Travel Writing – the worst job in the world

Neera

In an article in The Telegraph, travel writing was rated as the most overrated job, even ahead of a chef, an advertising executive, an architect, and a junior investment banker.

Travel writing is called a profession akin to a nightmare with good weather.

Yet the universal perception is that that is a dream job.

Ask a professional travel writer and you will get the true picture.

On the face of it, travel writing does sound pretty amazing. You get paid to travel! You get to see the world, indulging two passions at once. You get to inspire people to follow their dreams. You get to see things and meet people that constantly amaze you, and you get to call it a job.

Ben Groundwater

Get the money and prestige out of it, travel writing is something worth pursuing for.

Why?

Because travel changes you. It gives you a new perspective on things.

You get out of the daily grind and suddenly the world becomes such an interesting place.

Humans were not meant to work twelve hours and day.

My bags are packed and I am on a four-week journey through Turkey, Egypt and Jordan.

Wait for daily dispatches.

 

How to find the work you would really love to do?

Neera

The happiest people are not those who have everything they ever wanted, but are those who love what they do.

But it is not easy to find what you love to do.

Some people know what they want to do even when they are in their infancy; others keep drifting from one thing to another, never sure what their calling is.

The problem with drifters is that they believe that their purpose is something that will sweep them off their feet, and they will glide through it fulfilling their destiny feeling each day on the seventh heaven.

Do you think Mother Teresa felt that way while helping the poor and destitute each day of her life?

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

Paul Graham wrote a great article in 2006, How to Do What You Love. Although the article is directed towards youth to help them find the work they would love to do, it has nuggets for people who are finding their true calling.

According to him:

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don’t have to force yourself to do it—finding work you love does usually require discipline.

Paul provides a three-point test to determine whether something is your calling or not.

The first is the prestige test. Is it prestigious work or not?

If it is not, and you will still continue to do it, it is your calling.

Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

He goes on to say:

… if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what’s admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

The second is the money test. Will it make you loads of money?

The test is whether you will still continue to do it even if you won’t get paid for it even if you will have to work at another job to make a living.

How many doctors or corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?

It is easy to do unpleasant work; with money and prestige, it is hard to do something for the love of it.

You are beginning to get the picture.

Now comes the third test. It is in just two words, so pay attention.

Always produce.

If you are working in a soul-wrenching job and plan to become a writer, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you’re producing, you’ll know you’re not just dreaming but working towards your dream. The toil you will put yourself through for no money, no prestige to develop the talent will determine whether the writing is your calling or not.

“Always produce” is a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you’re supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. “Always produce” will discover your life’s work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.

Experience different things and figure out what you love. Not several items at a time because you will not give yourself enough time to figure out what you like about it, but one thing at a time and giving it a go.

Only 66 days for the year to end

Neera

Each year, panic starts around this time of the year – only two months for the year to end. It is even more evident if you keep a daily diary and pages start thining on the right-hand side.

Still, a lot can be done in this period.

I have been frantically finishing a lot of projects I started this year, one of them is developing a Life Story Blogging course I will be workshopping early next year to the University of Third Age students.

A few months ago I started making photo books with thousands of digital photos on my phone camera. I have only been able to make two. There are at least three more to make.

Travel journals with brochures are another thing that I just started that will require a lot of input.

In a week’s time, thousands of people will be participating in National Novel Writing Month and will be writing a book within 30 days.

Each year I participate in this challenge. This year I will be traveling, so instead of writing 1667 words a day. Instead, I will be working on producing a page a day, of a travel journal, with writing, drawings, and lettering combining three of my passions.

If all goes well, I too will have a book to show at the end of the month.

I will keep myself accountable by posting it regularly here.

An artist that makes mandalas

Neera

In Japanese esoteric Buddhist practice, the mandala aids meditation, promoting spiritual awareness and understanding.

Albert Yonathan Setyawan is an artist from Bandung, West Java, Indonesia who creates mandalas with slipcasts.

