Now Live: The Serial Travelist Podcast
A few days before my spring semester abroad in London ended, this small-town Florida girl was feeling almost, nearly cosmopolitan. I was living in the big city! The double-decker buses that once intimidated me, I learned to ride surreptitiously, without paying. In the beginning, I wandered the streets aimlessly, but now I’d identified my favorite coffee shops, bookstores, and galleries where I felt like a regular. I was gaining confidence and getting tougher with each day. I’d achieved something I’d wanted my whole life, and my insides were screaming, “Look, I’m different now!” I wanted to mark this period of significant change and searched for a way to outwardly show it before I headed back to the U.S.
I traded five pounds for an appointment with a student hairdresser to practice on me at the Vidal Sassoon haircutting school in Soho. After six hours she managed to lop almost everything off and finished with surprise scarlet and bronze highlights. Beaming, she said I was her best work. Like any proper makeover, the first look was shocking, but quickly I stepped right up and owned that pixie cut. Now it all felt real. With this superficial part of my new identity solidified—courage followed. If I could survive London, what couldn’t I do? To me, a short haircut meant sophistication and culture, and in some small way, it set my direction for the bigger moves that would follow to Portland, and much later NYC.
Traveling in your twenties is steeped in discovery and risk. Who you are is up for debate, and with each country visited and sticky situation solved, the universe offers up a new piece to add to the collage of your still-forming self. You fantasize about your future and form bets about the big life choices you’ll be making soon. Because you haven’t experienced the depths of adulting and responsibility yet, this youthful freedom is all-consuming. It encourages you to selfishly gobble up the world, simply for your pleasure.
Yesterday Michiel forwarded me this NYT opinion piece that makes a case for kids taking gap years or doing study abroad programs. It asserts that a complete education should value international knowledge and experience as much as reading the classics or math. The writer, Kristof, also theorizes that increasing our international intelligence “corrodes stereotypes and shores up our empathy by reminding us of our common humanity.” I couldn’t agree more, and I might even argue cross-cultural experiences matter more than most of what I read in my literature class.
Reading that article made me ask the question, am I chasing the intoxicating feelings from that first, pivotal study abroad experience? Does my current, nomadic life feel anything like backpacking through Europe did at 19?
Nope, not really.
Curiously, I rarely meet people doing any version of what we do who aren’t in their twenties. I’ve been wondering why this is the case. Why does it happen in our youth, but not again till it’s time for the retirement bucket list? What makes it off-limits for all those years in between?
My hypothesis is that extended travel in middle age feels impossible for most people. They can’t even conceive of it. After all, mid-life is a period that equals settling down and in. Houses are being bought or remodeled, career pinnacles are being reached, and children are being raised. It’s a time of nesting, building, and establishing, not exploring. Somehow in your 20s, this type of exploration is considered appropriate, even encouraged, but as the clock ticks towards age 30, family and societal expectations begin to set in.
Traveling today, at 44, is nothing like my twenties. While it once steered my identity and goals, now, it’s directing my perspective and values. I relate to travel and travel relates back to me, differently. Back then I was driven by discovery, and today, it’s by curiosity. Sometimes I feel like an anthropologist studying the ways people live, committing my favorite strategies to memory. How does a community’s values drive their culture? What drives their delight? Balance? Resilience?
Casually, I’ve been asking these questions for the last couple of years, but I’ve decided to put a little more muscle behind my efforts and make a more serious inquiry. I want to know if embarking on an unconventional life in your 40s is the new version of a mid-life crisis. Or alternatively, is it a way to sidestep a mid-life crisis? What is going on behind the scenes when a family drops everything and moves to a new country with grade school kids in tow? Why would a couple give up their beautiful apartment in Brooklyn and decide to live and work from the tight quarters of a catamaran?
I’m going to be interviewing people with hard-to-define lives on how they arrived at these daring life choices. Did they find happiness? Love? Health? Satisfaction? And how do they look at their careers, finances, mental health, and relationships differently now? And as I ask these questions, you’re invited along.
I’m thrilled to announce that The Serial Travelist Podcast launches today!
It’s a companion piece to this newsletter with a mission to answer the big questions I’ve been wondering about. In addition, it will have…
Regular Debriefs: Michiel and I will unravel what went right and wrong in the country we just traveled through. I want to give you the inside scoop on cities you’ve been thinking about planning a trip to and deliver the feeling of these places—a sense of the people, landscape, and culture.
Thoughts on Slow and Responsible Travel: How can you be a better, more respectful visitor in foreign lands? Where does spending your money have the most impact? What is slow travel and should you consider integrating it into your next vacation?
Full Disclosure: Ever wonder what the reality of our budget and costs are? How do we exercise and eat on the road? And finally, how do we not get completely sick of each other… or do we?
This newsletter will continue to be where the stories and photo diaries of my travels live, but with the podcast, I’ll be digging into nomadic living as the movement it’s emerging into. Why now and where is it headed? Is it a response to the current political and economic conditions? Is remote work already over, or is it a lifestyle that’s just now building momentum?
Being a nomad means endless uncertainty. It’s hard to deal with healthcare, governments, and banks. When a stranger at a party asks you where you’re from or what you do, you don’t have an easy answer. I’d like to give these compelling, hard-to-label lives more visibility. I suspect there’s a lot to learn from those bravely asking if the life they are dissatisfied with could be better.
The first episode debuts today! You can find it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Please subscribe, tell me what you think, and write a review if you’re feeling especially generous.
Today is: trying to cool off in the balmy jungles of Costa Rica
We are thrilled to be visiting our friends in Costa Rica, and learning about the life and community they’ve built here. This is the magic view from their porch that is stunning from daybreak to nightfall. I’ve been watching monkeys chomping on leaves right above my head while I’m rinsing off in the outdoor shower. I’ve also discovered I’m in love with jungle night baths, right under the stars. The level of new-to-me flora and fauna is astounding here. Every single evening I see a bug that I’ve never seen before. My understanding of nature has evolved significantly just by stepping foot into this wild and wondrous environment.
I’ll be savoring this last week in paradise before heading to FL next week to help my mom move into some new, exciting digs.