The world is your creative fuel
Why you should have a passport—and use it.
I was looking at BlueSky this morning (are you there? Follow me!) and saw a post lamenting that only 30% of Americans have passports.
Someone else responded that that number is out of date and it’s closer to 45% now, though once it was as low as 10%. Others chimed in to remind the original poster that passports are expensive (at least $130 for an adult)—and so is international travel—and they’re also a pain in the rear to get. All fair points.
Then there were a lot of posts saying what I knew a lot of folks would say: that America is so big that there’s plenty to do and see here without having to go anywhere else. That’s true, too—up to a point, though about 11% of Americans have never even left their home states. (My apologies to readers in other parts of the world—generally, you are much better about getting out and seeing other parts of the planet than we are, so I’ve written this post with my fellow countryfolk in mind, but the creative value of travel applies to you, too!)
I live in New Jersey, and grew up in Pennsylvania. I went to school in Pennsylvania and Vermont. With the exception of the six months I lived in Northern Ireland, my life has been pretty well centered on the East Coast of the US.
Is Vermont anything like New Jersey or Pennsylvania? Yes and no. New England has its own subculture, so NJ/PA are much more similar to each other than they are to New England, but the fact remains that nobody who goes to Vermont from New Jersey is going to think that they’ve landed in another country, or vice versa. (Okay, maybe if you went from certain parts of north Jersey. Maybe.)
Someone from anywhere in the northeastern US is much more likely to feel culture shock if they get off a plane in Houston (and, again, vice versa). That’s as true of the food as it is of the local etiquette and clothing customs… but you’re still in America, and there’ll be no mistaking that fact.
Does that mean it’s not worth going to visit Texas, Kansas, Arizona, or Oregon if you’re from my part of the country? Or vice versa? No. Of course not. We might be part of the same overculture, but there are distinct subcultures, and those are definitely worth exploring.
But going abroad is a totally different ballgame.
It’s your world
When I was but a wee young thing, a freshman in high school, my parents offered me a choice for the summer: get a summer job, or take a summer course at the local college. Not being quite ready to give up my childhood, but also being intrigued by the idea of being a “college kid,” I chose the latter. I did this two summers in a row, and the first saw me in class every day studying Russian history from a professor who’d been born in Belarus and survived World War II, including being imprisoned by the Nazis. This was in 1986, so the Cold War/arms race was still on. He was the closest most of us had ever seen to an actual Russian. He had been back home several times and we all had a good laugh at his slides of his pasty “Russian” friends—we didn’t really distinguish between any of the Soviet Socialist Republics at that point, though I actually knew what those were thanks to that class—at the pool in the summer as he showed us the modern Soviet Union.
What I remember most about his classes, though I did learn a lot about Russia from him, was his oft-repeated line:
“It’s your world! You should know every inch of it!”
Obviously, he didn’t mean we should set out with our pith helmets and safari gear to literally traverse every bit of the planet, but as a professor of history and political science, and someone who had seen, twice over, the effects of ignorance and propaganda firsthand, he knew the best defense against both was knowledge and experience. (I think his class was the first time I heard the old Russian jokes about the two main newspapers, Pravda—“truth”—and Izvestia—“news”: “There is no news in Pravda, and there is no truth in Izvestia.”)
He had a point, though. We get one trip on Spaceship Earth. It’s worth trying to know what we can about all of it, not just the tiny corner we were born into—and that includes visiting places that aren’t familiar to us.
Immersive experience
The first time I left the country was just a few years later: my senior year in high school. My middle school French teacher, Miss Pritchett, also taught French V for seniors, and had promised my class that if we made it that far, she would take us to France. I’m sure she assumed we would forget, but we held her to it, to her surprise. (To my surprise, almost none of my classmates were willing to put the language we’d spent all this time learning to use. I was corrected a few times, which I think was my classmates’ fear, but that beat not trying at all.)
When we got there, it wasn’t just the language that was captivating, though that was certainly part of it. The people, the food, the money, the cars, the clothes, the architecture—the whole sensibility of the place was different. We were, unquestionably, Not At Home anymore. We were fish out of water, and all the places we’d seen in our French books were actually right in front of us for the first time, in 3D.
The world was different, and because it was different, so were we.
It’s not the same as looking at pictures or watching a movie, or even going to the local French restaurant for cassoulet. The real thing is an immersive experience. (When you visit that restaurant after you’ve been to France, on the other hand, that cassoulet can transport you back to that trip.)
