Zero To Travel Podcast

Lavinia Spalding 0:00
that feeling of being anchored is really nice when we're traveling. I mean, traveling can be really disorienting it can be dysregulated. And to just sit with your journal with especially a handwritten journal, and reflect and figure out why the things that you've been doing have meaning. It's such a gateway to self discovery and

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you're listening to the zero to travel Podcast where we explore exciting travel based work, lifestyle and business opportunities, helping you to achieve your wildest travel dreams. Now, your host World wonder and travel junkie, Jason Moore.

Jason Moore 0:49
Hey, it's Jason weds your travel.com Welcome to the show, my friend. Thanks for hanging out, letting me bring a little travel into your ears today. This is the show to help you travel the world on your terms to fill your life with as much travel as you desire no matter what your situation or experience. How are you today, my friend got a wonderful show on a topic that believe it or not, we have never covered on this euro travel podcast after hundreds of episodes. We've never talked about travel journaling, which in many ways, is an essential part of the travel experience. And you'll hear why in this episode at the top you heard a clip from my guest today Lavinia Spalding, who is a award winning author and editor. She has published nine books Her work has won gold, Lowell Thomas and soul loss, travel writing awards. And she also teaches writing workshops around the world. She has a TEDx talk, as well around travel writing in global change. And one of the books that she wrote is called Writing away a creative guide to awakening the journal writing traveler. And when I saw this, I thought, wow, I mean, well, a journal and travel the they're just something that pair extremely well together, right? It's almost an essential piece of travel gear. And I feel like this is true. Even if you are not a writer, don't consider yourself a writer, having a little notebook with you, or something to capture the memories, the thoughts, the moments. And why don't we level up our travel journaling game here today and get some tips from a pro. So that's what we do we talk about some of Lavinia is transformative trips. She shares how living in South Korea for six years changed her life, we get into a lot of the journaling talk why a journal might teach you something that you can't learn anywhere else. And what makes them so special how to spice up your travel journal by including more than just your writing, she shares, tips, tricks and best practices for journaling. In general, how travel mix writers have us all, how to build that habit of journaling, which is something I've struggled with, and loads more. It's all coming in this show today. And I've got a couple other things as well, if you want to stick around. On the back end, something that came up in our conversation kind of sparked a reminder of a recipe I came up with, it's really easy to remember this recipe. It's not a food recipe. It's actually a recipe for helping you achieve great things in your life. I know this is a bit of a bold statement. But you'll understand what I'm saying when I share what this recipe is after the interview. So stick around for that segment now. I want to give a shout out to somebody in this community who is doing something that's quote crazy to them. And you'll hear why in just a moment. This is one of the fellow listeners in this community. I love highlighting listener stories by the way. You hear me say it every time if you ever want to get in touch Jason at zero to travel.com is my email. And I've got that handy dandy link. Yes, I said handy dandy. I don't know why in the show notes for you to leave a voice message, which is a really easy thing to do. So please make this a two way conversation. Get in touch share your story. Let me know what is up. This is a community power show after all. First, you are the boss of your own life. But Are you the boss of your own finances US Bank offers a wide range of credit cards for a wide variety of financial needs. And one of its most useful cards is the US Bank visa platinum card with a low introductory APR for 24 billing cycles this card is a tool for getting ahead. 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But that's not the only cause we have a lot of roles in our life that can lead us to feeling burned out BetterHelp online therapy wants to remind you to prioritize yourself and talking to someone can help you figure out what's causing you stress in your life. And I've actually used BetterHelp to talk to somebody. And it was great. I mean, I'm an expat based in Norway, I can do it from here, or I can do it from anywhere. And you know, that's valuable for travelers for digital nomads for people running location independent businesses, remote workers, all of that you want to have that consistency. And it's pretty cool because they onboard you with some simple questions. And you really have to identify what it is you want to talk about. And they make it really easy. So you get 10% off for being a listener of this show. If you go to better help hvlp.com/zero to travel, that's BetterHelp b e t t e r h e l p.com/zero. To travel all one word that will take you to that special offer, and you will be matched with a therapist and under 48 hours, you can sign up over there using that link. That's better help h e l p.com/zero. To travel thank you to better help.com online therapy for supporting today's show. Now a quick shout out to a listener before we get into the interview. This is for Jesse who's doing something that I plan on doing one day fairly soon as well. She says Hi Jason. My name is Jesse I've been binging on easier to travel podcast over the last couple of weeks love the show and hearing everybody's different stories. Thanks for all you do my family husband, myself and two boys age four and two who are preparing to head out on a family gap year where we will travel the world. This is quote unquote crazy for a few reasons. First, we have barely traveled at all outside of our honeymoon to Bermuda. We have only traveled for two short work trips Barcelona and Aruba to we are quitting our stable six figure corporate jobs and selling our house plus most of our possessions to make this possible three that I mentioned the two young boys Ah,

