Reflections on my travels

Originally written July 2019

Do you ever look ahead to some fairly certain date, like a distant graduation or an exciting vacation, and think “yeah that’s going to happen. And when it happens I’m going to think back to this moment and remember how I thought about how this would happen and how far off it seemed and how much was going to happen until then”. I don’t know, maybe that’s weird or too ~meta~, but I have this kind of thought a lot. 

A year ago, I had this thought about where I’d be right now–sitting on my roof looking out over a July Seattle sunset on another week night, doing my best to settle in with new activities, staying in touch with friends, and futilely trying to adapt to corporate life. I remember exactly what I thought as I was boarding my first flight from Cincinnati on July 27th, 2018: “Here it goes. You’re going to travel. You don’t know what all will happen but it will be such a time. And then you’ll be living in Seattle somehow working for Microsoft despite being a total fraud who somehow lucked out with this perfect plan (but maybe they’ll figure it out and forget about you! Watch out!), the weather will be beautiful because summer, you’ll be different in some ways but still the same, and you’ll remember back to right now as you’re just about to leave, a little terrified but mostly excited. Crazy how time will fly. Just wait.” And hey. I was right! It all happened, and here I am. Crazy how time flies. 

Anyways, I say all this because a year has gone by, and it’s been a very eventful year. I do feel like I lived a lot this year–it’s been packed full with change, challenges, and fun. I know it would be a disservice to myself if I didn’t take the time to formally reflect on all that I’ve experienced, struggled with, and learned. And as someone wise once told me, “if you don’t do everything in your power to share the stuff that makes you better, then you’re doing everyone a disservice.” So while writing this is undoubtedly essential for myself, I’m sharing it because I really believe in the power of communal experience and learning–if everything in my life went to shit and I could only keep one thing, it would be the meaningful conversations I have with friends and family in which I constantly feel inspired, curious, and supported. This is my attempt to add to the circle of insights I have gained from my experiences and the many amazing people around me. 

Before I dive into a formal reflection of my experiences this year, let me do a quick recap:

• June 2018: graduated from a wonderful college with people I adore. I really do miss Dartmouth– the place, the freedom of thought, the intellectual curiosity, the flexibility, the network of friends, the interrelatedness of everything.
• July 2018: Moving back home and a family RV trip through the Canadian rockies (rare to have all 6 of us in the same place. Adrian was living in Kalispell (but now in NYC, lol at that contrast). And Banff. WOW.)
• July 26th, 2018: an epic day of packing my backpack. Fantastic exercise in minimalism, not even a pair of real sweatpants made the cut
• July 27th, 2018– bye America!
• July – Dec 2018:
  • Bali, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, Dubai, London, Madrid, Belgium for a day? (an accident), Athens for the OG marathon, Chile, Argentina, Peru
• HOME for the holidays
• Jan-Feb 2019: Friends roadtrip! Boston, NYC, Washington DC, N. Carolina, Home to Ohio for packing my move out (eek!), Chicago, Motel 6 in Iowa (and a lifesaving Oreo McFlurry), Denver (the skiing!), Salt Lake City (again. The skiing!!), Boise (could it be, more skiing?!?), Seattle
• Feb 25th 2019: Officially moved into Seattle (thx Mom! What a champ! Helped me move a couch that I was naive enough to think I could handle on my own). Oh and I started my job! Somehow I was still in the HR system, thank god. 
• Feb 25th- Now, 2019: the ridiculous, amazing, confusing delirium of adjusting to “the adult world”. Would love to talk about this more. I think being in your 20s is tough. Right now, quarter-life crisis is a constant state of being for me. From talking to friends, I’ve learned that this is not just a me thing, it’s just plain old hard… But Seattle. Wow I love it. Feel meant to be here. 

Ok that’s it. Let’s unpack it all.

This reflection is going to focus primarily on the main motivations/goals I had for traveling in the first place. Essentially, I want to see how well I achieved what I set out to do and/or evaluate why I strayed from my initially stated plan.

Before diving in, I want to highlight another motivation for this reflection: A big thing I’ve always struggled with is feeling too self-conscious to share many of my thoughts/experiences for fear of judgment (she’s too preachy/too self-involved/too happy/too heady/too clueless/etc.). This is part of me practicing getting over this! While I can know and trust my intentions behind my thoughts and actions, I cannot trust that others will perceive and trust my intentions accurately. Which is why I wanted to write a more official, comprehensive reflection on my experience rather than leave it open-ended and informed only by a trail of social media breadcrumbs. Ok, that’s it, sorry for the mini-spiel. Now for my main reflections!

