Hello again!
Hope your week is going well. This week I’m discussing one of my favorite things in life — travel!
Upon graduating (which is three weeks away!), travel is one of the first endeavors I plan to embark on. Less than 24 hours after my graduation ceremony, I’ll be boarding a plane with my family to attend the Army-Navy football game. While it’s going to be freezing cold and wet (yuck), I’m excited to experience something I’ve never seen before and likely will never see again.
Following our quick trip to Philadelphia, I’ll travel to Florida for a much-needed siesta after cramming two degrees into 3.5 years of schooling. Maybe for the first time in years I’ll have time to write for fun and not for an “A.”
And, I’m in the process of planning a trip overseas with a loved one for next year.
If it weren’t obvious, travel has become one of my favorite hobbies. It consumes my bucket list and is one of the aspects of life I look forward to more than anything else. Each time I travel and have a new, exhilarating experience, I worry my future travels will never measure up to my last venture.
Aside from the excitement I feel from exploring somewhere new, travel has also shaped my writing immensely. After my first trip abroad in 2016, my perception of the world morphed. I think about life from a more global-centric perspective than before and feel more inspired to see what’s out there.
In June 2018, I spent a month on study abroad in Paris, France, where I studied writing, fashion, and intercultural communication. We learned about American expats like Ernest Hemingway who spent years of their lives in Paris to find inspiration and meaning, which was conveyed through their writing.
Travel (if spent meaningfully), can work wonders on your writing. Sometimes that extra push out of our comfort zone into the unknown is just the thing we need to inspire us to write and breathe a fresh new life into our voice in our writing. It’s like the seclusion and isolation from the places and people we are familiar with forces us to put pen to paper to make sense of our jumbled thoughts.
If you’re still a college student and your opportunities to travel are quite limited, I would start by seeking out a study abroad program that interests you and provides curriculum you find interesting. Don’t waste your semester abroad partying just because the drinking age overseas is lower and alcohol may be cheaper than in the states.
And, as always, save money. The trips I do not take with my family I must fund myself. There’s nothing more disappointing than being invited to go on a trip with a friend or loved one and having to decline because you don’t have money saved to do so.
Accumulating unforgettable travel experiences, which then translates into unforgettable writing, requires hard work. As you get older, you can’t expect Mom and Dad to foot the bill. You won’t have professors nagging you to go to museums and learn more about the culture. You won’t have spring breaks, winter breaks, and summers carved out to give you that precious travel time. It’s up to you to create those opportunities. What you put into it is what will come out of it.
I’ve made it a priority for myself to travel as much as I can going forward, whether that’s the Prada Marfa in the middle of Texas or Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam. There’s so much out there to see that can tap into tiny sectors of your imagination to get you writing.
And if you’re suffering from an incurable case of writer’s block, travel is likely the only thing that will get you out of it.
Thanks for reading! Contact me if you have any comments or questions.
-M