thanks again for sharing your wisdom and the stories of others is so helpful and encouraging. And she did mention offering yourself up as a guest for one of these transition to travel episodes. If you haven't heard one before, if you're new to the podcast, just search, transition to travel in the feed. These are some of my favorite episodes to put together where we interview somebody before a crazy adventure and after and see how the trip went if it was the right decision to leave your job, and so on. And those are some of the more popular episodes. So I will in fact be trying to record one of these with Jesse and we are getting in touch. So anyway, thanks for reaching out and inspiring me once again to look into my own family Gap Year, which is happening soon. That's the plan. That is my plan anyway, maybe I'll have to sell everybody on it a bit. We'll see. All right, let's slip and slide into this interview. Now again, stick around on the other side for that success recipe we'll call it for achieving things in life. And I'll leave you with a quote as well on writing to wrap this up. So please enjoy this chat with my friend Lavinia and I will see you on the other side.

I am on the line with Lavinia Spalding who is an award winning author and editor who has published 10 books and is also the co host of the wonderful storytelling podcast. There she goes, which features travel stories told by the women who wrote them you can learn more about her work at Lavinia spalding.com got a lot of fun things to talk about today is Lavinia. Welcome to the zero to travel podcast, my friend.

Lavinia Spalding 9:23
Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Jason Moore 9:26
I wanted to talk about your town New Orleans, which is a place that's near and dear to my heart. It's one of those towns where you just don't feel like you're even in the USA and in some ways, and the music and the food. So like how did you end up in New Orleans from Flagstaff where you grew up, which is like a mountain kind of rugged mountain town college town. Right?

Lavinia Spalding 9:50
Right. I took a very circuitous route. I actually grew up in Kensington, New Hampshire until I was 10. And then I moved of Flagstaff. And then I moved around quite a bit. Boston, Utah, South Korea for six years, and San Francisco. And in San Francisco, I met a guy. And the guy had been trying to figure out how to live in New Orleans. For like, 25 years, I started, I think, trying to talk me into moving here on their second date. And I ended up marrying that guy. And so here we are.

Jason Moore 10:32
So was it one of those situations where on like, the second date, you guys both felt like this is probably the person I'm going to marry? Was it that kind of thing?

Lavinia Spalding 10:39
Well, he felt that way. I had a feeling I had a feeling we both had a hunch. And so then we had a baby, and the baby started to crawl. And we were in a little one bedroom in San Francisco, and we needed more space. And he said, Well, we can either move to the suburbs of San Francisco, or we can move, we could try New Orleans. And I was very resistant, because my whole community in San Francisco, I just had an extraordinary community there. And I didn't want to leave. And finally he said, Well, you know, New Orleans is kind of the closest you can get to being an expat and still live in the country. And I was like, All right, When do we leave?

Jason Moore 11:32
That's a good sales proposition, I would say.

Lavinia Spalding 11:35
Anyways, it is it really has its own culture, it has its own cuisine has things that you literally cannot find anywhere else in the country.

Jason Moore 11:46
No. Yeah. And how long have you been there now?

Lavinia Spalding 11:49
We've been here, five and a half years. Okay.

Jason Moore 11:55
Well, yeah, when you travel or when you're traveling long term, you know, that's kind of built in, right, like detaching from can maybe community or your sense of belonging to it, maybe not your sense of belonging to replace, but, you know, you're pulled out of your sort of everyday life there. And I do feel like that, that is an exercise in detachment. Right? And so moving to another city, that's like, like your husband said, I mean, that seems like a permanent a permanent detachment from some part of your life that is really like a closed chapter in many ways. Right? Was that was that hard for you? In the beginning, I can relate cuz when I moved to Oslo, it was like, I don't think I realized how impactful it was going to be to like totally close the Colorado chapter in my life where I was living beforehand.

Lavinia Spalding 12:39
Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I left with the, with the intention to keep a foot in both places. And you know, my publishers are there. I'm on the faculty of a conference, that book passage travel writing conference every year. My I have so many friends, my goddaughter. And so I thought, well, I'm going to move to New Orleans. And because it's so much cheaper to live in New Orleans, I'll be able to afford to come back a lot. And stay and, and I was I was doing that pretty well until the pandemic hit. And now I haven't been back in so long. And that's hard. But um, yeah, it was it was tricky at first. At first, it was wonderful to be here. And I just connected with with it in a big way. And with the joy and the music, and the just the kind of the food and the spirit of New Orleans is is just, it's contagious. And then I went through a real slump of being extremely homesick for the Bay Area. But this was actually kind of it was interesting. To me, I realized that I really fell in love with New Orleans during the pandemic, like it was a great place to be, it still is a great place that we're not, you know, out of it. But um, but when the world shut down, and it felt like I couldn't travel. I just dug in really deep to the culture here. I wrote, I co wrote the Frommers easy guide to New Orleans and I started writing a bunch of articles about New Orleans, I started really becoming a tourist here. And it was a it was a nice time to be here because New Orleans Orleanians have this sort of resilient spirits and no one was really too stressed out here. They were just like, yeah, we'll just have our music outside instead of inside and all of the restaurants have outside. Seating are not all of them, but a lot of them and so it was a pretty soft space to be.