Since I’m structuring this based on my original motivations, recapping those is a good place to start. However, some of my thoughts expand further, so I’m giving you fair warning now. 

Here’s what I wrote before I left as my main motivations for traveling: 

1. I want to experience cultures entirely unfamiliar to me, especially focusing on how they relate to their environments and particularly how women view themselves within their society.
2. I want to feel uncomfortable, challenged, and stretched a little past my current limits.
3. I want to develop skills around writing and reflecting. I’m a firm believer in the advice to constantly be focused on developing a new valuable skill. This project (and this blog particularly!) is my start at improving my writing, reflecting, and blogging skills as a whole.
4. I want to develop a stronger sense of confidence and assertion. I have found that, like many, I often worry about what people think and aim to please them (or at least not upset them). Traveling alone forces me to advocate for myself or else be taken advantage of, and this is a skill I think I absolutely need for my career and life in general.
5. I want to form relationships with fellow travelers and practice being over-outgoing. Again, traveling alone will absolutely force me to interact with other travelers at hostels without the crutch of a companion to lean back on.

Cool to think back on this over a year later, since I now also have 6 months of being settled at a corporate job in Seattle to contrast with my travel experiences as well. 

First, #1. Experiencing other cultures. Prior to this trip, I had never been outside of the “west”. For a while I had no interest in visiting Asia because I didn’t understand it. Then I changed a lot in college–new perspectives, new people, deeper thinking about bigger problems–and got curious. And this curiosity grew into an obsession with the idea of being immersed in a totally unfamiliar place. So in terms of my travel takeaways, I could write about all the cultural differences–there are a few things that I do want to call out here (like how in Laos, there is no concept in thought or language for singular possession (“mine”), only communal (“ours”))–but the main takeaway I have regarding this point is a little different. I want to expand upon the concept that “people are people”.

I found that while I knew that all people are people and have always tried my best to live by the golden rule (thanks Mom & Dad for that early lesson!), I didn’t on a root level truly understand that. Essentially, the “people are people” concept went from an aspirational ideal to an inherent truth in my mind. The way I see it, true understanding can actually only come from real world experience. You can be a good person and know that all people are created equal, but looking back, I don’t think that was enough for me–I wasn’t really there yet. I had to live it more holistically. To talk to people with wildly different backgrounds in their own environment. To actually see the challenges and and feel the inequities. To watch kids playing and laughing together with dirty clothes on a dirty floor. To see people sitting around a makeshift buffet in the street laughing and eating together. To wave and smile as I ran by and receive a wider smile back. I can’t put it into words–it’s an authentic appreciation of others— a broader form of love that words can’t capture. I am fully convinced in the underlying good of humanity and the commonalities shared by us all, which are then given color by our differences. So this point is to say that I found traveling to be foundationally empathy-building for me. 

This concept expands outward even more–I spent a lot of time thinking about the difference between “knowing” and “understanding” in general. This is mainly because I’ve loved consuming a diverse set of content from books/articles/podcasts for awhile and I think I treated that knowledge as a substitute for real experience. In fact, that was another motivation for traveling that I didn’t explicitly clarify–to actually challenge myself in the real world rather than in the intellectual cocoon of college. As they say, I could be book smart but not street smart. Anyways, I don’t think I have to say much more about this idea other than it’s quite real. It’s one thing to know about a concept/trend/positive behavior and it’s yet another thing to actually execute on that knowledge. I think this experience helped me to execute on a lot of my thought-based aspirations (calm your anxiety, go with the flow, see the beauty in everything, listen to your gut and don’t worry about others’ expectations, etc.). Not a perfect science, but experience is the most powerful teacher. And now that I’m in a new settled situation and working a corporate job, I find myself thrown back into the washing machine of “knowing” what I should do based off of business articles/podcasts/etc. but struggling to actually execute. It’s just another learning curve. And, naturally, I found myself needing to take a break from all the podcasts and articles to just let myself live and experience my new setting. I used to fight this–somehow just being & experiencing didn’t feel like active self-improvement and learning. But I’ve grown to appreciate it as another, even more authentic form of learning. So I’m grateful for that lesson solidified through my travels. 

