(or I Never Want to Throw My Trip Diary Away!)
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
—Oscar Wilde
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In this chapter, the use of journaling to facilitate reminisces about our trip experiences is discussed. Journaling can be carried out through a variety of methods ranging from making handwritten entries in a diary to constructing vlogs (video blogs) and/or other types of recorded travel documentaries. Journaling is particularly effective in sparking trip reflections because it allows us to create ongoing and evolving records of our trip impressions. It is a skill that can be facilitated by our travel providers as they work with us in different ways.
The Power of Journaling
Many of us like to keep some type of documentary records or journals on our trips of what we have seen and done so that the experiences we have had are not forgotten. Unlike single pictures which only capture individual moments in time, the act of journaling permits the construction of ongoing narrative reflections of our trip encounters. Journaling allows us to capture our reactions to things when our impressions are fresh and unfiltered, and reviewing such reactions when we return home enables us to see what we saw in our travels over again and to gain new insights about them (Levine 2018).
Journal entries are particularly interesting to use to evoke travel reminiscences because they give us a chance to relive our experiences as they occurred in real time. We may, for instance, be surprised when we re-read our journal or review our vlog (Doherty 2018) to learn that our first impression of seeing Times Square in New York City was that all the people looked a bit bizarre, or that what impressed us most about Niagara Falls on the day that we saw it was not the visual beauty of the falls, but rather the tremendous power of the sound of the water splashing over the rocks and hitting the bottom of the falls. Further, by reviewing journal records, we can also learn if and how our impressions have shifted and changed over the length of our journeys. Perhaps, for example, on the first day of our trip, we noted that we were quite overwhelmed by New York City, but on the last day, we wrote that we were much more relaxed about being there. Maybe we forgot until we looked at our journal again that we felt sad and lonely at the beginning of our cruise but happy and energized by the end, or that early on in our travels to some place, we thought that the people in the culture we were visiting seemed a bit lazy, but that we modified this view as we got to know them better. Journaling, then, can serve not only as a means of factually documenting what we did or what we saw, but also can act as an aid to help us understand how our impressions evolved through time as we continually reacted and responded to new experiences (Carpenter 2001).
The act of keeping journals during trips also offers advantages to us in other ways. Journaling allows us to step back and see the larger picture that we may have missed in some of the hustle and bustle associated with the practicalities of our travels (Barth 2018). It can promote a kind of perspective-taking and thoughtfulness about experiences that can deepen our pleasure in them. In fact, the very act of keeping journals can facilitate a kind of heightened attentiveness to our surroundings (Amabile and Kramer 2011). This is because the knowledge that we will later write down or verbally record our trip impressions causes us to look more attentively at our environments in the moment as we attempt to discern patterns and meaning in what we see. Journaling additionally helps us decide what we would like to further experience or not experience on our present or future trips.
Facilitating Journaling
The act of writing about or in other ways creating narrative versions of our travel experiences, thus, has many benefits. This powerful tool is something that we would be wise to cultivate, and is a skill that could be facilitated by those in the travel industry. Although it is not hard for us to simply record impressions of our trips these days because of all of the devices we have at our disposal, ranging from simple notebooks to cell phones and iPads, it can be more difficult for us to know how to make our records memorable, interesting, and creative. Here is where travel providers could be helpful.
First, travel providers could make available to us rich background information to heighten our understanding of what we are observing during our journeys. As just a few examples, a guide at some geological site could help us better appreciate the majesty and magnificence of what we were seeing by noting that the rock formations in front of us had taken over a billion years to form and contained multiple fossils from animals long since extinct on earth. Or before attending events like concerts or special dinners, we could be given opportunities to meet backstage with the musicians who will be performing in the concerts or with the chefs who will be preparing our meals. All of this could then enrich our later reflections on the meaning of our experiences.
We could additionally be taught, in general, how to simply become more sensitive observers of our environments. For instance, if we were getting ready to take a hike in a beautiful forest, we could be shown how to recognize the calls of various types of birds present in that forest, or how to pick out the scent of different types of flowers. Those of us preparing to stroll along a beach could be shown how to recognize small shells that are often found in the sand there, or how to identify tide patterns in the sea. Such training would heighten our ability to be mindfully receptive to our surroundings and to be able to later create narratives about our experiences that were nuanced and perceptive. These are the kinds of narratives that tend to stay with us and to make us long to return again and again to the place where they were created.
Questions for Discussion
Please answer the following questions to think more about how journaling can help you coalesce and bring to life meaningful travel experiences that you have had. Draw on both your personal travel experiences and/or any experiences you have had in the travel industry as you do this.
1. Have you ever kept a written journal or made an audio or video record of some trip that you took? If yes, did doing so impact how you remembered your trip later? Explain.
2. How do you think the sorts of memories evoked by reviewing trip journals (either written, audio, or video) tend to be different from those evoked by looking at individual photos of trip moments? Explain.
3. Vlogs and other types of travel journaling are becoming increasingly popular today. Which of the suggestions offered in this chapter about how people in the travel industry could work with us to help us create more nuanced and perceptive records of our trips were the most interesting to you? Why? Are there other types of assistance you would like to receive from travel providers if you decided to try to keep some sort of journals on your next travel outing? Describe.
4. What makes for a good journal entry in your opinions? What elements does it have? How is good journaling different from simple description?
Notes