Jason Moore 14:56
How did the diving in and starting to write about Your town change. Change it for you, if at all.

Lavinia Spalding 15:05
Well, I started the fight to feel like more of a resident. More of a local, connected. Yeah, no, we're New Orleans has a thing where if you didn't grow up here, if you didn't go to high school, you're kind of you can't say that you're, you're, you know, a newer Linnaean. But I started meeting so many cool people in my research and just, I had to learn so much about the history and that made me definitely feel a lot more connected. It's it's such a magical place. It really is. There's just, there's nowhere like it.

Jason Moore 15:40
There really isn't. My stomach, growl, just thinking about all the meals I've had there. And oh, and my wife hasn't been to New Orleans, and I'm really I would love to take her because it's just such a different place. You know, there's no place like it in the world. I know you can say that about a lot of places. But New Orleans is special. And it's really special. You know, I wanted to ask you about your first transformative trip because you've built a career around traveling. I'm wondering what the genesis of that was.

Lavinia Spalding 16:16
Hmm, well, I three trips come to mind. The first would probably be when I was 10. We moved my family moved from New Hampshire to Flagstaff, Arizona, and we took three weeks to drive across country in this old refurbished school bus that my my parents had named it Gilly ROM, which means song of the road in in the Romani language. And it was just it was very eye opening. I was already going to be a writer, I was working on a novel about three, three siblings with rhyming names Jenny Penny and Lenny. And that novel didn't end up going anywhere. But I was writing this novel and, and going across the country with my family and I there's still some of my strongest travel memories like my, my parents were beatniks and very unconventional. And my father was a concert, guitar, classical and flamenco guitarist. And I remember one night we're at this que away somewhere like Virginia, or somewhere, and there was a pond. And there were robots. And they were all chained up. And my father broke the law, broke the lock on the chain. And we all just had this like, incredible, magical evening, out on these boats with my dad and his guitar. And at late at night. That was just one of the memories. I mean, there were so many memories. So that was probably the first the first one and it kind of kicked off a curiosity in me. And, and then when, you know, I did sort of the that traditional Europe backpacker thing my senior year in college, and that that was what really gave me the big travel bug.

Jason Moore 18:31
Yeah, that was the case for me too. Right after I graduated from college did the solo backpacking thing in mind totally blown.

Lavinia Spalding 18:39
You use the word transformative. And when I really think about what was the most transformative travel for me, it was definitely South Korea. I lived there for six years. And it really shaped who I was, who I am as a person.

Jason Moore 18:56
Why did you jump there for six years? Well, I

Lavinia Spalding 18:58
didn't I moved there for one year to teach English as a second language to have

Jason Moore 19:05
an abroad experience abroad. Yeah,

Lavinia Spalding 19:08
yeah. So I was graduating from college and I was I didn't have any money, not a dime. I was supposed to go into publishing and had been working as an intern at a scholarly press as a proofreader and editor and I assumed that I would go into publishing and that I, you know, would like move to New York and get a job at some publishing house. And I was at a party in my senior year and I met this woman who said, Oh, I'm leaving for Korea in two weeks, and she started telling me about what she'd be doing teaching these conversation classes and that she didn't have any upfront costs that the school was flying her over. I'm putting her up in an apartment. And I just made one of those blink decisions on the spot. Really good to go with her to also right there. Yeah, I said I am. I am actually I too will be going to Korea very soon. And yeah, I had a boyfriend and he came along and and one year turned into three years. And then I came home and I spent a year in Fort Lauderdale, Florida working for a newsletter writing for our newsletter, I financial newsletter company, and then I just got super bored and went back for another three years. That's how I ended up there for six. That's a long story.

Jason Moore 20:45
What do you love about South Korea?

Lavinia Spalding 20:48
Okay, everything, everything. I mean, it's, it's, it feels it really when I left, I was pretty fluent in the language. And I learned so much there. I became a Buddhist there. Well, that's not true. I became a Buddhist in Santa Fe, officially. But I I began my my path. As a as a practicing Buddhist, and I learned to cook there. I you know, I took taekwondo lessons. I mean, I just really, I was fascinated with with the culture. But the people were, you know, were of course, the best. I had so many friends who just sort of adopted me. And yeah, so I went back a couple that was I left 20 years ago. And then I went back three or four years ago to write a feature for the AAA magazine. And it was the first time that I'd been back and 17 years, I guess. And it was incredible. And I could not believe how good the food was. I was just, I think I gained like 10 pounds while I was there, because I just couldn't stop eating.

Jason Moore 21:59
Yeah, place I gotta get to, oh, my gosh,

Lavinia Spalding 22:03
you have to do you have to?

