What we leave behind
An almost empty beach in Brighton. If you look closely you can see the red "Danger" sign on the left-hand sign saying that the winds are too strong to enter the water.
An interesting thing about extended travel is that it really gives you time to miss different things than shorter trips. It's easy to miss my own bed on any length of trip, but there are some things where a quick deprivation would go unnoticed, being revealed only when lacking for a longer time. I find now, over three weeks into a four week trip, that something I terribly miss is sitting at my desk. AirBnbs—especially AirBnbs in Europe—very rarely contain a desk at all, and even more rarely contain a desk positioned in such a way as to be useful.
Sitting at a desk makes me feel empowered. It makes me feel rooted, centered, steadied, and calm. A desk is a place where a great number of things may be within reach, and shifting between multiple activities—reading, writing, thinking, brainstorming, cleaning, fixing, and so on—becomes effortless. Travel accommodations force a different kind of item management, one where space is at a premium and nothing can be simply left where it was last used without impeding the use of another person or item. On longer trips in the past I've missed writing, or being alone, or music, but for this trip, I miss sitting at my desk.
...that, and bathrooms large enough to sit down and stand up in without bumping into the door, walls, and sink.
What extra-ordinary thing do you find you miss on extended trips? Why do you think you miss it?
After reading about the magical Japanese art of luggage-forwarding, I am incredibly envious of the travelers that get to take advantage of this service. Japan inches higher on my personal "to visit" list.
As someone with a love of paper, I sympathize with many of the people in this recent BBC article about why we may never give up on paper. Truly, there's nothing like it, and I hope that we certainly don't remove it entirely from our lives, I think we'd be losing more than we'd know.
I've written some things about friendship previously in this newsletter, and Delilah shared another one with me, about handwritten letters as a method to fix the "male friendship recession." The idea is that handwritten letters grow in intimacy over the immediacy of technology, and decouple the anxiety of being "responsive" that digital communication entails. I've penned a couple of hand-written letters over the past year, and never regretted it. I think I'd like to make it a more frequent habit.
I've entitled this newsletter "What we leave behind" for multiple reasons. One, for the things we miss while traveling. Another for what we give up when we give up paper. Finally, for what we give up and leave behind when we become isolated, leaving behind the rootedness of our institutions. Joey Hiles has written an incisive Plough essay asking "why are we lonely?" and looking to Alexis de Tocqueville for answers. I highly recommend reading and discussing it with someone. Once you've read it: what makes you personally feel rooted rather than just physically preset? What are you rooted to?