Next, #2. Challenging myself through uncomfortable travel. 

There were a couple things that I wanted to really challenge myself on. First, I’ve always felt like I mostly fit in. Not entirely–I’d bend myself to actually “fit in” in various settings–but I was never noticeably out of place. And I’ve always been concerned with what others think of me, so I would get anxious if I ever felt like I was being really noticed for a non-explicitly positive thing. I didn’t like being seen. So basically I wanted to work on solidifying my true sense of self–one that would be unswayed by my changing environments.

Secondly, when I thought about the idea of traveling alone without many belongings or much of a plan, I expected that there would be a lot of tough situations/long days/lack of sleep/stressful situations that I would have to handle. I’m naturally a pretty anxious person, so I wanted to practice being in those situations and keeping my cool. 

Now, with all of the time and space to reflect on these challenges and the broader idea of my comfort zone in general, I’ve realized how I’ve both succeeded and failed to really achieve this goal. This is because I learned how my comfort zone isn’t so simple. It has layers. So really, I learned that “getting out of my comfort zone” was much too vague of a goal for me. When I started to break it down more, I noticed that some parts of my comfort zone are harder to recognize and access, while others are much easier to identify and tackle.The way I’ve come to think of it is 1) my physical comfort zone 2) my individual emotional comfort zone→ thoughts and feelings that I think are within my control 3) my interpersonal emotional comfort zone→ essentially, other people’s thoughts about me (what I can’t control). I think I was able to make a lot of progress on the first two–my physical and individual emotional comfort zone– but I really don’t think I did enough to stretch the third one. I’ll elaborate more.

Physical discomfort is the easiest for me to identify–years of athletic training primed me well. Keep running, one step at a time. One more rep. Grit it out. Take a hit to make the play. Be tough. Etc. This is the whole “pain is temporary” argument. When traveling, I definitely had to deal with physical discomfort in terms of cramped travel (28 hour hellish bus journey to Laos stands out), long days hiking with a very heavy pack (hip bruises, cracked knuckles, nerve damage to my toe), freezing cold showers (literally water straight from a melting glacier), stomach sickness (ate all the street food and felt fine but the one time I go to a nicer restaurant I got so sick. And it hit on a night bus). I got to practice all the “just keep going” mental strategies I’ve developed through the years, and also learned many new ones based on mindfulness & meditation. So I can certainly say that I pushed myself in terms of physical discomfort, but I was pretty comfortable in handling it. 

When it comes to my individual emotional comfort zone, I do think that I made a lot of progress. Unlike my physical comfort zone, I was less used to addressing these challenges before traveling. I was very much in control in college–I planned out my assignments to get them done well ahead of time, I could eat and sleep mostly when I wanted, and I owned my schedule to a great extent. If something was out of place, I’d stress more than necessary to address it. I got a lot better in my senior year of college, but nowhere near where I wanted to be. However, when traveling, I became so at peace with most things being out of my control. No clear plans for the day, a bus route that was hours late, street harassment, missing possessions, dependence on someone/something I didn’t trust, language barriers, etc. I had to adopt a “this situation is somehow meant to be, look at all I’m learning just by living it, everything will be fine” approach a lot, and it really did seemingly rewire my brain throughout the year. And, now that I’m back in the American society of productivity, I even feel frustrated that I became too accustomed to this more relaxed thought pattern—I sometimes struggle to motivate myself to plan ahead and execute because planning seems more futile and less natural. So overall, I would say I successfully achieved this goal. Of course there’s still a lot of room to improve, but this is an area that I think I can point to as an example of how post-travel me feels very different than pre-travel me. 

