Globetrotters Writer Spotlight — Matthew David
Traveling Freelance Photographer and Writer
Hey, Globetrotters. My name is Matthew David. I’m 31, and I’ve been traveling more or less non-stop for the past two years.
I love to travel because it helps to keep me in contact with that outer boundary of myself, where I can both discover and redefine my limits.
My number one travel activity is writing. I fill pages of my journal each day, for multiple reasons. In the short term, it’s a type of therapy — helping me to clear my head and make sense of what is happening around me. In the middle term, it allows me to sustain myself financially when I can package together stories and photos to sell articles to magazines or blogs. In the long term, it helps me to see patterns in my life, and to more clearly see where I need to make adjustments. (And hopefully a super-long-term bonus of ending up as part of a travel book someday ;) )
I come from Des Moines, Iowa. Though I don’t spend more than one or two months there per year. I live on the road, going where projects take me.
I work as a freelance photographer and travel writer. Before this, I was bartending or waiting tables in between go-for-broke travel marathons.
The best place I’ve been to is Nepal. I’m currently here for my third visit. Every time I come I take out the maximum duration visa of three months, and usually end up extending it. There is an energy (especially on the paths of the Himalayas) that draws me back each year, and sends me away feeling as if I have unlocked a higher plane of existence.
In my spare time, I like to read voraciously. I read at least a book per week, often rotating between novels, travel narratives, and philosophy or spirituality. I especially love to read novels set in the place I am in, even better if they are by native authors. My close second here is film photography: reading narratives from another time while also capturing moments on the medium of film combine to create this feeling of time travel, of taking journeys within a journey.
My top travel tip is to take it slow and keep it open-ended. I only ever book one-way flights. Rushing from place to place just tends to wear me out and leave me feeling empty. I hate the idea of traveling to collect a stamp or check a box. It’s similar to the relationship between slow and fast food: Long-term travel is truly an investment in yourself.
If I could live somewhere else, I’d live in Kosovo. I hope to move there long-term this summer. The landscapes are gorgeous, the country is very affordable for artists, and the energy of the capital, Prishtina, is that of a collective creative community on the rise: the people and culture there are brilliant. There is also the excitement of living in a place that is still working on itself, that hasn’t fallen into complacency, or doesn’t take progress for granted; which is what I feel most of us do in developed countries.
My favorite way to travel is by walking: crossing borders on foot, taking in every step of the landscape, camera in hand. But train travel with a book in a window seat comes in as a close second.
Three lessons I’ve learned from traveling are:
- Travel as escapism is a complete waste of time: Travel in itself can’t change you or solve your problems, it is simply changing the physical location of yourself and all of your existing baggage.
- It’s not about the number of places you see, it’s about how you see them. My favorite Paul Theroux observation is: “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been; travelers don’t know where they’re going.”
- It takes time to transition into the travel mindset/mentality. When I leave home for a six-month stretch or more, it takes one to two months at least to adjust from my home routine and sink deeper into a flow state where I feel like I am a traveler once again. There’s discomfort and confusion, and I have to give myself grace and trust that I will make it through that stretch and push into a new phase of the journey.
Thank you for reading /
If you would like to read more, you can follow along on Medium here: Matthew David
You can see more of my work on my personal blog on transformative travel \ as well as on Instagram
Safe travels.
