Most people have been told that travel would benefit them at some point in their lives. Almost every adult growing up had advice to that effect: travel before you’re too old to enjoy it; make the memories and money will travel after; and travel will broaden your horizons in ways that are hard to predict, but always good for you in the end. This is true up to a point, but it also has a unique impact on how you consider the familiar when you return home.
The common advice to travel while you can despite the money sounds good because it implies that travel’s ability to expand the human experience is far more important than the money it costs to do it. It also glosses over the fact that one can only cover the expense of travel if one is fortunate enough to have some degree of financial security.
Traveling isn’t cheap; plane ticket prices have skyrocketed, time off is limited, and it can be hard for wages to keep pace with the cost of living, much less the expense of organizing and booking a vacation to some foreign land hoping culture shock wears off before you have to return home.
Yet, despite having been a member of the lower working class my whole life, I have managed to see something of the world. It’s been expensive, but it’s also given me all the things that people have said it would: more perspective, more curiosity, and more appreciation for the world around me.
On my most recent travels, I turned off the part of my brain that usually worries about the day-to-day and tried living fully in the moment so that I could remember the experiences I had while traversing four different countries. It was a fast pace, but didn’t feel that way, and it seemed for the first time in a while that I could breathe.
Creative professionals—certainly writers and artists, but also marketers, designers, and strategists—need opportunities to step back from the everyday because the pressure of meeting deadlines can make it too easy to disengage from our lives and the parts that make them meaningful. Breathing allows creatives time to reexamine whatever problem they face, which gives them a chance to consider newer, more innovative approaches to problems they faced, whether it’s in their work, their life, or their career.
Returning from my travels, it presented a bit of a shock to return to the mad rush through life that characterizes so much of the U.S.’s approach to work and life. We constantly press for the next goal, the next benchmark, and never really take stock of what’s been done along the way. Instead, we take a “what have you done for me lately?” philosophy, putting it on employees (and sometimes friends and even family) to justify why they deserve to continue their relationship with the organization or individual.
There’s nothing wrong with holding people accountable to deadlines, boundaries, or growth trajectories, because that’s part of how we ultimately become the people we wish to be. Controlled amounts of stress helps drive people to approach problems even if they don’t see the point right away, and that can make it possible for businesses and individuals to become better in the long-run.
However, even if you’re not working on a piece of art or creative marketing campaign, there’s still a need to take a step back to breathe for a beat. Maybe it’s done through travel, but there’s nothing to say you can’t get the same effect through anything that shifts your perspective ever so slightly outside of its typical frame.
Not sure where to start? Try:
Striking up a conversation with a stranger
Reading a book from an international author you don’t recognize
Visiting somewhere you have never been in your home town
A Feel Good Place
A Feel Good Place in Southern Connecticut
Traveling through southern Connecticut offers many scenic landscapes and interesting places to explore along the way. Last winter, my wife and I stopped over in Chester during a road trip, and it offered up a few intriguing places that are more feel-good because of the atmosphere they create as part of the wider community than as individual businesses in themselves.
To that end, I decided to write a bit about the experience we had Simon’s Marketplace and the Wayfinder Society, two businesses with different approaches to their operations, but complementary in the feeling they create that you can keep your sense of wanderlust while still finding a sense of home.
From the Bookshelf
THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD BY CLAIRE LOMBARDO
Every family has its issues, and the Sorensons are no different. There’s love in there somewhere, but it’s probably buried beneath the layers of interpersonal slights and individual issues that have been bottled up and pushed down in the hope of forgetting about it. However, when Jonah shows up, the child the most successful daughter put up for adoption, it brings more than love bubbling up to the surface.
For Casual Readers: Anyone who enjoys reading about family life and intergenerational trauma would likely enjoy this book. This book in particular offers some unique insights about the role a parents’ relationship to one another impacts the rest of the family.
For Writers: Given the central role that the parents’ relationship plays in the lives of their children, this book would offer a unique way of exploring love for writers looking to dissect not just the relationship between two people, but also how that relationship has an impact that ripples through their entire community.
What Comes Next
Enjoyed this issue? Here’s what you can expect from the next newsletter:
Why bad business advice can be so easy to take, but really difficult to spot.
How the owners of a French cafe made being a student profitable.
A gritty novel covering war, grief, and societal structure based on Chinese history.
As always, while this project may be a space where I share some of the things I have been thinking of, I also want to make sure it delivers value for you. So if you have feedback on what you would like to see, let me know and your recommendation may make it into the next issue.
