February 3, 2023
Happy Friday, travelers! This week has been one of promise, of settling comfortably into life’s changes and milestones toward new opportunities.
I recently moved into what I’m calling The Bachelorette Pad. While stacks of books cover just about every surface1 until I finally decide on a bookshelf, this little studio is starting to feel like home.
This week, I also made the decision to carry my January social media vacation into the rest of 2023. Maybe indefinitely. Unless I’m traveling and sharing Stories from new countries, my plan is to be off the ‘gram. No scrolling. No posting.
Through this transition to my late 20s, moving, propelling my career in an unexpected2 direction, I’ve had to shift with the tides of change. My life today looks vastly different from when I first began sharing parts of my life on the Internet.
In 2019, when Sarah L. Travels was in its infancy, I wrote a new blog post every day.3 I was on Instagram constantly. The goal was to eventually monetize my blog and live off the income indefinitely.
But that’s not how it happened. Something changed in me. Or, rather, two major things:
One piece of this change was the emergence of opportunities that came from elsewhere. Opportunities I couldn’t pass up, that bring intellectual challenges and interesting people to work with. Most importantly, they pay well and they pay immediately. Not years and years down the road, which is the reality of bloggers before they make it. Thousands of hours of free work over years of consistent posting.
The other, though? The thought of living the full-time blogger life lost its luster within the first few months. Every monetized blog I read looked and sounded the same.4 The topics weren’t interesting to me personally. It took years to reach the point I’ve arrived now, thousands of subsequent moments since that first realization that I wanted something different.
Since the dawn of this year, I’ve upgraded my personal writing to a passion project. Whether or not it makes a full-time income no longer matters to me. In a way, I’ve demoted it from a side hustle. In another, it’s become exponentially better since financial pressure has been removed and my creativity can just flow.
When a part of my brain isn’t constantly planning how to “succeed” online, what I need to content plan for Instagram, my entire mind can be on the writing. Which is how it always should have been. The written word was the point the whole time—everything else was just a supplement, a creative medium.
All of these realizations came to a head in the days since I last wrote you, in part because of a few amazing essays from other writers on why they left social media.
In her essay on why she left Instagram, Tsh Oxenreider said something I could not stop thinking about: “it (Instagram) shortens our attention spans, it’s taught us to reach for the phone instead of enjoying the merits of boredom…” Emphasis mine.
The merits of boredom. I could not get that out of my mind. I knew instantly that Tsh is right. How many of my best writing ideas came when I was just sitting in the silence with nothing else to do? How deeply did I enjoy the soft caress of a mountain breeze as I sat on Marielis’ porch in Viñales? If it were any country but Cuba, where Internet is limited, I would have been on my phone. This time, I read Women Talking and watched the bougainvillea dance in the wind.
Forgive me for burying the lede, but it’s as simple as this: the merits of boredom make us better travelers. And because this space is about more than travel—it’s really about life—the merits of boredom are an invitation to sit with ourselves. To get comfortable in the discomfort, alone with the one person we will be with every second until our last.
For me personally, it’s looked like reflecting on how I will change the way I capture the Journey to 197. How many moments could I bear witness to without looking at my phone? How many interactions with strangers can I have without thinking about documenting it later? What do I hold close, and what do I share? How much more deeply can I pay attention when I’m no longer thinking about succeeding online?
In all the lasting memories of countries 1 to 26, I could not tell you where my phone even was. Maybe screen-side down on a table, or tucked away in my purse? The best part is I forgot where my extra limb was for a moment and partook in the vagabonding of old, the travel experiences all over the world that got people on the road and kept them there, even if it meant awful pay and long stretches of time away from family.
Whatever the cost, it was worth it for one more waltz through the Bangkok flower market. For one more Havana rum mojito from that little paladar in the plaza. For one more temple excursion in Angkor, for one more day not knowing what comes next.
For one more sunset, salt in the air as the sky went from cerulean, to marigold, to indigo. Eyes wide open. Just me and the road.
All of it was camera-ready, Instagram-worthy, but that was never the question.
The real question was always the reverse.
What’s On My Tray Table
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The year was 1932. King George V5 reigned. Ripples of gossip spread across Europe about a new political party in Germany. The English heard about it here and there, but no one knew exactly what was to come. After all, how could they?
As all of the above happened around him, Aldous Huxley wrote this novel, one of the most famous ever written. I’m sure he also didn’t know the National Socialist German Students’ League would enthusiastically burn it during one of their famous rallies.
The context around the novel is fascinating, but the world within its pages is almost unbelievable. The society Huxley created manufactures human beings to maintain a strict caste system. So strict, in fact, that people on the lower levels of society are conditioned to want their boring jobs and nothing else. No one has parents. Marriage is a thing of the past. Henry Ford is their deity. Everyone’s purpose is stability.
That is, until someone outside the civilization threatens everything it is built on.
There is much more I could say about it here, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. This was my pick for the reading challenge, and it delivered.
I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy
My least favorite genre is self-help, but my second-least favorite is celebrity memoir. Except for this one. I flew through this book in two days.
I mostly want to tell Jennette how sorry I am that she suffered basically her entire childhood and adolescence, while the world mainly cared about how well she could entertain us.
This memoir is in no way overhyped—McCurdy’s upbringing will surprise any reader. It certainly shocked me. But aside from its poignancy and comedy, this book was written by McCurdy herself,6 and the written word has always been her first love. When I saw she isn’t on the iCarly reboot, I was so happy for her.
By the end of the first half, you, too will be glad Jennette is free.
Be brave and stay that way,
Sarah
P.s. In case you enjoy link roundups and missed my post earlier this week, you can see January Links here.
And why is it that I have so many books I still haven’t read? I know I can’t be the only one.
In all the best ways!
Sometimes, I still can’t believe that. How in the world did I do that?!?
With a few exceptions, which are those I continue to follow to this day.
Queen Elizabeth’s father
Not a ghostwriter, which is typically the case with celeb memoirs.