Jason Moore 22:05
I know it's alright. Well, I want to get into travel journaling. You wrote a whole book about this, which I thought was just a wonderful idea. And I want to dig into this the book, I know you've published many books, and we can share some more of those. I want to hear some of the other ones that you've written and some of your favorites. Of course, you can find them all on live India's website, but this book writing away creative guide to awakening the journal writing traveler. And I just want to start it with a quote from the book comes early on where you say, if we're committed to honest investigation, that travel journal can be a cornerstone of growth and a catalyst for great work, providing a safe container for astonishing discoveries and the life lessons we take away from them. And I'm wondering what life lessons you have learned from journaling that may not otherwise reveal themselves to you? Yes, one

Lavinia Spalding 22:57
of the things that, that I've learned most from journaling is that when we really set and write and reflect on our experiences, that I don't know, I think it has a lot in common with travel, we learned that we're not alone. I find journaling to be very similar to communion in a way. Like I sit and I write, and I feel like the journal is kind of a companion. And so that I don't know if that's really a life lesson. But just the the feeling of being connected to the journal has has really has been a big part of what has kept me doing it. But I guess, I guess life lessons, the life lessons for me really come from travel. You know, just the realization that, you know, we're all interconnected, again, to use that word, but also just just the the awakening that happens when we get out of our comfort zones, and we shake things up, and we're eating different foods and sort of challenging all our preconceptions. Those are the sorts of life lessons that I was probably referring to, and I think that that there's a there's a real value to sitting down with a journal and kind of diving into those and exploring them deeply. And yeah, I'm totally not sure if I just answered your question. Yeah,

Jason Moore 24:42
I think so. Well, you know, it's an interesting first of all, I've had a heck of a hard time building a habit around journaling, and maybe it's because I'm not a writer, I don't know or, you know, that it's probably bad excuse, right. There's there really habit elements of it right? On the practical side, it's like, alright, let's build the journaling habit. And then there's the sort of the why keep a travel journal in the first place, which I think you've answered right as the documentation of these reflections gives you the space to kind of process I feel and really brings forward like, what, maybe you noticed that you didn't even realize you noticed until you start writing? In some ways, at least that's been my experience with it.

Lavinia Spalding 25:29
Yeah, I mean, I think there are so many reasons, the why there are so many wise to keep a journal. That's just that sort of, I mean, I could go on for hours about all all the various reasons why one should keep a journal. But I do think that feeling of being anchored is really nice. When we're traveling. I mean, traveling can be really disorienting, it can be dysregulated. And to just sit with your journal with especially a handwritten journal, and, and reflect and figure out why the things that that you've been doing have meaning in that's just, it's such a, it's such a gateway to self discovery, and, and it just sort of, I don't know, forces, this stillness in this attention, it forces us to really notice and ask deeper questions. And I think that's when we become a better traveler, is when we ask those questions of ourselves. I mean, it's a conversation with yourself really, and, and especially nowadays, I feel like, you know, we don't really listen to ourselves very often, so much of what we do, and maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, but with social media, and even if you're a big waiter, or a big TV watcher, so much of what we're consuming, is provided by other people, is given to us by others. Other people are entertaining us, and, and it's a kind of a rare opportunity to just sit and let yourself, speak to yourself, you know, and be in conversation with your mind and really listen to your thoughts. And I find that the easiest way to do that is when I'm writing, in a handwritten journal, there's this sort of, you know, kinesthetic connection. The page.

Jason Moore 27:42
Yeah, I love that. The way of thinking about it this sort of two way conversation with yourself. Yeah, had a question or just some practical questions, but it sounds like that the one I had around paper or digital, it sounds like your paper based all the way right, keep it keep it analog style.

Lavinia Spalding 28:01
I mean, not all the way because I'm also a reporter. So sometimes, I mean, I'm, you know, or I'm a, I'm a travel writer. So I keep a couple of different notebooks when I'm traveling, I have sort of a big, you know, I love going out and buying a brand new england journal for every trip some some beautiful moleskin, or something that I'll want to write in that's visually appealing to me. And so I keep that for just writing my thoughts, my musings, my reflections. And then I keep a smaller usually a little sort of pocket sized notebook that I that I walk around with during the day and jot down things. And then I usually have things on my phone as well, just because sometimes it's faster to take notes on that. So I do all of the above. I can never do without the the handwritten journal because of the part where it becomes a keepsake it becomes this incredible artifact that you get to keep I love looking through my old journals. It's it's time travel, it just brings me right back to that place in a way that that I think reading old Instagram posts or, or you know, blog posts or emails, just it just can't for some reason, reading my own handwriting looking at, you know, I do, I also always travel with a glue stick. So I also have tickets in there and hand drawn maps and a lot of lists. I keep a lot of lists.

Jason Moore 29:45
Gee, that sounds so fun to have. I wish I had a box of all of that. And I cannot go back in time and do it now. So you're inspiring me here. I can start now. I do it a bit with audio because I'm lazy. Alright. It's all like I'll record and, you know, I can listen back in here, my kids talking from like three years ago or something, and that's pretty, pretty cool. So that's sort of my version of that, but it's not organized. It's not paper based. And I just liked that feeling of being able to be transported back to a certain time in your life. And in order to write, maybe, fearlessly, I don't know if that's the right word. I feel like a part of that even within your own private sanctuary of writing and journaling. Isn't there a bit of an element of still quieting the judgmental mind? Where you're just like, you know, oh, okay, I shouldn't I shouldn't write about this, or this is stupid, or do you have any advice around that?

