The Plan, In Sum

Posted on September 29, 2009 by lisafindley

Travel the world. The end.

Okay, a slightly more detailed summary: Take my paltry savings and two years, and travel around much of the globe, on my own and ready to make friends.

Still not enough? All right. The summer after I graduated high school, I took my money from working in a second-run movie theater and the cafe of a local bookshop, and went to Europe for six weeks. This mini-Grand Tour was a solo affair and a revelation in self-sufficiency and finding happiness in independence. The summer after my freshman year of college, my friend P and I borrowed P’s mom’s minivan and drove around the Western part of the U.S. for five weeks, figuring out how to travel together and still be good friends at the end of it. (That worked out just fine, by the way.)

So I’ve long been a fan of taking extended, multi-stop trips, and by the time I graduated college, I’d decided to travel the world. Several people have suggested various ways of accomplishing this goal, including doing it in many mini-trips, working with a volunteer organization, and going on a group tour. Thing is, I want to be moving, not vacationing, so I need a long period of time, and the thought of paying for a package tour running around the big tourist stops with my drunken peers is not appealing. I’d like to volunteer with various organizations, and there are some good ones out there, but most of them require you pay a fee, so that won’t work for the whole trip.

It comes back to me, a backpack, and the very necessary spirit of adventure. I’ll happily meet up with friends along the way, so if you have any place in particular that you’ve always wanted to visit, or if you’re fluent in any of the languages of the countries I’ll be visiting (please!), let me know.

For now, the idea is to go to New Zealand/Australia in January of 2013, then work my way up Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Transiberian Railway to Moscow, Eastern Europe, Western Africa, South Africa, and India. Back to the States to make a bit of money, then down to Central and South America, and possibly Antarctica.

All of it’s changeable, except the date of departure. I turn 30 in 2013, and I’ve said since I was 18 that I’d start this trip before I was 30, before I started to settle down, move up in a career, or feel tied to a particular place. Life isn’t over when you’re 30, but if you’re not careful, the urge to try new things and become a different and better person is. So winter of 2012/2013 it is!

The Music Don’t Lie

Posted on September 29, 2009 by lisafindley

There are now no doubts I made the right decision about breaking up with my boyfriend of six months — last night, while dialing through the radio, I heard all in a row: “Time for me to Fly” by REO Speedwagon, “Already Gone” by The Eagles, and “It’s Too Late” by Carole King.

The music has spoken.

The Questions

Posted on September 29, 2009 by lisafindley

This blog will generally be a travel blog, but there will probably also be posts on music, books, and the hilarious misadventures of my life in Chicago. I’m opening this up to the (what I’m sure will be tiny) public so we can exchange ideas, tips, ruminations. Do you write about travel–why, and how, and for what audience? Do you travel a lot–what kind of trips do you take, how often, with others or by yourself? Got practical tips and advice, a funny story, or a rambling reflection on why we do what we do? Have a follow-up to something I’ve written? Please share.

Without further ado, here are the big questions I’m pondering:

Why travel? Why write about traveling? How do I answer these questions without diving into the murky waters of self-importance and clichés?

Okay, so maybe I don’t answer those questions, or at least not right away. But it’s time to start considering them in a serious way, and to start writing about what I figure out, because it’s T minus three years from my trip around the world, and I’m not going to set off on a trip I’ve planned for 10 years without feeling confident that I’m ready for it. And by ready for it, I mean ready for the adventures, the mundane details, and my sincere involvement with the people I meet and the places I go. I don’t mean ready in the sense that I’ll have plenty of money or have every minute of my itinerary planned—that’s ridiculous and sad (okay, not the money part; that’d be kickass). I mean I want to be prepared for anything, because that’s what’ll happen. I mean I want to be prepared to change a bit, because that’d better happen. I mean I want to be prepared to engage with people in a real way, and not simply check places visited off my list, because being fully engaged is the best that can happen.

I’m starting to read some travel blogs and travel writing tips websites, and I’ll check some books out of the library. Let’s see what the pros do, what the dedicated amateurs do, and where I might fit in. There are many ways to cock it up, but some quick notes to self: My viewpoint is central to my life and no one else’s, so I shouldn’t discount any of my own emotions or thoughts, but I’d sure as hell think twice before expressing them in person or in print, to make sure that they have value for others. Even though I can get very list-oriented and methodical, I enjoy my spontaneous moments and need to leave plenty of room for them on my travels. This also means that I need to shift some of my thinking from checklists (“where are you going?” “Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia…”) to a compilation of experiences. How do I write about my own travels as a privileged white American woman in this world without falling into the traps of racism, classism, nationalism, etc.? How do I travel without falling into those traps? How do I travel in a conscionable manner, giving something back to each place I visit, without getting a bit noblesse oblige? How do I expand my own horizons without making it all about me, and how do I make my writing reflect that?