Setyawan replaced the five Wisdom Buddhas of the mandala with upper parts of five religious structures: mosque, church, temple stupa and ziggurat.

In my recent visit to the National Art Gallery of Australia, I was mesmerized by his monumental ceramic floor installation called Shelters which is comprised of 1890 terracotta ceramic components meticulously placed in a grid referencing the Kongokai mandala.

Setyawan’s art represents the mixture of faiths, cultures, and ethnicities that surrounded him growing up in Indonesia and the occasional religious and political conflicts he witnessed. The repeated patterns evoke mantras and sequences inherent in nature.

More than an arrangement of decorative elements, Setyawan’s ‘exalted aggregations’ instill a meditative focus and call on our interpretation of and desire to map the order of the universe.  

His other exhibits are equally impressive. A quick search on Google images gives the vast array of his artwork.

Still young, having just finished his Post-graduate degree in arts and working towards his Ph.D. in Contemporary Ceramic Art, his work has been exhibited in Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Australia, and Italy. A lot more is expected of him in the coming years and decades.

What to do with travel brochures?

Neera

I collect travel brochures.

I have a box full of brochures from my past travels which I can’t bring myself to throw out.

I am particularly attached to the maps because we clung to those while finding our way through unfamiliar cities.

For some time, I have been looking for ways to use them in such a way that they bring back memories associated with those places.

Lately, I have been watching travel journals that some very creative people are sharing on Pinterest and Instagram and I am hooked.

They are not that easy to make and are extensively time-consuming.

But I decided to give it a go.

The picture at the top is my first attempt to journal a trip to Cairns in July 2017. It is obvious I need to work a lot on lettering.

Here are the maps, which are now forever preserved in the journal.

When should an article or a story end?

Neera

Many times we can’t figure out when an article or story should end. The same goes for books, whether it is fiction or non-fiction.

As a writer, we have collected so much material that we keep on going long after the article, story or a book has reached its logical end.

What is that logical end?

The logical end is when you have made the argument.

Every piece of writing is making an argument.

Writing usually starts with an idea that often comes as a question or a problem. We explore that question, (like the question at the start of this post) and we make an argument.

Finding the argument in the story is a tool, and it can be used by filling in the blanks in the following line:

‘every …. can or should …’

This simple equation to be used to find the argument in your writing even before you started writing.

If your book is about travel writing your argument could be ‘every traveler can become a travel writer’ then give them ten steps to become a travel writer.

If your book is about taming a dog, the argument you could be making is ‘every dog can be tamed even the old and rigid ones then through your book you give them ten ways how the readers can do it.

If your book is about storytelling, the argument you are making is ‘every person should become a storyteller then give them ten benefits and teach them six elements of storytelling.

What you are doing through the argument is you are entering the mind of the reader and getting them to think differently, act differently, or teach something they want to learn.

You don’t want them to just read the article/ story/ book, you want them to do something with it.

It is easy to understand the concept of every piece of writing is making an argument in non-fiction, but what about fiction writing.

In fiction writing, the argument is made through the story.

Let’s have a look at arguments in some well-known stories.

The argument Shakespeare is making in Hamlet is, ‘everyone should stand for injustice.’

The argument of Romeo and Juliet is ‘the hatred can lead to bloodshed.’

The argument the movie Rocky is making that ‘even an underdog can win.’

None of these stories give ten points to prove the arguments they make, but they do it by weaving the argument within the story.

Because without an argument, there is no story.

If you’re telling your life’s story, it’s not just a story of survival, it’s a
story of hope and perseverance, and when somebody reads that story, they’re gonna get that too and apply that to their own situation, their own obstacles that they’re facing.

And when that story should end?

When the argument has been made.

It is that simple.

Anything after that is waffle weakens the story.

Now decide on what argument you are making, with whatever piece of writing you are doing, and stop as soon as you have made it.

Just like I am at this point.