, I hopped on the plane and led a group of 19 people to France in June 2026, visiting Paris and Normandy.

I was barely well enough to get on the plane. I went anyway.

It was one of the best trips I’ve ever been part of. Truly, we had the BEST group of people! I could have let what I was facing stop this group trip, and I am SO glad I kept going. Yes, I had to make modifications. I learned a lot. I tried first-hand some of the tips I offer clients traveling with medical needs. This was one of the hardest trips I’ve had in terms of navigating chronic pain and other ongoing health issues. I was truly experiencing hard stuff and big wins, at the same time.

That’s the part I most want you to hear. And what I intend to share here.

• How to weave travel into your life even when it doesn’t feel like it fits.
• Systems that can help you travel with more ease, less stress.
• Destinations, hotels, tours, etc. that showcase how I craft vacations.

Here’s what five years of planning trips for clients as part of my business, and decades of my own travel has taught me: travel isn’t only the big vacation. Sometimes travel is part of how we respond when life happens. It’s the anniversary trip, the trip after a loss, the conference, the kid’s tournament, and the overnight near your medical appointment.

I call it Travel with Life®. (I liked it so much, I trademarked it.)

So. I turn 45 this November, and I’m planning something to celebrate it. If you caught my Instagram recently, you know I mentioned I have a new project in the works.

Here’s all I’ll say for now: it’s new and fun, very Travel with Life®, and it doesn’t always mean going far from home.

It starts in November.

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