Planning A Next Adventure: #2. Have a Purpose
Part #2 of 8 in: Thoughts On Planning A Next Adventure
Purpose helps gives your & your journey shape and meaning. Instead of a string of disconnected days, it turns your experiences into a thread you can follow, and a story you’ll remember long after the journeys ends. One day you might be gazing over a valley that could have been lifted straight from a travel documentary; the next, you’re standing in a post office queue in a town you can’t pronounce, trying to post home three sweaters you regret buying. Those are the moments when purpose matters. It’s what gives shape to the in-between days and keeps the quieter stretches from feeling like empty space.
Your why explains why you set out; your purpose is what you’ll actually do once you’re out there. It could be building a creative body of work, following a structured learning path, volunteering for a cause, or practising a craft that improves with repetition. Whatever you choose, give it rhythm: a daily habit, a weekly milestone, or a 90-day chapter with a visible result. Momentum is easier to protect than to recover.
- Without purpose, travel time can blur into a string of disconnected moments of nice views, meals, and stops, but without a thread to hold them together. Those days become hard to remember or revisit meaningfully.
- With purpose, your time gains continuity. The hours spent, whether dramatic or mundane, add up to a narrative, a “story” of your travels that you can look back on, tell others, and feel that it was worthwhile.
For example:
- If your purpose is to learn a language, then every conversation from ordering coffee to chatting in a market, becomes part of a story of progress.
- If your purpose is volunteering, even dull admin days are part of a bigger story of contribution.
- If your purpose is creating art, the scraps of sketches and photographs build into a narrative of work-in-motion that reflects the journey.
Above all, keep purpose kind. It should guide, not govern. Some days will only hold a walk, some stretches of journalling, or the admin that keeps life ticking over. That’s fine. The aim of purpose is provide a rhythm you can live with, one that prevents drift, creates proof that the journey matters, and connects you with your why..
Purpose can take many forms, and your travel style will nudge it in certain directions.
- Sailing: maintaining the vessel and honing seamanship skills can turn routine days into tangible progress.
- Overland: documenting landscapes and cultures along the route can create a meaningful narrative.
- Road Trip: building a photo essay or travel log gives a unifying thread to hundreds of small stops.
- Slow travel: learning some of the local language or skills, roots you deeply in a community.
- Volunteering: the project itself becomes the purpose, offering daily goals and visible results.
- Nomad: advancing a remote business or creative project while exploring new locations keeps life balanced.
- Solo travellers: personal growth milestones like navigating complex transit or making new connections, become the markers of progress.
Your purpose does not have to impress anyone, nor does it have to be grand. It only needs to be something you can work on, grow into, or contribute to in a way that makes each day feel like part of something bigger.
