This year will be a time of change. During our travels, we’ll be constantly surrounded by the new, learning about ourselves and growing in ways we can’t anticipate. Before we leave our current home, I wanted to set our “North Stars,” or principles that will help guide us in our journey. These are the values that we want to live by, regardless of how much else changes, to help us travel intentionally.
Anchor yourself.
It will be easy to get swept into the current of the new, and we know we’ll get exhausted from the stimuli. In order to stay grounded, we want to live by the habits that have meant the most to us in our daily lives here: reading, writing, cooking, and exercising. This year will be a chance for us to design our days, filling them with the activities that energize us. Although we’ll be adaptable as well, I’m hoping we can fall into some sort of routine: morning runs, afternoon writing sessions, reading and journaling before bed, and weekend meal preparation. It’ll help us feel at home, anywhere we go.
Outdoors > indoors.
As we plan our route, we’re going by the principle of “chasing summer.” We believe that if we visit a place when it’s warm, we’ll be able to pack lighter (avoiding the bulk of winter clothes) and have longer daylight hours to explore. As much as possible, we want to go places on foot—we’ll run to explore new neighborhoods and we’ll walk whenever we have a destination in mind.
Shop local.
We’re trying to let go of the notion that we need to buy everything in America before we leave. A friend told us she intentionally doesn’t pack certain things, so that she’ll have to search for them as soon as she gets to a new place—it’s a great excuse to start talking to locals and exploring a city. Plus, we want things that represent what makes a place special, whether it’s socks in Japan or merino wool base layers in New Zealand. Beyond physical possessions, we also want to buy foods from local markets and cook as much as we can.
Get side-tracked.
Since we’re traveling with specific goals and questions in mind, it can be easy to get too structured in our process. One of my friends told me about “averted vision,” which captures the idea that it’s easier to see a star with the naked eye if you look slightly to its side instead of directly at it. Similarly, when we visit a popular tourist attraction, like the Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, or Grand Canyon, it’s natural to look for the sight we think we should be seeing: the classic postcard moment—but when we feel biased toward having the quintessential experience, then it’s hard to see what else is there. We could be looking so hard for the most interesting content to write about (e.g. public spaces, street art, design culture) that we completely miss all the opportunities around it.
Recognize that every city is a gift.
This is a lyric pulled from Florence and the Machine’s song “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.” We know it’ll be inevitable to experience burnout or frustrations after the initial excitement of a place fades away, but we want to remember to be grateful. We need to remember it’s ultimately a growing experience for us—one of the reasons we’re leaving is because we want to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Design your own curriculum.
We want to use our travels as a learning experience—not just in terms of new cultures and languages, but also in terms of developing our creative skills and design sensibilities. There are many things we want to explore, from photography to cooking, and we want to use this time to experiment and invest in ourselves. We’re describing this trip as our version of continuing education, like grad school. There’s a David Brooks quote I think about quite often: “We don’t become better because we acquire new information. We become better because we acquire better loves…education is a process of love formation…it should offer you new things to love.” If we’re able to uncover new loves or deepen old ones, then this trip will be considered a success.
Love the things you bring.
While there are so many recommendations to get the most practical clothing and travel gear, it’s also important for us to feel comfortable and confident in what we bring with us. We want to wear what we feel good in, so we can feel better wherever we go. We’re simplifying our wardrobe, and we’re trying to strike the right balance between form and function.
Pass things along.
We should love what we own, but we should also be ready to let go of it. As we’re moving out of our apartment, we’re actively learning that there’s beauty in giving things away—not only will they get new life, but they also get to benefit other people. We’ll be living lightly, so there’s no point in holding onto what we can’t fully appreciate. We’re thinking about personal value more than objective value and shedding what we can. Lightness can be abundance.
Actively reach out.
It’s always hard to make friends in a new setting, but we want to fully dive in wherever we go. We hope to always reach out to like-minded people who inspire us, to be bold and to feel comfortable asking for what we want. Confidence is simply about turning thoughts into action, and we want to act more than we hesitate. I frequently think about the Joseph Campbell quote, “If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you.”
Find communities.
Beyond reaching out to inspiring individuals and close friends, we also want to meet people through our interests. One of my friends loves swimming, and she told me how she started every morning of her travels in a Japanese bathhouse. This was a way for her to be a part of the local culture, despite not speaking Japanese.
Travel slow.
Instead of checking off tourist sights from a list and bouncing from one place to the next with the time we have, we want to slow down and savor. One of my friends used the word marinate and I liked the idea of being infused with a place’s local flavor. It will take time to experience a place fully and tune into a city’s pulse.
Let the realizations come to you.
Travel is a time of personal growth, but it’s important to let it happen gradually and naturally. One of our friends gave us wise advice: don’t try to package everything into a lesson. Instead, we’ll simply pay attention to our inflection points and be honest with ourselves when we hit our personal crossroads.
Stay in touch with friends and family.
I’ve often heard the quote: it’s easier to leave than to be the one left behind. We want to make sure we stay in touch with people we care about—whether that means going out of our way to visit them, inviting them to stay with us, or sending postcards and gifts.
Value alone time as much as team time.
We’ll be traveling as a pair, which means it’ll be easy to spend all of our time together. However, we’ll deliberately carve out time for ourselves as well, since we don’t want to miss out on the reflection and freedom of being on our own.
Write while you’re there.
We’ll be documenting our adventures in each city through the form of interviews, observations, and photographs. However, we recognize that it’s easy to fall behind and try to backfill posts. To avoid this, we’ll aim to wrap things up while we are in each place, so that we can be fully present in our next destination as well.
Quality over quantity—except in your work.
Whenever we make decisions about how we want to spend our time or money, we generally prioritize quality. However, we know that we can easily get paralyzed when we aim for “high quality” work, and it can hold us back. We want to have a mindset where we produce as much as we can and practice our creative skills frequently. Constant iteration will lead to quality, but we can’t start from there.
Embrace the zeitgeist.
This year, we’ll return to places that we’ve visited in the past. It’s tempting to prioritize the new, but we also want to remember that we’re never quite “done” with a place. No matter how many times we’ve visited, there will always be a mix of different conditions—you can’t have the same experience twice.
Prioritize health.
We’ll be pushing our bodies to different extremes on this trip, and our health will be the foundation for everything. I have a lot of cheesy sayings to capture my perspective (e.g. health is wealth, food is mood), but overall I feel like it’s important to get the basics of sleep, food, and exercise right. It’ll be directly correlated to our happiness, and we want to keep our energy levels up to experience the city at our best. Even if we have to go slightly out of our way, like carrying healthy snacks throughout the day or getting a temporary gym membership, it’ll be worth it.
Leave well.
It’s been bittersweet to wrap up our time in San Francisco, but a big lesson has been leaving well. We’ve been spending our days having coffee chats with friends and co-workers, visiting our favorite places, and reflecting on everything we’ve learned. It’s been a really fulfilling and heartwarming experience, and it’s surprising how much you can learn from leaving—you really start to experience and appreciate a place more, and you understand your own life more as well. For every new place we visit, we want to leave well, too—whether we’re leaving a piece of us there or bringing a piece of it with us.