Lavinia Spalding 30:50
Yeah, I think that's one of the most important reasons to keep a journal actually, is that that ability to be honest and vulnerable, when you're writing with an audience in mind, whether it's for an article or a letter, or a, you know, a social media post, or you know, anything that you know, you'll share, it's just, it's not as easy to get real. You know, you don't, you don't genuinely allow yourself or I don't generally allow myself to get really wild and messy and vulnerable. And I don't write the embarrassing stuff, the disappoint months, things like that. And those are, those are the kinds of experiences that I think really teach us, you know, travel, there's so much opportunity for self discovery, growth. And if we're only writing what is intended for public consumption, we're missing huge opportunities. And so I always tell my students write for yourself first, before you ever think about writing for an audience. Because that's where the breakthroughs will come and the real epiphanies, I just think it's nice to keep some, some things for yourself, to keep some stories for yourself, not everything you experience needs to be broadcast to your 1000s of friends and followers, some, some things, you know, you get to keep. And that's what the journalist for. It's also, well, I was about to go off on a major tangent. Okay.

Jason Moore 32:39
Tangent away.

Lavinia Spalding 32:41
A lot of tangents. Just thinking about social media made me think about how visual, everything is when we think about what we consume. In terms of travel media, and travel information. There's so much of it is visual, it's image based, it's all. I mean, it's not all but it's, it's primarily photos, beautiful photos, and there's just so much more to travel than that. You know, there's, there's so much that you can get down in your journal that you could never get in a picture. There's sights, and I mean, there's not sights, tastes and smells and touch and you know, all that all of the sounds, and there's conversations and there's emotions. And those are the things that I try to capture when I'm journaling. I don't write you know, this is what I did today. That, you know, I do some of that, but I really try to capture what can't what my camera can't.

Jason Moore 33:51
Yeah. Well, you have a chapter in the book called tips, tricks and how travel makes writers of us all writing honest writing raw. And I wanted to get some of those tips and tricks here. I'm imagining when I open your journal, because maybe because you said your parents were beatniks that there's going to be some like flowing stream of consciousness sort of care wack esque prose. I don't know what it looks like, or is it you know, finally, you know, crafted sentences or? I don't know what I would find. But I'm curious. Yeah, I wanted to hear some of your tips and tricks and just best practices.

Lavinia Spalding 34:25
Well, I mean, it's, it's different for everyone. You know, I have friends who write you know, long, long entries and they sit every day at the end of their, of their travels. And they write these long entries and I'm not I don't really do that so much. I like I said, I keep a lot of lists. And I I always make sure when I'm starting a journal entry entry to kind of hit the hit the bullet points first like You know, five things that I that I don't want to forget, from today, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then I'll start writing long form. Because otherwise I'll get tired. And then I'll never write about some of those things. So, and then I keep a lot of lists. So I make these lists before I even set out on on my travels, I'll write at the, at the top of the page, people are characters, because sometimes they the characters or animals or, and I'll write, you know, sounds, or tastes, or questions, or quotes. And so I'm filling those in all the time when I'm traveling. And it's fun for one thing, but it's also kind of a trick to get me to open the notebook. I'll think, Oh, I have to remember this guy's name, who, you know, because I had such an interesting conversation with him. And so I'll flip to the characters page and write his name. And so that's, that's just, uh, you know, I guess, a tap. If you want to have fun with it, just bring a glow stick and, you know, a small, a small pair of scissors. Because, you know, it's, it's fun to just sort of glue in your ticket stubs and things like that. And it makes it so much more interesting. When you do look back on it, or when you're sharing it someday with your kid, you could say, oh, you know, this isn't this was a, you know, a little map that someone drew me or this was my, the sugar wrapper, the you know, the that, or the sugar packet, you know, wrapper and things like that. I mean, I have so many things that have this. This was in Bali. And I was, I had a friend who smoked clove cigarettes in Bali. And it just reminded me of him. So I went and bought myself a pack of clove cigarettes, and I gave the cigarettes away, and I put the package that wrapper in my journal, and it still smells, you know, that was like, I don't even know, 20 years ago, it still faintly smells like clove cigarettes. And it just brings me back. So I love that. Um, but the the other tip, I would say you were saying that it's the practice of it, that's hard for you to get into the habit. I mean, there are a lot of things I could say about that, I would say the first thing is just give yourself really easy goals. And I've read that writing down goals makes it much more likely that you will actually accomplish your goals, because it sends a message to your brain that it's important. So like to write down, you know, I will write in my journal, five minutes a day or three minutes a day. So to give yourself a goal, that's so that sounds so easy, I think is a good idea. So I always make a goal to write for three minutes a day. And of course, I ended up writing longer than that, because once I crack the journal, I start writing and I enjoy writing. But it's sort of hard to just get into the habit. So even five, five words or two sentences to just say well, I'll just do this, or I'll just write lists but then you have it and you open it and that's half the battle. And then I would also say just don't you know don't think of it as something burdensome or like homework that you have to you have to write in from morning you know all everything you did from from breakfast to bed from morning to night. Just right, what gives you pleasure?

