Elevating Artistic Pursuits and Well-Being: A Quality-Driven Travel Philosophy

During this choose your own adventure book of mine called life, I’ve really noticed how important it is to have options. That’s just a realization that may or may not strike you as well but I’ve come to terms with something else that has entered into the picture. It’s begun haunting me on some level this idea that what matters more than how many countries I visit is the quality of my time there.

[As an aside, I’ve always been a sprinter in terms of how I preference going out. I love to go out but in short bursts. Never long-distance running. And so when I started this tour that same pattern of mine rears its head and I see to it that I go out when I can and when I’m not out, I’m very much enjoying that time of not being out.]

Now, I’ve extrapolated a particular idea out from its original context into how I want to use it and I want to share that with you. My ‘Follow Your Art’ Music Tour started 5 months ago. I decided I would travel the world looking for places I can perform hunting open mics in this endeavor to get better, have more fun, and create new connections while strengthening and maybe even stabilizing old ones. And NOT letting my psychosis or depressions get in the way of that. I’ve now been to 3 countries outside of the US. since my tour started and at least 8 different cities in these 5 months and the thing that has, while I’ve been clawing and tearing at how to make a decision for where to go next, finally come back into my awareness is “quality over quantity.”

Now, where I took this “quality over quantity” principle to the next level was born from a time I was to some degree auditing a class on how to help people through sobriety. I didn’t get much else from the class as I'm not at alcoholic myself but this principle really stuck in me ... the proverbial thorn in my side if you will. Its this idea that being sober 10 days and absolutely loving life and enjoying life and reveling in it is infinitely better than a thousand days hating it and hating yourself and wanting it to end. It cannot be measured the difference between these two levels of experience.

So, continuing with this choose your own adventure book called Life - at the bottom of the page, as it were, for many of the destinations I’ve chosen so far has been ... this country (or city) or that country (or city). This day or that day. This method of travel or that method of travel.

However, the question I’ve been leaving out of my decision-making process has been this: what will make the time that I have here even better and not just for this location but for any location I go to next. That is, I wanted to meta-contextualize this principle that if I’m doing anything, it needs to make where I’m already at even just a little bit better if not entirely. The decision I make needs to give me access to new possibilities, new ways of expressing my art in the mediums I already have access to, and so on.

That’s almost intuitive right? That I just need to make the time I have here better? But lets go back to where the principle originally comes from because I don’t want to lose the importance of that in translation. I can choose to go to Egypt next. I can choose to visit a whole new country that far away and bring closer the possibilities of setting new destinations. Or I can put off going there just a little bit and invest in ways to make the countries that are very close by a bit more of an extravagant and exciting time for me to have here and now.

And that’s what it becomes all about. How do I make where I’m already at better? How can I orient in such a way that opens up for me what I don’t yet know can present opportunities for me I wouldn’t otherwise have. That’s not to say I’m not going anywhere … I am. And I will. I just, in the process, want to consider what will make ‘this’ experience a more loving and a more enjoyable one with more ways I get to revel in it. Beyond that there are other ways I find I may or may not use this principle, but to really get the idea, try and look at it from a new angle.

Let it come to you.