And when I want to go home, I'm going mobile...

It's always so scary for me to begin something, whether it's a new notebook, a new news story, a new blog, or a new adventure abroad. My name is Valerie Insinna, and I'm a 21 year old college student studying print journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia.


Deep down, I'm a homebody -- I love my family, my friends, familiar things, affection, and sometimes complete solitude and comfort. Despite my own nature, my two biggest passions are things that inescapably push me out of my comfort zone: journalism and travel. I love adventures and become bored easily. So I do things like going to Nagoya, Japan for a semester or write news stories at the state capitol. Inevitably, I doubt myself beforehand and dread the possibility of failure. And somehow, I realize how happy I am to travel and write, and I know I could never be as content otherwise.

What is Going Mobile?

Most simply, it is the title my travel blog, in which I'll post photos and write about my experiences abroad.

More accurately, it ties into who I am as a person and who I'd like to be as a traveler.


I am a 21-year-old woman with a 50 year old man's taste in music. I love and am inspired by rock from the 70s, especially progressive and experimental music. Some of my favorite artists include Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, David Bowie, The Velvet Underground, and The Who.

It's from a song from The Who's album Who's Next that this blog takes it's name. "Going Mobile" was written by Pete Townsend about his love of driving around in his mobile home without any idea of what his destination should be. In my opinion, it's an excellent song that somehow always goes overlooked when travel writers and magazines write about travel music.



Obviously I'm not going to be driving around in a mobile home like Townshend (at least not in the near future), but I'm still inspired by the idea of a mobile home. To me it represents the act of carrying your home on your back along with you as you travel. Although I'd never turn down a free vacation, it is infinitely more gratifying to be able to make a foreign place a home --to not only love a place and leave it behind as a tourist does, but to understand that home can be any place in the world as long as you keep a natural curiosity and sense of wonder.

I hope this blog becomes a way for me to connect with others, whether it be my family and friends back home, other travelers, or other writers and journalists. Drop me a line, I'd love to hear with you.