Jason Moore 38:51
Yeah, three minutes is so doable. Right? Okay, really easy to get your head around not not a burden

Lavinia Spalding 38:59
is it is and you can actually you'd be surprised how much you can actually record in three minutes especially if you start with sort of the highlights or the the main impression impressions. You want to remove

Jason Moore 39:16
impressions is a great word. I love that tip of just kind of knocking them out in the beginning so to speak. So you're just getting a framework down that you can pick and choose from and you're also not forgetting sort of the main things because I think that's where it can get overwhelming for a lot of people myself included is that you know, you're looking at this blank page and am I just gonna fill this up and my hands getting tired after the first five sentences and I just liked the idea of bullet points in three minutes. That sounds manageable.

Lavinia Spalding 39:47
That y'all just that you'll not do it then you can just attach it to something that you do get done every day. And the glue stick is cool. So like I'll do it, you know right before I brush my teeth I'll journal so, so attaching it to something that you do every single day. I'll have it, you know, I'll do it with my coffee, I drink coffee every day, that's never gonna change

Jason Moore 40:11
was a great

Lavinia Spalding 40:14
changes. So that's an easy way to sort of a hack.

Jason Moore 40:18
Cool. Well, this is a maybe more of a general travel writing question or documentation. But you mentioned practicing Buddhism. And a lot of that means staying in the present moment, yet the job of the travel writer is to observe to be in the moment, but also be able to recapture that moment later. which is no small trick. And especially when you're starting to come up with perhaps say you're writing an article and you you're starting to develop an idea around a narrative or an angle, and then you start, inevitably, I feel like it's it's difficult to not start filtering some of the world through these ideas that may be turning into an article or something like that. Do you know what I'm getting at here? Because this is always a thing that I asked travel writers, because I think this can be a tough balance, and maybe you don't struggle with it at all. But I'd love to hear your thoughts around that. And any, any practical advice you can share?

Lavinia Spalding 41:24
Do you mean just that that the writing can get in the way of the experience? Or yeah, that

Jason Moore 41:31
idea trying to find that balance? Where you're having the experience, but you're also not letting the sort of the ideas around? What you might want to do the document that experience come into play? Or is that even important? Does it matter even to you, for some people might not even matter?

Lavinia Spalding 41:50
I think it is, it's tricky. Um, but I guess I would say that, if, if you're worried, from a writing point of view that you're not going to, that you're only going to write what you're planning to publish, then I guess I see it, sort of like photography, how we take so many pictures, but we're certainly not sharing all of them, we're figuring out which ones are the best to post or, or send and we're cropping them, and we're filtering them. And then we're sharing them. But in the background, you've got like all of these photos that tell the whole experience. And I think that for me writing is like that I I just write and write and write and write. And sometimes a will identify something and think, Oh, this is this is something I'll definitely want to write about. And so then I'll you know, I'll spend more time on that. I think if what you're if what you're saying is how to make sure that the the chronicling doesn't interfere with the actual traveling, then that's that goes back to, to not sort of viewing it as homework or an assignment, where you, you, you're just seeing it as something pleasurable that you get to add on to your day. And to just, you know, write in shorthand, for me, you know, so much of keeping a journal is that I don't have a very good memory. I have large gaps, where I just don't remember things, including some of the most wonderful trips I've taken. I think that there have been times like, I went to Vietnam by myself. And I just bought this really fancy camera. And I didn't keep a journal on that trip, because I was so excited about my camera. And I look at those pictures. And I'm like, I have no idea who these people are. I don't know their names. I don't know where we were, I have no idea what this neighborhood is. Did I like them? Did I not like, you know, it's, I have to keep it for my for my memories. And so in that way, the the journalists notebook becomes different from the travelers diary. So for me, it's a big mishmash, I have, you know, my musings and emotions and thoughts that I would never in a million years share with anyone else. And then I have my practical overheard quotes or my interview notes, things like

Jason Moore 44:41
That's great. In terms of advice around travel, journaling, keeping a journal. Did we miss anything? Was there anything else you wanted to add to that? No, I

Lavinia Spalding 44:50
mean, in terms of of advice, I think that that that probably sums it up. I will say that one thing that I didn't talk about is that There are actual health benefits to journaling. And I always see these studies and I always read them because I feel so seen when I read them, but um, but there are all these studies that show that journaling, and especially handwritten journaling, that it improves your mood, it lowers stress, it strengthens your immune cells and reduces blood pressure. It can help with sleep problems. I've read that it even can ease asthma symptoms, I mean, there, there are always new studies popping up about how journaling can be of benefit. And so, you know, in addition to all of just the, you know, having having a place to put your innermost thoughts, having like a portable therapist, or somewhere to sort of go for refuge, and having it be sort of a, an extension of, of your creative self, where you can sketch in it if that's something you'd like to do. There's, there's health benefits. It's practical, it's creative. I mean, I don't know, I, it makes me so happy when I see someone in a cafe writing in their general, because it is it does feel like it's like we're losing that. And in a larger sense, maybe sort of losing the ability to connect with ourselves deeply.

