We live in a time where we are less inclined to commit to full scale travel diaries and written recounts of our adventures. However, Travel Editor Ella Ruddle explores non-arduous but equally as sentimental options for documenting our adventures.
Recently I was going through all the pictures, mementos and keepsakes my nana has kept over the years to create a presentation for her 90th birthday. Among an array of hoarded paraphernalia was a thick, bound book that had clearly been revisited over the years.
My great-grandmother had won the lottery in the 1950s and taken Nana on a European tour from New Zealand. Nana was a trained typist, so throughout her journey she recapped the events and sightings of every single day in shorthand. When she returned to New Zealand she typed out all the shorthand notes into a storied account of her travels accompanied with printed photographs.
When I stumbled across this book my first thought was how impressive my Nana’s discipline was to take notes every day. I’m not sure about you, but I have started and abandoned several journals and travel diaries in my time. While I can’t speak for everyone, in contemporary times I don't believe we are as inclined to take daily notes of our travels and turn them into bound books. However, I believe we still do have that same desire to remember, document, and share our adventures.
So what are the best ways to do this that align with our waning attention spans and growing online presence?
On my recent trip, while I couldn’t commit to a journal, I did two intentional things that meant I had written memories to look back on. The first was spending five minutes in the Notes app on my phone each day. Five minutes was manageable, and my Notes app seemed like a place I could easily gravitate towards. In each entry I wrote the date and one memorable story from the day. I forgot some days, and others I wrote one sentence, but I now have a notes app full of tiny anecdotes and stories to look back on.
I tend to be anti-souvenirs, as these are often a waste of money, bad for the environment, something that weighs your bag down, and fairly unrepresentative of the history and culture of a place. However, I empathise with the urge to get a little something to take away from a place.
So instead on my trip I would purchase a postcard at each destination - not to send to anyone, but to ‘send’ to myself. On the back of each I wrote where I stayed, how long for and things I saw. This way I had something physical to remember my trip by that didn’t weigh my bag down or get lost in a drawer with all my other abandoned mementos. While not quite as special as a bound book, it is something I continue to look back on.
Besides using Instagram as a picture diary, there are other ways to visually document your travels. For example, if your phone has the capacity, leave the ‘live photo’ feature on when you take pictures. This way when you are inevitably taking one million pictures of your friends in front of the sunset, you capture the whole moment. The seconds captured before of your friends giggling make the image even more special to look back on.
Posting our travels on social media leaves us caught up with how it is perceived. Perhaps try using a film camera as opposed to your phone, so you have no idea what the picture looks like. Taking the pressure off allows you to just snap away, and often these random images you get back are the truest reflections of your travels.
I love getting back from a trip and gathering all the memorabilia together in a box so that every so often I can sit on my bedroom floor, open the box and dive into those memories. I would love for our generation to be like my nana’s and write full length novel journals of our adventures. However, these modern day iterations might work just as well.