However, when it comes to the final tier of my comfort zone–my interpersonal emotions–I think I really failed to stretch this well. Sure I made a little progress here and there, but I think the challenges were just too hard for me to overcome without deliberate focus. And I failed to give it that. The core of this is that I just care too damn much about what other people think. This isn’t always the case–there are surface level things that I really don’t care about (I don’t mind being the weirdo running in my toe shoes), but if I think that someone could form a negative opinion about who I am–that is, what my motivations are, what kind of person I am–based on something I do, I freeze. I do recognize that it’s not an inherently bad thing to care about what others think–this is emotional intelligence in some respect. It allows us to build relationships and convey our respect for others. However, I also have to acknowledge that I cannot please everyone, that some of my goals and actions cannot be achieved without rubbing some others the wrong way. Similarly, I may know that it doesn’t matter if a stranger on the street thinks I’m some clueless blonde airhead because I’m wandering around aimlessly, but I still get self-conscious and feel like hiding from their judgmental gaze. Essentially, I don’t want to feel like I need to prove myself–my values, my motivations, my capabilities–to be viewed as worthwhile in the eyes of strangers. Perhaps this is just years of social conditioning coming to a head–I preemptively imagine others making assumptions about me based on existing stereotypes–woman, young, millennial, blonde, too chatty, too quiet, whatever makes me stand out in a given setting–and feel the need to either hide or explicitly try to counter it. Since I stood out a lot while traveling, I felt this concern often and sharply. When I wrote out my motivations, I think that the self-assurance I outlined can be rebranded as my desire to overcome this dilemma, and I recognize that it’s still very much a work in progress. However, I can see it much more clearly now, so I’m grateful for developing that clear awareness in myself through traveling.

Now for #3, my desire to develop my writing skills. 

Well this is much easier to evaluate–I did write a lot. I wrote more during my travels than I ever wrote in my life. Everything on my original travel blog in addition to 200 pages of my journal (and a lot of headspace to just think— so valuable). None of it (including this!) is any good in a formal sense, but to be honest I never really cared. I was just trying to put my thoughts and experiences into words to preserve them–to build the muscle of converting my invisible, easily forgotten thoughts into something tangible. Something that could be shared. I’m really glad I did this. I learned how cathartic it can be to just write stuff down, and I’ve maintained my journaling practice (albeit haphazardly) ever since. Sometimes I questioned how truly real and raw I was being with myself when writing. Occasionally my voice in my journal can seem somewhat performant–like a showcase I know how to give to myself when I don’t want to go a level deeper–to challenge my motivations further. As a high level example, I’d often write that an experience was “amazing” because I knew it ought to be, but I wouldn’t articulate some of my inner anxieties and frustrations that were blocking me from fully feeling that amazement. This just comes down to raw honesty with myself, and I know that will always be a worthwhile challenge. So I explored that tension through writing, and it’s an ongoing process.  

One more note on writing–there’s one practical writing exercise that I am incredibly grateful for called “5 points of mindfulness”. Basically, in a few different settings throughout my travels, I’d focus on journaling exactly what I was feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting, and hearing. As a result, I’ve found that I can recall each of those moments so crisply. I actually haven’t even read back most of what I wrote, but I can still picture myself and my environment as it was each time I focused on this exercise, and I’m so refreshed by that. I’d recommend giving it a try sometime–especially as a way to really experience and remember something. 

I do regret not having blog posts for the second half of my travels. Unfortunately, between my stint of European country hopping, lack of internet, and extremely poor connections even if I did have wifi, I wasn’t able to complete the blog posts that I wish I had. These would have covered everything after Nepal including:

• Flying from Nepal to Dubai (a wild transition)
• Dubai to London (visiting my friend Rachel)
• London to Madrid to visit Rhian who was studying abroad there
• Brussels for a few hours (a fun accident) before getting to Athens for the OG marathon with Rhian and her friends, having a lovely Greek dinner hosted by our family friend Costis
• Athens back to Madrid with Rhian and getting to see my parents for a night
• Madrid to Chile and down to Patagonia
• My week of backpacking/camping off the grid in Torres del Paine National Park (WOW, I can’t really pick a favorite part of my travels, but this experience probably felt the best )
• Chile into Argentina to explore the Argentinian Patagonia (El Chalten, El Calafate)
• Back to Chile, then up to northern Chile and the bus travel into Peru
• Peru for 3 weeks—> Tacna, Arequipa, Cusco, Inca Trail trek, Macchu Picchu, Ica, Lima, Trujillo, Huacachina, and back to Lima
• Flying home for good! Stranded in Toronto for a day, then home. 

So sadly I didn’t publicly document any of this, and looking back it was all incredible— a true progression of my travels from the previous few months. I wish I had documented this, and maybe I still can based off of all my journal entries and photos. But overall I did write a lot. I came home a more free flowing and capable writer than when I left, so that makes me happy. 

I’m going to lump my thoughts on #4—developing confidence & self-assurance–into my thoughts for #2 above. They’re inextricably linked, as my wavering self-assurance is entirely dependent on my familiarity with my comfort zones. The quick summary: I definitely feel like I’ve developed a much stronger sense of self, yet I still have work to do to overcome my deep-seated desire to be fully understood and positively viewed by people.

