In essence, travelers are dreamers. We all fell in love with adventure because we knew there was more of it, and found the most intoxicating part of a journey to be the knowledge that we could always go further, resting only when we needed to. Now, we’re being asked to rest this passion to an unprecedented extent, but let’s not take this personally — no one is telling us to stop dreaming. In fact, as anything and everything one can mark on a calendar gets cancelled for the foreseeable future, we’re being challenged to dream more than ever to imagine the kind of world we can travel safely, sustainably, and with certainty that public health is protected.
Part of that dreaming, of course, looks like fantasizing about where we’ll go next, and the fuel for these fantasies hasn’t changed: it’s stories, as ever. The stories we accumulate, encounter, and trade have always taken us far away, first in our mind’s eye as we save the money and make the plans, and then finally in reality. That’s why we’re putting together Our Passport To Yours, a series where our staff and community members will share personal stories, ranging from our favorite travel experiences to accounts of how we’re adjusting during a time when travel might be the last thing on our minds.
In the first installment of this series, we’re looking through my passport — I’m Joseph Ozment, editorial manager here at Passion Passport. I’ve told a lot of my travel stories on this website over the past few years, so I’m going to take this chance to share some of our articles that I’m finding most useful during this time. I’ll also take you on a short tour around the corner of the internet that I’m exploring these days, and provide a few of what I’m calling “anxiety busters.”
Let’s go!
Looking Through our Passport:
- 10 Books That Shaped the Way We Travel
- How to (Actually) Learn a Language at Home
- How to Get Beyond the Travel Blog and Tell Your Travel Story
- How to Kickstart Your Creativity At Home and On the Road
- Videography Basics: Tips for Beginners
- Photography Basics: Indoor Photography
- How to Help Coronavirus Relief Efforts From Home
- How to Use Social Media Mindfully
- Overcoming the Demons: Traveling with Anxiety
- How to Craft a Memorable Story
Anxiety Busters, The Arts, and Virtual Travel:
- Met Opera is streaming operas during the coronavirus outbreak
- Ambassadors Recommend the One Book to Read Before Visiting Their Country
- Virtual museum tours, perfect for families
- Explore the tomb of Menna in Egypt’s Theban Necropolis, in 3D
- How the plague inspired some of Shakespeare’s greatest plays
- Surprise, we all live in David Hopper paintings now
- Live Penguin Cams — watch penguins at the California Academy of Sciences run around and play. Enough said!
- The Bolshoi Theatre, Russia’s most renowned opera and ballet company, are streaming their performances over the coming days
- Stream full episodes of Aerial America, a Smithsonian Channel production showcasing each of the fifty states’ natural beauty
- Amnesty International has a free online human rights academy, with courses on digital security and human rights, how to write about human rights, and more.
- For musicians: two very fun and versatile synthesizers from Moog and Korg are now free on the app store
Just to keep you busy:
If you’re like me and learning some new things more out of necessity than anything (like making breakfast from scratch with this pancake recipe), you’re probably in search of activities that don’t exactly feel necessary for survival, but can still broaden your experience with spending all this time at home.
It doesn’t look like I’ll be making it to Japan this year, but I decided in the meantime to learn some very basic origami — after all, we’ve all got paper at home and I wanted some new decorations. Now I have a number of origami pikachus keeping me company, because I can’t control myself. Use method 2 here and enjoy your new friend(s).
I’ve also signed up to receive a writing prompt to my inbox every day, courtesy of musician Maggie Rogers and friends. In a serendipitous twist, today’s is modeled after a travel journal entry! The Isolation Journals is a 30-day project intended to keep your creative mind sharp, so sign up right away.
That’s all for now! Bon voyage.
What’s keeping you busy these days? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter!