Tuesday Inspiration: Travel your ass off and Make it Count

#makeitcount

Over at the Daily Wh.at, they posted the above video and wrote:

When Nike gave Internet video maker Casey Neistat a hefty advance payment and orders to #makeitcount, it’s unlikely this is what the company had in mind. Nicely done.

They also traveled that many places in 10 days.

I found the video inspirational and fun. It got criticism on YouTube. But screw them.

I also found this article called, Practical Tips from 4 Years of Traveling The World. You should read it.

There are 21 great pieces of advice, including this:

11. People are more alike than you think.

My preferred way of connecting to people is via food but regardless of your passions or interests, travelling will also open your eyes to the fact that we are all more alike than we think. Yes, there are cultural differences and traditions that differ – vastly – but the basics of human emotions and the kindness in a smile are omnipresent, and a beautiful reminder of our shared humanity. Be it the Laotian woman on my bus to Vientiane who only wanted to talk about how men in Thailand thought they were better than men in Laos, to the soldiers in the Philippines who wanted to know how we in Canada survived without growing our own rice, to the family in Bolivia who asked why tourists didn’t swaddle their babies on their back, Bolivian-style. Threads of common human queries – love, food, parenting, and many more – resurface again and again. Ask questions, encourage people to ask them of you. In the end, these knots of human connection are what makes the world go round.

And these:

15. Packing does not get easier.

I wrote a piece on long term travel and the things it doesn’t fix. In it, I talked about how, 2.5 years into my travels, I still hated packing. It’s now 4 years into my travels. Guess what? I still hate packing.

16. Not planning too far ahead leaves you the flexibility to need to take the wonderful opportunities that come your way.

I get quite a few emails asking if I opted for a round-the-world ticket or whether I plan as I go. I’ve addressed this in the resources page but I want to reiterate it here because I think it’s important: don’t plan too far ahead. Over and above the undeniable fact that I thought I’d be back in North America by now (and not still travelling), so many of the places I loved beyond belief are the ones that weren’t even on my initial, vague itinerary. There’s nothing wrong with planning, or doing research, or even booking longer-haul flights if you have a set schedule to follow. But leave as much as you can to as-you-go travel. You’ll meet people who wax poetic about a specific destination and want to go there; you’ll decide you need – NEED! – to go to the Philippines with your brother because you’ve become fascinated by a small primate that you need to see in person; you will find yourself and your mind expanded by the sheer impossibility of everything being available to you, if only you could choose where to go first.

It is a scary thing, to leave it open to the whims of your brain as you travel, but a worthwhile one.

My goal is not to be a stay at home photographer. It’s to travel the world endlessly with cameras on my back, exploring this great big earth that God created (honk).

And when I’m done or it’s done with me, I’ll measure my life in these things.

Let’s do this.