TRAVEL | TRAVEL STORY | INSPIRATION
Globetrotters Writers Spotlight — Jillian (Jill) Amatt
It’s been a lifelong journey…….
Hello Globetrotters!
My name is Jillian, but I prefer Jill. Doesn’t it seem more friendly? I was called Jillian my whole childhood, but when I went off to college I decided to introduce myself as Jill, and it has mostly stuck.
But they still call me Jillian in my hometown:)
Thanks to Warren Patterson for prompting us all to write our Globetrotters Writers Spotlight Stories! If you want to take part in the challenge, click the link below.
I come from……
I was born in Banff, Alberta, Canada, one of Canada’s top tourist destinations. When I was three I moved down the road to Canmore, which is just as beautiful, but a bit quieter. At least it was then.
I grew up running free in nature and pretty much having the time of my life. I camped a lot and developed a real love for the outdoors and our natural world.
I knew at a very young age that all things are connected.
My parents took me traveling from almost day one! My first trans-Atlantic flight was when I was 10 months old, and my first solo flight was from Calgary, Canada, to Medicine Hat, in southern Alberta when I was just 4 years old!
After part-time traveling for most of my life, my partner and I finally pulled the plug on our conventional life and started traveling full-time in 2017. First, we lived in Central America and the Caribbean for 2 years, then arrived in Morocco in January of 2020. Since then, we have mostly been in Africa, though we had one 2.5 month stint in Istanbul at the end of 2020.
We currently find ourselves in Uganda.
My Job Is….
Since pulling the plug on my conventional life, I have been nourishing my creative side. I have multiple print-on-demand platforms where I upload digital artwork, I have two Etsy shops, I write for Medium (still new at this one!), and I also have a Patreon page where I share content and make a bit of money in return.
We started getting serious about our YouTube channel in 2020, but we haven’t crossed the 1000 subscriber mark yet, and are nowhere near the 4000 required hours to get monetized, but we will keep plugging away.
So I guess you could say that I am a content creator.
My partner and I also paint murals in exchange for accommodation while we travel, which keeps our costs low, plus we housesit occasionally. We have built a brand called Artistic Voyages, which you can learn about on our website here.
We also have been teaching composting and permaculture techniques here in Africa as we travel around. This is all volunteer work and quite often we get free accommodation and meals in exchange for donating our time and knowledge.
I love to travel because…
Honestly, I can’t think of one good reason that I don’t love to travel!
It took me many years of trying to fit into a ‘normal’ life, and now that I have made travel the front and center of my priorities, I could not be happier!
Okay, I’m going to try and put this in a bullet format, with the most important item first. The things I love most about travel:
- Meeting new people and learning about different cultures and ways of life.
- Trying new foods and learning different ways to prepare food.
- Seeing the vastness and diversity of our planet firsthand.
- Experiencing something new every day.
- Discovering ways of doing things that blow my mind.
- Learning new words and languages.
- I don’t know……..I could go on and on!
The best place I’ve been is…
I really dislike having to choose just one. Honestly, EVERY place I go has something that I love. Even Egypt. Ha!
If I was to be asked which was my LEAST favorite place, I would say Egypt. That was because the Egyptians were rude and aggressive, and if you look at my top item above, you will see why I didn’t like it. But the truth is that the area around Aswan was absolutely stunning and took my breath away on a daily basis. So there is that.
This world is magical in so many ways. Even in the barren desert, there is so much beauty. Every place is awesome, in one way or the other, and I know if I tried to say my favorite, then I would somehow be insulting other places as they think that they are my favorite.
You know what I mean?
In my spare time, I like to…
Hmmmmmm this is a tough one. This full-time traveling life gives us lots of spare time, but we are also constantly mixing work with pleasure, as our life is how we are making a living. So separating spare time from working time is sometimes tricky.
Does that make sense?
But I suppose one of my favorite things to do is to just head out on a random walk down random streets, just to see what we can find. We mostly operate on a ‘no plan is the best plan’ strategy, and it usually takes us right where we need to be.
My top travel tip is…
DON’T OVER PLAN!
It is so tiring reading articles where people have planned out every detail of their journeys. There is no freedom, whimsy, or chance to be had! When you go traveling, you enter a world that you know nothing about. You can’t imagine the excitement that is waiting for you on the other side, and if you plan out every minute of your journey, you will miss out on the exciting and unexpected things that pop up! Seriously, just try not to overdo it. You really will have a richer travel experience.
If I could live somewhere else, I’d live in…
Well, this is impossible to answer because I am living where I am now. In a few days, I will be living somewhere else. And after that, it will be the next place.
We don’t really have any overarching wishes of where we want to go in the world. Sure we talk about going to different places, but we are in no rush to get there, and we mostly let the universe guide us along as it wishes. We usually find ourselves in the best possible place, and better than we ever could have imagined.
My favorite way to travel is…
SLOWLY!
We try and spend AT LEAST three months in each country that we visit. We are in no rush, and we know that we won’t see the whole world (it’s an impossibility in one lifetime anyways!). But the experiences that we have are so rich because we take the time to really see a place, and to get to know the locals.
Many times we comment on the fact that we wouldn’t have had ‘this or that’ experience if we hadn’t have stayed for as long as we did. With time comes more opportunity for a richer and deeper experience as you get to know the people and the culture better.
We spent 7 months in Uganda in 2021, and we just arrived back for more! It’s safe to say that we love this country!
Three lessons I’ve learned from traveling are…
- WE ARE ALL THE SAME! Truly! It amazes me that within each group of people we meet, we can see people that remind us of somebody back home. We all have the same personalities and dysfunctions in our human forms. Most of us are really good people, but amongst all cultures, there are also bad people. Mostly we all just want to be happy!
- The world is not scary! In our past 4 years of travel (and my 20+ years before that), we have not had one bad incident happen to us! Call us lucky, or whatever, but it is true. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we always see the good in people, and don’t assume somebody is bad. We give people the chance to demonstrate to us how they are and don’t judge them. It has served us well, and we have not been led astray.
- We will never see it all. The world is so vast and each country has unlimited potential of seeing the sights, trying the food, experiencing all the experiences. It’s important to just take life one day at a time, do what you can, and be happy with that. You will see what you are meant to see, and that is all there is to it.
My number one travel activity is…
Probably the thing we do the most is to just look. We can go for a walk and get caught up in the beauty of the flowers, or a butterfly that just flew by. We take an insane amount of photos of little things that put smiles on our faces. Since leaving North America we don’t have the addiction we had to be entertained. The world now entertains us, and every day we are amazed and inspired by what we see.
In Conclusion
Travel is THE BEST! If I could convince every person I meet that the most important thing that they can do with their life, is to travel, you can bet I would be doing that ( I do try!). I do believe that as travelers, we are peacekeepers. We are the ones who are open to learning about different parts of the world and different cultures. And you can bet that that simple act breaks down more barriers in our world than we can even imagine.
So kudos to all of us who are taking it upon ourselves to see the world! It is vast and oh so interesting, and bit by bit we will uncover ALL of its secrets.
Muah ha ha!
Sorry, too cheesy?
Cheers guys! Keep traveling! We are all killing it!
Thank you again to Warren Patterson for initiating this challenge! It has been fun to read others’ stories, and I have enjoyed putting mine together.
If anyone is interested in our time spent in Africa during Covid, I am breaking it down into bite-sized pieces, starting with the link below.
I also wrote an article on avoiding travel burnout as a nomad.
Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We have now been on the African continent for over 2 years! Join our adventure by hitting the links below! Subscribe to Medium to get full access to my writing plus thousands of others’!
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