There are many times along my travels that I have found myself looking at the sites through the lens of other people's lenses.

Whether on phones, cameras, or the almighty retro polaroid, I've seen every tourist attraction I've visited through someone else's lens. The problem in all of this is that I rarely see every moment of my travels through my own lens. But to experience my travels through my own eyes and create memories without recording every second has become something I have decided to live by.

I will be the first to admit that I am very active on many forms of social media and I do take photos specifically for Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. However, in the course of the past two years of traveling, I have stopped living my life directly through the lens of my camera. The truth is, I would rather experience the things I see for what they are rather than what I will look back on through the lens of my camera. Granted, experiences I know I will want to remember, I will take a photo or video to capture the story of the moment.

I will never understand the constant need that is felt during an event to record it for everyone. Over the summer, I attended a concert and tried to record as much of my favorite songs as I possibly could. Meanwhile, I realized just how much of the concert I was missing as I was trying to fit everything onto a tiny screen. On the way home, I found myself rewatching the videos because I was too focused on capturing it for everyone else.

It is from moments like these that I base my need to physical capture a moment. Before I ask someone to take a photo of me or my friend's someone special, I take in every ounce of the area that I can. I want to remember the moment the way I see it, not the way I record it. So here is my New Year's resolution: to capture every moment first through my own eyes and then worry about capturing it through a lens.

Here's to 2017, may it be a year of experience and discovery followed by looking through a lens.