You can look at a thousand photos of the Eiffel Tower, but they can’t tell you what it’s like to be crammed into one of its elevators, or to look out from the restaurant while you have dinner, or—with a wisdom well beyond your 17 years—to tell Miss Pritchett, who is reluctant to come to the top level because she’s afraid of heights, “Me, too, but I might not ever get the chance again. Come on!” (She did!)
And none of those other photos will ever be the one you took yourself.
This is why I craved, and jumped on, a chance to live outside the US for a while—I wanted to be immersed in something different for more than a 10-day trip. I wanted to know what it was like to live in a different culture like a local for a period of time that was substantial enough to leave a mark on my psyche, and give me the ability to understand a perspective that was different from the one I knew.
Traveling alone also gives you an opportunity to shed parts of your identity for a while, if you like. You can be whoever you want to be for the duration of that trip, because you’re subject to no one else’s existing expectations, though not everyone realizes that.
Travel is an experience. It can’t be replicated with videos or stories from others who’ve gone somewhere. It’s a full-body, multi-sensory, 3D event. Your experience is never the same as someone else’s, even if you’re traveling together.
You are never the same after that experience, either. Travel always changes us, in ways large and small.
Travel as creative fuel
I had originally wanted to make travel an integral part of my podcast, going from place to place talking to people and asking them to point me to my next guest, moving from person to person as I trekked all over the place. Alas, that idea required far more funding than I had available—which was none—though I’d still love to do it at some point! If you’ve listened to the show for a while, you’ll know that I often ask guests who have traveled how it’s influenced their creativity, in a nod to that original idea.
Never has a guest told me that travel has had no impact whatsoever. It’s much more common to hear that it’s stretched their thinking, fueled their curiosity, or inspired different ideas or projects.
One particular guest, Linda King, writes the “Smart Travelista” travel guides, so we talked not only about her history with travel and how she began writing those guides, but about how she thinks travel influences creativity, including the newness of the environment creating a sense of openness that doesn’t always exist in our daily lives. I won’t spoil the interview for you, because you should go check it out (or read the transcript, now that I can do those, if that’s more your speed!), but it’s also never a bad thing to add to your well of experience so you have more to draw on in the future—and travel is guaranteed to do that for you.
Okay, so international travel is great creative fuel, but as those folks on BlueSky observed, it’s expensive. No argument there. What can you do, then, if money’s a problem?
First of all, check out travel deals. They do exist! I’m not going to link to deal sites, because they come and go, and that makes them difficult for someone like me to vet quickly and reliably, but sites like Google Flights and Hopper can help you track flight prices so you can get the best fares. (I used Hopper for my recent flight to LA and it was very helpful.) If you have credit card points, they’re usually worth more for travel than for anything else, which can reduce or eliminate your cost.
I’ve traveled a fair bit on my own, and part of the reason for that is that I find it’s cheaper that way. (I’m also allergic to tour groups.) I get to pick my own flights and accommodations, so I’m not stuck with someone else’s hotel choices that are beyond what I actually need. I’ve used AirBnB with great success, though it’s been several years, so I’m not sure how things may have changed there (I would recommend only staying with AirBnB SuperHosts.) Of course, traveling with a roommate can help cut that accommodation cost by 50%, so that’s worth considering, too.
Let’s also look at the reality that you might not be able to afford that international trip, even with a good deal on a flight or accommodation. A change of scene is still good both for your soul and your creativity. You should go somewhere as different from your usual milieu as you can get, provided it’s a place you’re interested in. There’s no sense going somewhere you don’t want to go, after all (though it’s also true that sometimes the places we think we don’t want to go to are exactly where we need to go!).
If you’ve never traveled by train, do it just for the experience. It’s very different from flying (leg room is a thing!), and generally costs a lot less. Amtrak isn’t as extensive as European rail lines, but if there’s a line near you, see where it can take you. You might be surprised!
Road trips are still a great way to see new places, and some roadside attractions still exist. And if even that’s too much, try being a tourist in your own town. We often ignore the places we’ve lived in for a long time, because we think we know them so well. About 20 years ago, after my whole family had moved away, my parents started spending a month each summer in our hometown, staying in a downtown hotel. None of us had ever lived in that part of town, and since they could walk to various historical sites and businesses from there, they started taking tours. I joined them a few times when I visited, and it was fascinating to discover places we’d never paid much attention to even though they were part of the familiar scenery.
All of it is fodder for your creative brain, and can pull you out of your normal routine, which is good for both those little grey cells and your creative projects.
What’s your favorite travel destination? Or your favorite travel story? How has travel influenced your creative work? Let us know in a comment below!
I love this post! I definitely want to travel more!