Jason Moore 46:27
Do you have rules around technology when you're traveling, smartphone usage? And all that or?

Lavinia Spalding 46:32
No, not really. Um, I like my smartphone. I like I like taking pictures. I like Instagram, I love taking recordings. But I just I also know that if I give myself over entirely to technology, I lose something really important in those journals, something that I won't be able to get back. And I love being able to flip back through them. And they've actually helped me to as a writer, I, you know, I was asked to write the introduction to an Edith Wharton classic, called a motor flight through France. And I was so and I said, Yes. Because when you're asked to introduce me the Wharton book, you don't say no, no matter how intimidated you are. But I was so glad I had my first journal from when I went to France in college because I wrote down dutifully every word and I was able to really use that. And those memories in the intro to that.

Jason Moore 47:39
That's cool. If you could go anywhere, for dinner tomorrow, where would you go? Today for that matter?

Lavinia Spalding 47:46
Oh, gosh, probably to my sister's restaurant in Utah. My sister. She was just actually one of, well, I have two sisters, my sister and her her part business partner has my my adopted sister but they they were just not. They were semi finalists in the outstanding restaurant category in the James Beard, only 20 in the entire country. I know. It's called Hell's backbone grill,

Jason Moore 48:16
talented family over

Lavinia Spalding 48:20
my sister's restaurant. And if a restaurant was closed, I'd fly myself to Korea, and I would gain another 10 pounds.

Jason Moore 48:29
Nice. You're making a good case for me to become more of a beatnik style parent? Yeah. You mentioned characters being a part of your journaling? Can you just gut reaction tell me your most memorable encounter while traveling with a particular character?

Lavinia Spalding 48:49
There are so many

Jason Moore 48:51
so many, but you could just share one.

Lavinia Spalding 48:57
Yeah, um, I feel like I've been saved so often by the kindness of strangers. And, you know, I just like want to move to Korea, and I would be so often just completely lost and they would be strangers would just take me by the hand and, you know, lead me wherever I wanted to go. I wrote about this guy. So there's a there's a book that that comes out today that I'm in an anthology called Letter to a stranger. And it is an anthology of 60 epistolary essays written to someone who hunts you from your past. It's an incredible book edited by Colleen kinder, you should think about inviting her on because she's wonderful. And I've actually written three of these letters to strangers, one to this guy I met on a beach which is that's the one that's in the anthology and another to a shopkeeper in Korea, but the most recent one I wrote was this man in in the fez Medina so my husband had bought an I'm probably gonna mispronounce this word astrolabe or astrolabe. That's an old seafaring compass. They're beautiful. And he had bought one from this man in Fez. And I went back, I think three years later, and he recognized me, which I was like, wow, my husband really over paid for that. No, like, he's got this shop in one of the busiest parts of the fez, Medina, how many tourists come through every day? How many people poke their heads in? And I wasn't even the one who bought it. I was sort of wandering around thinking, Oh, why is my husband buying this big metal thing that we now have to carry home? But he recognized me and he was like your back? I'm gonna think you do not recognize me. He's like, Yeah, I do your husband, tall guy. He bought a master lab for me. And it was it had been years. And I couldn't, I just couldn't believe it. And I. So I wrote a letter to him about that. On the website, the literary journal is called off assignment. And it's called something like to demand and that's Medina. But it just really made an impression on me about how we think we're just passing through these people's lives, and they'll never remember us. And so how to be in the world, how to how to act, how to engage with locals in a way that they'll remember you kindly, and they'll say your back.

Jason Moore 51:43
I love that. I love that so much. Well, I hope to have you back again, this was super fun. Thank you so much. I would love for you to share the various links, talk a little bit about the podcast, let the people know where they can find you.

Lavinia Spalding 52:00
Thank you for bringing up the podcast, I have a podcast with my co host, Kelly Chappie, and it's called there she goes. And you can find it on all the various platforms. And it's it's a very straightforward concept. It's just, there's not a lot of chit chat or almost no chit chat. We just invite women to come on and read their true travel essays. And so we have, we are just in production now for season two. And we'll launch in April for season two is that you can go back and listen to all the great stories from season one and

ad 52:39
cool concept.

Lavinia Spalding 52:41
Yeah, it's it was a it was kind of Kelly's idea. She heard me reading the introduction, a part of the introduction to the most recent edition of the Best women's travel writing, which I, which I edit I've edited six of the 12. And she texted me and said we have to do this. And I said well, yes, i That's why I do it. And she said no in podcast form. We have to share women's stories of travel. So so that's how that came about. But yeah, you can find me on Instagram or Facebook. And very occasionally on Twitter. And my website is just logged in as balding.com.

