Dreams of being a travel writer – Shattered!
Before I travel, I like to read travel fiction books and anthologies to see what different authors have to say about the area that I will be visiting and to potentially get a different perspective. I was at the library (Thanks Sybil and Lori for the money saving tip!!) and I picked up this book “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?”
There was a couple of things that I thought was interesting, funny, and insightful:
- His classification of travel books
- He runs out of money 50% through his trip after quitting his high paying Wall Street analyst job to become a travel writer – Even if he saved 1 paycheck, he should have more than ~$283 dollars to his name. But then again, the book would 50% shorter.
- Basically he has ~several weeks to cover the entire country, visit every location/hotel/restaurant/transportation in every city, not be bias, pay with his own money and get reimbursed afterwards. Basically, his point is to take the recommendation of travel guides w/ a grain of salt. Did I mention that he had ~$283 dollars 50% thru this assignment? Basically he did not have enough money to finish his assignment or to return home.
- He ends up getting a roommate that is from a poor family w/ nine siblings. The last time she was in school she was 14 years old. She basically tells him that she is there to find work because no one offer her a boring desk job. Raymond reminded me of the show Better Call Saul where he basically walks out on a great job w/ great pay and benefits because he wanted to do things his way. The owner of the nail salon where Saul use to rent an office/sleep basically told him that she would not continue to come to the nail salon if she had a choice but no one offered her a company car.
The last point hits home. I will be very grateful for the opportunity to travel.
Time to take the library books back and get back to my checklist of stuff to complete!