The essence of travel

So I write a blog about the essence of friendship and
choose a picture of me..... alone!

Travelling is about the simple things in life. It is the ultimate equaliser:  Everyone is in the same financial position, and this financial position is known as skint! Travelling isn’t about the clothes you wear, the post code you were brought up in, the car you’ve left behind… It’s about the raw friendship, the essence of a person, a pure connection uninfluenced by external factors. My friend Angela put it simply as “It’s just friendship and taking care of each other… an adopted family… travelling is truly living.”

 

The concept of travelling has evolved and has become more commonplace amongst thousands of young adults as time has progressed. So why do so many people flood the borders of other countries? I think each of us has our own personal motivations for setting off and seeing the world.  My friends and family used to share their tales of travelling and they riveted me, more because of the people they met and the things they got up to rather than the things they saw. I loved it when they returned from their travels with new friends and partners from different cultures in tow.

Initially, when I embarked on my travels, I thought I was going for the sightseeing. I had grand plans of soaking up the sights in New York, getting off the beaten track in eastern Canada and getting the adrenaline pumping through Australia, but I very quickly learned that I was gaining more from the experiences and the people than the sights.  Of course, no, not everyone you meet is nice. I’ll be honest - you meet more than a few complete lunatics while you are travelling! There was one night where someone in our hostel room turned all the lights on at 1am and ran around completely naked, yelling about freeing a cockroach from the prison of the room. Unfortunately not everyone you meet will be well meaning and ‘normal’. However, I met some amazing people and made lifelong friendships.

I have to admit I went into the whole thing with more than a little naivety. The experiences of travelling are too much to capture in a blog, but I remember going to a karaoke night in Ohio at aged 19. After several rounds of ‘I Will Survive’, the bar closed and we had to make our way home. Being in the middle of nowhere, my newfound group of friends and I decided to walk back, an activity that apparently is worthy of investigation by the police because they promptly pulled over in front of us and asked for ID. My friends were both over 21, but I was a young baby faced 19 year old thinking how strange it was that the police ask for ID for a walk home. It turns out that after midnight in Ohio, if you are under 21, you’re not allowed to be walking on the street so we were given a police escort back to our accommodation. No dramas there, but certainly an indication of how my eyes started to be opened to the fact that not everywhere is like little old Nailsea in the west of England.

The experiences I have from travelling and the memories I have retained are some of the best from my lifetime (so far!).  I love looking back on my photos and reading my journal from that time. I have been so lucky to see some of the world’s iconic sights, but by far the best thing to come out of my time travelling was the people I got to know and the experiences we shared. I wish our memories had the capacity to store all the little moments and bring them back in HD format to the mind’s eye: The photos I have just don’t do those justice.

A favourite quote of mine comes from the TV show, Orange Is The New Black: “I think that when you have a connection with someone it never really goes away, you know? You snap back to being important to each other because you still are.” My book explores those connections with people:  The friendships you make and then the deeper connections you form. The question is, can those connections be maintained once you return to the real world? 

The first few steps start with the first few bars....

"Looking back on my self-discovery, the reason for my journey was always to be accepted and loved."

I love music. I mean I REALLY love music. It can pick you up and transport you back to a moment in time: For me, music is my very own personal time machine. The moment the song lifts you back to can be only minutes long or it can be a whole year of your life. In just a few bars your song replays those emotions, the smells, the sights and the moment overwhelms you, washes over you.  That is why I love music.

I had been trying to write my book for a number of years, but every time I sat down to write it I would get only a few pages in and then scrap the idea as it never really felt right. Essentially I wanted to write a story of self-discovery - I knew the content of the story but not how to write it. It was music that finally lifted the dreaded writer’s block.  On another long, unproductive evening sat in front of my computer, I pressed play on my iPod: Suddenly the words were flowing and it all felt right.

The music playing took me back to a hugely important period of time in my life and it allowed the words to pour out of my head and onto paper. It took me back to travelling and the time I found ‘me’. It may sound very self-absorbed and like a ‘first world problem’ to some, but we each have personal challenges and mine was accepting who I was.

It should be very easy for the words to flow when you are writing from personal experience, but music is what kick-started it for me. The book is a fictional tale, but the emotions and self-realisation experienced by the protagonist are not and I make no apology for that. I want my audience to relate and to realise that we all face personal challenges and, although sometimes they feel overwhelming, given time we come out the other side wiser, stronger and enlightened. At least that is the theory:  I know sometimes as humans we also like to repeat the same mistakes over and over again!

I use music as a key theme throughout the book, I guess, as a way of citing tracks that I feel are lyrically relatable. I see it as a musical education for the reader, but also for myself as the book is based in a time before my own adolescence and reference.

So it seems this week’s blog is slightly more serious than I intended it to be, but, then, there is a serious message that underlines the story in my book.  Looking back on my self-discovery, the reason for my journey was always to be accepted and loved. I didn’t like the thought that some people may dislike me due to the person I fell in love with: After all, falling in love is chemical and you cannot choose who that person is. It seems unfair to live in a world where love, which is usually an amazing and happy experience, can be tarnished by fear and lack of acceptance. It makes the world a darker place where you cannot share what should be one of the happiest periods of your life. 

Like Frank Ocean said in the song Bad Religion, ‘I swear I’ve got three lives balanced on my head like steak knives, I can’t tell you the truth about my disguise, I can’t trust no one’.  It seems sad that a song about loving someone is called Bad Religion and ends with the lyrics ‘Only bad, only bad religion could have me feeling the way I do’.

On a brighter note though, the world is evolving and it is becoming more accepting. I hope my little story contributes to just one person being better educated and less ignorant around the topic of sexuality.

Writing a book

It all starts with a blank page

So in the modern era I have been informed that I need to write a blog. I am not sure what to write in my first blog. You maybe thinking.... Why are you writing a blog? Well, I have written a book and I would like a lot of people to read it. My preference is that people read it and love it; to get you to read it then I need to let you know that I have written it.

The book is an idea I have had for ten years. The main motivation for writing the book is to share my experiences of travelling but most importantly talk about human relationships as it is something I have always found interesting. I have always found it fascinating how we meet people, why our paths cross and ultimately why our paths were meant to cross in the first place. Why do we get on with certain people? Why is it around some people we 'feel' a connection? Is it chemical? Is it fate? I know this may sound a little cheesy and it probably is but isn't that what life is about?

I am still in the process of editing the story and making sure that it is ready for the human eye; there are all sorts of hurdles to go yet. I am not a grammatical expert..... so that will need to be sorted as unfortunately some people judge you on grammar and not the story. I also need to finish this gin and tonic. That is also very important.

I often question that I am a lady due to my inability to multi-task but I am currently watching 'orange is the new black' while typing. I think this will at least earn me a certificate..... or something.

Anyway, there will be more over the coming weeks. This is just a sample of my random thoughts... which come out more in the book but with a bit of a story for structure. Although to be honest I do lack a bit of structure.... so you can expect that too.