Jason Moore 53:22
Yes. And we will share all the links check out the podcast and I I so appreciate you and the work you've done and the work you're still doing and I hope to share a meal in New Orleans with you. Yeah, look forward to keeping in touch and maybe we can have you back on some sometime after game.

Lavinia Spalding 53:43
I would love that. Thank you so much, Jason. It's really been a pleasure.

Jason Moore 53:46
Thanks for your time. Okay. There you have it. Thank you once again to Lavinia Spaulding for stopping by the show. Lovely chat, lovely person. And definitely encourage you to check out her podcast as well. She's just so much incredible work and travel. And you know, we have all the links in the show notes. You can learn more about her and check out her podcast over there and appreciate her time travel journaling. I remember I have a journal. I remember the front of it. It was the journal I had. When I took my first backpacking trip through Europe, the one that changed my life. I talked about it a bit. I mentioned it in the show, I should say. And I remember it has a monkey on the front. And it's like blue, purple ish, I believe. And I have not seen it. I can't find it anywhere. And every time I go to visit my mom, I go look for it and still haven't been able to find it. I feel like it's in a box somewhere in the attic or something. Anyway, I'm going to come across that one day and it's going to be travel gold. For me. It's going to take me right back there, I think is Lavinia said and, you know, it's funny I remember So many details from that trip, even though it was so long ago, sometimes more vividly than even recent trips I've taken and I think it was because of the newness and the impact that it had on my life and how transformative it was. And I also think it was because I wrote more things down, I was writing a lot down. And I'm lazy. With my journaling, I do audio journaling. So this episode for me has really been a good kick in the pants to get back to a very simple daily writing habits where it's not complicated. That was one of my favorite pieces of advice, their advice there, just make it easy. And just do it every day, make it easy. So that will be the challenge. You know, lately, I've been throwing out these challenges at the end of the episodes. And I think that's a good one for this episode is to kickstart a daily writing habits and start with three minutes or five minutes or three sentences, whatever works for you, I'm going to do the same thing as well. So let's do it together. And know that when you're busting out your, your journal, your notebook tomorrow, or today, I'll be writing right alongside you as well. Maybe not at the exact same time, but we could do it asynchronously. Right? All right, let me share this bold statement I want to deliver on I mentioned at the top, that I was going to share a recipe that I often think about that I believe leads to achieving some great things for yourself. And whatever everybody else thinks doesn't matter. But great things for yourself in your life, when it's in your favor when it's followed properly. And that's not me, I don't always get this recipe accurate. And I don't really measure it exactly. But when I live by something close to it, I feel so much better about things I feel better about just life and progress and where I'm going and everything. And this is the idea of the percentage of time that you spend in a day creating versus consuming, creating versus consuming. This is something that was mentioned in the interview, she was saying that, you know, so much of what we're consuming is provided by others to entertain ourselves and letting ourselves speak to ourselves in a conversation being in conversation with our mind through the journaling. But there are other ways to do this, too. I do it through podcasting, perhaps even creating music and writing songs and things like that other things that I do creatively and when my balance of creativity versus consumption is out of whack. If I'm consuming 80% of the time, and only creating things 20% of the time, I start to feel crappy personally, and nothing's really getting done. Not that I feel like I have to be ultra productive, or I feel like I have to be getting things done all the time. But there's something about exercising your creative minds that I don't know, if makes me feel good. Makes me feel like, Alright, yes, I put something out into the world, even if that's just for me, that didn't exist at the beginning of this day. And my consuming habits can be or I should say my consumption habits can be awful. You know, if I'm spending 80% of the day consuming the chances are

you know that full 80% isn't being used up by all kinds of educational articles. It's like, what are they called Doom scrolling or just, you know, crap, crap for your brain, like junk brain, junk food, internet stuff. At least that's for me. And when I can tip the scales back to a higher percentage of creating versus consuming, I know, I've done pretty well with that day. And when you do that, over time, if you're spending the majority of your day creating instead of consuming, you're providing a service to the world because probably some of that stuff's gonna get out there. You're gonna share it with people, maybe it's just your spouse, maybe it's your children, maybe it's your friends, maybe it's the world through the internet or whatever. Either way, you're creating something and you're making an impact on yourself and or others. And you can provide value in that way to yourself and others and when you're consuming not that consuming isn't a necessary thing. When you're studying when you're researching we need to consume we all need to consume but when that scales are tipped towards creating more I find that over time that really does compound and it can lead to some great experiences and things in life. It's been my experience. So just wanted to leave you with some food for thought there. Perhaps highlight that and having an awareness around the percentage of the day you spend creating versus consuming and what that recipe might look like for you, percentage wise. And if it's not in a way that makes you feel good, then perhaps what we might do to change that and to flip it around a little bit. So just some thoughts there. I hope I delivered on that big promise in the beginning. I believe this is a critical recipe, at least for me, and I wanted to share it with you now let me leave you with a quote from Maya Angelou, credible writer. This is from her book. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which I just finished a couple of months ago and what a story. She says quote, There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time. Peace and love.

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