I wasn’t supposed to live this life.

By all accounts, I should have been sitting at a desk in a sleek, air-conditioned office, watching the clock, waiting for some arbitrary moment to feel alive. Instead, I found myself in a back alley in Bangkok, sharing a plastic stool with a street vendor who made the best damn som tam I had ever tasted, trading stories over cheap beer and chili heat that burned so good it felt like a revelation.

My name is Rowan Blake. I’m thirty-five, single, and allergic to the idea of staying in one place for too long. I travel not to escape, but to understand—people, culture, food, stories. The raw, unfiltered essence of humanity that you can only find when you step off the well-worn tourist trails and sit, listen, and let yourself be changed by the world instead of trying to change it.

I wasn’t always this way.

The Breaking Point

I grew up in a small town in upstate New York. Safe. Predictable. The kind of place where people measure their lives in mortgage payments and PTO days, where adventure is something you watch on Netflix. I did everything right—went to college, got a degree in journalism, landed a steady job writing content that nobody read. It was comfortable, and I was miserable.

Then, in a moment of clarity—or madness—I booked a one-way ticket to Vietnam. I told myself I’d be back in three months. That was seven years ago.

Something cracked open in me the first time I walked through the chaotic streets of Hanoi, dodging motorbikes and drowning in the scent of grilled pork and fish sauce. It wasn’t just the food, or the people, or the dizzying mix of old and new. It was the realization that I had been living my life as a spectator.

I wanted to be in it, tasting, touching, feeling, knowing.

So I walked away from the career, the stability, the safety net. I started documenting my travels—not just the polished, Instagram-friendly version, but the real moments: the conversations with grandmothers who stirred pots of ancient recipes, the musicians who played for the love of sound rather than an audience, the moments of loneliness that were as much a part of the journey as the thrill of discovery.

Outlaw by Design

I never set out to be an “influencer.” I don’t sell detox teas or pretend that life on the road is all sunsets and street food. But people started following my stories, not because I had the best photos, but because I told the truth. The joy, the struggle, the beauty, the mess. I started writing the kind of stories I wished I had read before I left home—the kind that make you ache for something more than what you’ve been told you should want.

I named my blog Outlaw by Design because that’s exactly what this life is—choosing to live outside the lines, designing a world for myself that doesn’t require permission. I am not a tourist. I am a witness, a participant, a student of the world.

I don’t have a home base. My passport is my address. My heart belongs to the people I meet, the meals shared, the lessons learned. I have danced in the streets of Cartagena, gotten lost in the souks of Marrakech, spent nights drinking homemade raki with fishermen in Crete. I have fallen in love with places, with moments, with the sheer possibility of it all.

What Comes Next

I don’t know where I’ll be a year from now. Maybe sleeping under the stars in Mongolia, learning the art of falconry from Kazakh nomads. Maybe in Naples, eating pizza so good it makes me question everything I thought I knew about food. Maybe back in Vietnam, sitting on a plastic stool, thanking the universe for the moment that changed my life.

I don’t travel to collect passport stamps. I travel to collect stories.

And now, I tell them here.

This is Outlaw by Design.

Welcome to the adventure.