Field Notes | No. 1
Grab a pen and paper. Something new is coming to this newsletter.
Field Notes are what you jot down in the moment. In between the margins, off the side of your desk, on an airplane, or under a flashlight in a tent. They are raw, unfiltered, before the mind has a chance to edit. A few times a month I'll be sharing a story and a journaling prompt to help you do the same. This is the first one. Try the prompt and let me know what comes up!
What is Field Notes?
Traveling is like a big chunk of clay. Writing is what happens when we hold it in our hands, flip upside-down and look at it from all angles. Writing is the process of transforming a lived experience into a deeper understanding and turning it into something tangible.
To me, travel doesn’t feel complete until it transforms from experience to words. At first, writing was a way of preserving memories. Then it became a way of sharing the travel story with others. Now, I’ve realized the process of writing is what deepens our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. Writing is alchemy.
I’ve come to interpret alchemy as the chemistry of the human psyche, our childhood, travels, careers, love stories, challenges, wounds, friends, and choices. Alchemy is the cocktail of all the things that make you, you.
The power of a blank page
Over the past five years, I’ve spent a lot of time adventuring around the world. Writing has been the vehicle for self-reflection. While it can feel uncomfortable processing things that happen to us, it can also become freeing.
The intimidation of a blank page became my standard ritual. The solitude of cafes became a safe haven for writing. Words spilled out of me on trains, planes, ferry boats, in hostels, and in parks. No trip became complete until I dumped everything about it into the pages of my journal. The biggest delight became not just the trip itself, but the aftermath. The sitting at my desk at home with a hot cup of coffee, poring over my scribbled notes from my travel journal and turning them into Helvetica font on my laptop. Writing is how I made meaning out of experience.
My identity soon became one of a traveling storyteller, my friends asking which stranger I befriended on my latest trip. What landscapes I visited, what interesting conversations I had, what food I felt was life-changing, and what I learned from my travels. The more I traveled and the more ink flowed from my pen, the more I felt my travel experiences became etched into my soul.
A lot of us travelers, endurance athletes, and adventurers have something in common. We intentionally throw ourselves out of our comfort zones and seek firsthand the transformative power a self-imposed challenge, because we know what it does for our personal growth.
That’s what I hope to do with these Field Notes journaling prompts— provide a space to explore our own thoughts and experiences, so we can mold these chunks of shapeless clay into something unique to us. Not only so that they remain in our memory forever, but so that we can see the intricate layers we add on to our lives. After all, it’s the experiences we go through and the people we meet along the way, who shape who we become.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I first heard that quote on a podcast about a decade ago and it’s attributed to psychologist Viktor Frankl. To me, writing is that space.
First, some rules:
Grab paper and pen. Yep, go analog. Read the following prompt then set a timer for just 10 minutes. Write as much as you can. Don’t pay attention to spelling or grammar, just let it spin out of you in whatever shape it wants to come out.
Your prompt:
What chunk of clay are you holding in your hands right now? Think about a recent experience you’ve had that still feels unfinished. Can you flip it upside down and look at it from a different angle? It can be something small, like the words you exchanged with the stranger on an airplane that keeps replaying in your head. It could be the jungle of thoughts that were going through your mind while at the gym. Maybe it’s a word you read on someone’s t-shirt while traveling (yep, that’s what sparked my “Saudade” journal entry in the second photo of this article), or what you learned from running a marathon. If you’re short on ideas, open your photos on your phone, close your eyes, scroll and stop. Write about whatever memory that photo brings back.
What do you think of this format? I'll still be writing stories as usual, but you can expect Field Notes a couple of times a month from here on out. Leave a like or a comment below. And if you try the prompt, I’d love to hear about it!
Everything can be looked at as an experience, even the mundane. Each day, no matter how routine, how upsetting, how uplifting, is an opportunity to examine our reaction and interpretation of the events that occurred. Travel though, enables one to see life through a new and fresh lens. Victor Frankl’s quote, which you shared with me before, 🙏, is one that I reflect on almost daily. Your new idea of writing prompts is clever and inspiring. I look forward to hearing more from you and others.