Everytime I travel somewhere new, I make a new journal documenting well, basically everything. No meal or sight is left undocumented. My partner reads these little journals and is impressed that every little chicken nugget I eat has profound signifigance to me. Well, I interpret it as being a super neurotic traveler.
By now, I have a couple of shelves filled with notebooks and scrapbooks. I have journals just for travels, notebooks saved from school and work, and regular diaries, too. Did I already say that I’m neurotic?
The last four years of short-term travels have been documented in adhesive-backed photo albums. My mom used these same albums to document my childhood, so that’s probably why I lean towards these. You can save just about anything in it’s pages. It’s therapeutic for me especially after the trip to think about it. I find that after a long plane or car ride, you need one day to just do some bullshit with your hands and write a silly little story. It’s like therapy – filing away the little receipts and ticket stubs. For longer trips, I journal each day instead of afterwards.
This year is 2020 and because of covid, there are even fewer pages. I planned on summer trips to Connecticut, Atlanta, Orlando, and Tucson, but none of them happened. I wonder if we will ever “return” to normal and what did that even mean?