Not a Travel Writer

I have to face up to the fact that I am just not a travel writer. My least favorite part about all the research papers I had to do in college was the part you have to devote the most time to: research. I'm not a big fan of looking up dates, names, citing sources, and all that malarkey. If Wikipedia was a credible source then I, like the rest of every campus community, would probably jump on board and let it be our one-stop information shop.

What I am interested in is recording my reactions, feelings and outlooks on events and activities in my life. I love learning, be it from reading a book or exploring a new culture. But once the experience has been lived, it feels so tedious and boring to go back and recollect it, and to point to all the things I learned about it for other people. I have started numerous blog posts, waiting to be published, about the things I have done. But lacking the interest to go and regurgitate facts about them (and a keen interest in having the posts seem "legitimate"), they have remained only a few lines long, with notes like "add interesting historical facts here." I guess it's good this is a blog, and not something more respectable.

I hoped to keep this blog as a way of getting some travel writing under my belt. In case I ever wanted to get a job where I could travel the world and get paid to do it, this seemed like a pretty legit way to kill two birds with one stone as it were.

But unfortunately I'm just not into it. I'm really into storytelling, honing a visual narrative and creating universes. The real world, thank goodness for it, gives me inspiration and holds my interest every day. But you're not going to get much more out of me other than how I "feel" about it.

Yesterday I was coming down with a good deal of self-doubt over being an artist. I continue to have trouble categorizing what I want to do. Do I want to be in the world of film? Video-Games? Comic illustration? Music? Writing? Acting and performance? Stand-up? Animation? I admire and have a desire (and occasionally a knack) for all of these activities, with a deep respect for all of the mediums. But the world seems to want us to be categorized and rigid in these desires.

I was watching "Inside the Actor's Studio," a truly great show where various celebrities are often interviewed about their craft. I watched the two on Robin Williams and Steven Spielberg. Whenever I watch these things, about celebrities discussing how they became successful, I always feel like I've started too late, or I'm not in the right place. Mostly I get an overwhelming fear of success, and an overwhelming sadness at what I will become if I don't try to overcome it. I'm already 24. Its about damn time I got over myself and started being part of this big world.

I inherited a lot of wonderful things from my parents, but two rather detrimental ones too: From my mother, a constant anguishing preoccupation with money and trying to have enough of it; from my father, a stern insistence that art made in the pursuit of making money was not truly "art." Along with these preoccupations being melded with some insistent fears of my own, I have grown up thinking that doing the things I want to will not get me anywhere. I have grown up seemingly in the shadow of giants, people I could never see myself becoming. But there's a fault in logic there, right? If I beat myself up for NOT being like Steven Spielberg, or Bob Marley, or Bill Watterson, why don't I ever praise myself for also NOT being like Adolph Hitler, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or any number of drug abusers et. all? It's a great blessing to not be like anyone else, because everyone is a total individual if they just let themselves be one.

Luckily, the great thing about watching "Inside the Actor's Studio" is that eventually the feeling turns the other way. Hearing the stories of the people I admire gets me thinking about doing the things I want to do for the sheer pleasure of wanting to do them. In his interview Steven Spielberg said that most of his movies are personal therapy sessions, and that the great responsibility an artist has to society is to get to know themselves. When you let yourself into the process, and allow yourself to be seen through your art, whatever medium it may be, is when magic stuff begins to happen.

So this morning I meditated on where this puts me. The truth is, I don't want to be a travel writer. I don't want to be a concert pianist, or an architect or a volunteer relief worker in Africa. I want to be a storyteller, and I want to use whatever medium fits my standards of that story. I want to be able to make a comic book, make a movie, write a song, write a book, and not worry about how I'm presenting myself commercially because that doesn't matter. That shouldn't matter. I'm ready to throw myself into letting people know who I am. Though it may not seem to have much good to do in the wider world, I really hope my capacity to understand the world's pain, its laughter and its humanity transforms into something that can help make someone's life a little better.

I'm ready to take the reins and do whatever it takes to allow me to continue doing this.

I'm also ready to say this is probably not going to be a blog about much traveling. There will be plenty about MY travels. But I'm not a travel writer.