And finally, for #5, meeting people from around the world:

Well this for sure was a traveling highlight. I can’t get over how many people I met–locals and travelers alike–and how easy it was. I actually had to focus on carving out time to be truly alone, and there were even times where I felt suffocated by people, where I just had to get off the grid and be alone again. 

It’s fair to say that most of the people I met were other young travelers who were either in my hostel or on the same bus/train/boat as me. Most of these were one-off relationships–we follow each other on Instagram but don’t actively stay in touch. However, I definitely know that if I were to reach out to any of these people, they’d welcome me to visit (and I’d gladly repay the favor as well). A few times, I formed a little travel crew where a group of us would explore together for several days, and I always loved that. Overall, there’s a few key points to make on the relationships I made while traveling:

First, they’re very much like summer camp–these relationships are formed so quickly. It’s part of the travel culture–everyone is naturally more open, a combination of self-selection into traveling in the first place and the fact that we’re all just trying to find someone to relate to amidst all the unfamiliar territory. I absolutely loved this— an authenticity underlies every new connection— I just found people to be primed and willing to open up about their thoughts, fears, and motivations, willing to engage in impromptu philosophical conversations. This is partly why I say that I learned even more traveling than in a term at Dartmouth— the whole experience was like a diverse seminar of conversations covering everything from the proper way to enjoy hummus to the conceptual unanimity of patience and love. 

Second, the rapidity with which I formed and left relationships allowed me to examine the boundaries of my constant, underlying self versus my malleable, performative self. In other words, I became cognizant of how I would adapt my behaviors to relate to the people I was with while also solidifying my understanding of what parts of myself would not be compromised. I felt this most poignantly in Northern Thailand, when I had been with my fun crew of Clara and Jake (and Anton and 3 German girls as well) for a couple weeks before making the decision to leave off a burning desire to get off the grid and do something adventurous by myself (this ended up being my Chiang Dao hike). In that blog post, I wrote:

“I used to be hard on myself about changing my behavior to “fit in”, but now I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having malleable parts of you based on who you’re with. The constant parts are still there too, and it just makes you more adaptable and relatable to others. I think that’s actually a skill. You just have to recognize when you’re feeling too ungrounded from your base and reevaluate. So that’s what I did this week.”

I like this little reflection–I think it speaks to a growing ability of going with the flow that I developed. I came to appreciate the feeling of letting the Type A side of me take a backseat as we made new plans–sometimes I could literally feel my attachment to my own ideas of the plan loosening their grip. I could easily laugh with new friends over small things like our tuk tuk driver’s music or a chilled out cow laying in the road and chat for hours about their travel experiences so far. But I also always felt an underlying internal drive to do something experientially meaningful each day–to do something unique and think or write more deeply about it. If I went too long feeling like I hadn’t done something challenging or special–something that I really wanted to do to better understand a place on my own terms, I would proactively take my space. And, when I did seek out these more unique experiences, like-minded adventurous company tended to follow–this was particularly true for the people I met while camping and backpacking in Patagonia and the couple I met on my Chiang Dao hike.

I guess overall I’m saying that I met a diverse group of people–thoughtful, adventurous, spontaneous, relaxed, fun–primarily by following my gut of what I was seeking in different time periods. When that feeling changed, I tried to listen and move on appropriately. And regardless, I’ve gotten to stay in touch with these people (mostly through Instagram) and use it as a frequent reminder of the paradoxical vastness and closeness of the world– I say this less as a factual statement and more of a feeling, one that I’ve recognized makes me feel quite happy and inspired 🙂 

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I know I’ve already gone way over the word limit for retaining anyone’s attention span, sorry not sorry for that. But this basically concludes my reflections on my travels from the perspective of my initial motivations.

To end, I’d like to reemphasize the main point of this– to contribute to a communal experience of sharing and learning. Overall, my travel experiences made me better–perhaps immeasurably so, but certainly better in some ways. Even if I can’t articulate it well (or just have to drown people in words to sort it out myself), I know I’ve grown from the experience and I’d love to keep exploring these ideas with others (please share your wisdom and reflections with me!). Seriously, I’d love to discuss since I feel like I’m constantly trying to make sense of most things and would appreciate some fresh insights.

If you made it through this, you’re a champ. Thanks for reading 🙂