Travel Journals and the Art of Memory Collecting

I love looking at little things, and things with lots of detail, and things with repeated motifs. I love holding on to little slips of paper, ticket stubs, stickers, wrappers, and random things that remind me of other things. It started with taping one old concert ticket to the wall of my room in my first college house in New Orleans. And then I got a disposable camera back from the film developers and I taped up a few of the prints. And then I added a coaster from my favorite dive bar. And so on and so on and on it goes.

Then when I started traveling, I instinctively kept all of my boarding passes, luggage tags, and little bits and bobs that caught my eye as I made my way. I would hoard these little treasures and scraps of memories, and though always intending to do something magical with them, would inevitably end up throwing them away when it became time to pack my bags and frantically tetris everything into its place. A random stack of junk papers is usually the first to go.

Enter the travel journal.

In addition to hoarding tickets and paper scraps, I also have developed quite the stationery and notebook collection. Putting the first mark in a blank notebook can always feel a little daunting. But one way I’ve found to eliminate that apprehension is haphazardly sticking a beautiful label that you meticulously peeled off of a wine bottle right in the middle of the page and then working from there. Anything can be beautiful when framed the right way. And my travel journal is my way of beautifying the messiness of living on the road and the wonderful chaos of constantly changing environments and experiences.

Changing the way you see can be a beautiful thing, and I hope you look at some of the things you might have previously passed over, or seen as mundane, and try to frame it in a new light.