I feel inspired, excited and terrified. I am going to Nordic Travel Fair Matkamessut in Helsinki, Finland this week as a travel blogger. Yay!

Visit Finland and Visit Helsinki have built an interesting program for bloggers to show them around our beautiful country before and during the fair. Only a few invited bloggers take part of these excursions, but there’s also an extensive program for bloggers within the fair itself. It is the first time travel bloggers have been featured in and invited to the fair in this extent. I was fortunate enough to receive a blogger pass which will allow me to participate to some of the events (thank you @nbefinland!).

On Wednesday 15th of January I’ll go to a two-hour seminar about co-operation bloggers and travel industry. The speakers of the seminar include some of my favourite travel bloggers like Melvin from traveldudes.org, Sebastian from off-the-path.com and Laurel from monkeysandmountains.com. It will be awesome to see them in person. After the seminar there’ll be time for some mingling and hopefully I’ll get to meet fellow travel bloggers from all over the world.

On Thursday I’ll have a chance to browse the fair, Matkamessut, itself. It is the biggest travel event in Finland and is held every year in January. I have been there twice before but the last time was a couple of years ago so I’m also interested to see how the fair has changed. On Thursday I’ll also visit Bloggers Lounge and later in the evening I’ll be meeting Finnish travel bloggers in an Instagram Travel Thursday -meeting organised by Satu from todestinationunknown.com among a few others.

Although I’m very excited about this, I’m equally terrified. I am definitely stepping out of my comfort zone on this one. Here’s what I know to be true:

• I’ve had this blog for two years now. (God, has it been that long?)
• I have traveled quite a bit in those two years.
• I LOVE traveling.
• I love writing and working on my blog.
• I have over 1700 followers on Twitter.
• I do not have loyal readers.
• I don’t post very often. (I don’t really even know why that is, I think of writing and new post topics all the time).

So while being so happy and excited to be participating the seminar, fair and all the other events, I feel like I’ll be totally out of my league in there. And because of that, I’ll be also stepping out of my comfort zone. Out of the area of my expertise, out of the place where I know my stuff, where I know I definitely belong and deserve to be.

And that is such a good thing! Only out there can I and will I ever grow. As a person and as a blogger. A this point that’s exactly where I need to be. Out there.

So I’ll keep my head up high and accept the challenge. Hope to see you in Matkamessut!