Today I am welcoming an awesome lady on my blog. Her name is Ashley of Writing to Reach You, who you’ve probably seen me write about a few times already, because she’s awesome sauce. Ashley is known around the blogosphere for her guest posting these days, and I love that she’s put herself to this challenge, sticking to it, writing amazing posts, and proceeding to be even more awesome than she already was. So, without further adieu:
My name is Ashley and I blog at Writing To Reach You. I’m invading your space today, because Lauren asked me to write about how traveling has changed both me and my writing, and whether I have ever considered being a travel writer. I have been writing forever, but travel is fairly new to my life, so these are questions I am still in the process of answering for myself.
It makes no sense to me now, but I had no interest in traveling until I was 25. In college, I never thought about studying abroad, and after college, I went straight to grad school with no thought of taking some time to see the world. It wasn’t until I was buried in debt and had just committed to a PhD program that travel suddenly sounded like a good idea. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money for it by then. So I put that dream on hold, and worked really hard for a couple years to finish coursework and get myself in a better financial position.
When I finally had the money, I started taking small trips to different states. A couple friends and I got in the habit of traveling to see each other every three months, choosing a new location each time. That helped me get used to traveling. I didn’t think too much about being scared, because I was exploring new places with familiar people. It still took me a while to work up the courage to travel abroad, especially because I knew I would be going by myself. I was full of fear until the minute I landed in Germany, and then I was fine. But instead of satisfying my wanderlust, that trip only made it worse.
The very first trip I took as part of this new traveling life was to San Francisco to spend New Year’s Eve with friends. I had a magical time, and when I got back, I sat down to write a recap for my blog and had no idea what to say. So I decided to just say everything and that has become the style by which I write all of my travel posts. I tell the story of everything that happened and inject some meaning and humor. I assumed at first that the travel posts would only be of interest to the people I traveled with, but they’re actually among my most popular posts. They are some of the most fun for me to write as well.
Most of my trips have been with friends, so there’s not a lot of time to sit down with my journal and reflect on what’s happening. I just enjoy myself in the moment and then go home and write about it. But when I set off for Germany alone, I intended to journal as much as I could. You expect that when you’re walking around a castle you’ve been thinking about since seventh grade or standing in front of a cathedral that is so massive you can’t fit the whole thing into a single picture that you will be full of profound thoughts to record. That has never been true for me, and by the time I went to Germany, I wasn’t expecting it to be. The experiences were profound, but I didn’t have the words to articulate them yet, so again I just wrote about the things I was actually seeing and doing. Being so far away from home and in an unfamiliar timezone gave me the opportunity to think about old problems with a new perspective, so I wrote about those things as well. I was never lonely, but my journal was a comfort to me on that trip.
I am still so new to travel that I don’t know exactly how it is changing me and my writing. I just want to see things and experience them. Education has opened up my world so much, but nothing really compares to standing in front of that cathedral. Writers spend so much time alone at their desks, and that is a life that has always appealed to me, but it’s not enough anymore. I don’t want to sit alone at a desk if I’m not spending the rest of my time out participating in the world.
There is no life I can imagine for myself that doesn’t involve writing, and I love that I can go anywhere and do anything, and writing will still be the activity by which I ground myself. It’s the same act whether I’m sitting alone at my desk or standing on top of a mountain.
The most obvious way that travel has changed me is that it has made me feel confident that I can do the big things I want to do and be happy taking risks. Traveling alone made me realize that as much as I love people, I don’t have to wait around for anyone before I get started living my life. My writing is largely introspective, so I think these changes are starting to become obvious.
As for the question of whether I have considered being a travel writer, I should say that I have considered it, but only very recently. I felt for a while that I didn’t know how to write about travel. I mean, I can’t picture myself writing a paragraph of description about how the sun rises over the castle and isn’t that a perfect metaphor for how the people in this small mountain town live their lives. But I have my own style, and it seems to be interesting enough to other people. So I’ll say that regardless of whether I ever get paid to be a travel writer, I’ll always be traveling and writing about it.