Whether you travel for business, pleasure, or the familiar pull of family reunions, there’s one companion you should never leave behind: your journal. Beyond your passport or your carry-on, your journal becomes a deeply personal record keeper—capturing the emotional undercurrents, fleeting observations, and intimate details that no photo or souvenir ever could.
As part of Eric Maisel’s insightful series Journaling for Men—inspired by The Great Book of Journaling and Redesign Your Mind—this reflection by April Bosshard reminds us how essential journaling can be, especially when we find ourselves far from home. Though the series was originally designed to introduce men to the power of journaling, its wisdom extends to all travelers seeking deeper self-awareness and a more mindful connection to their journeys.
The Journal: A Quiet, Loyal Travel Companion
There’s a unique kind of silence in travel. Airports buzz, landscapes roll past, conversations ebb and flow—but underneath it all is a quieter internal experience: how you feel in those moments of motion, uncertainty, and discovery. A journal is perhaps the only companion who listens without judgment and holds space for all the messy, beautiful, and transformative details of the trip.
April Bosshard writes, “A journal is an ideal traveling companion—one who always listens and rarely talks back.” That statement captures something powerful: the journal doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t comment, doesn’t check its phone. It waits patiently, ready to catch every thought you toss its way.
Whether you’re sitting on a delayed train in Tokyo or sipping strong espresso in a Roman piazza, journaling turns even the smallest moments into something worth remembering.
Journaling Alone—And With Others
Traveling solo can be a liberating, if occasionally lonely, experience. In these moments, journaling becomes a refuge—a way to process solitude, delight, confusion, or wonder. You write not to report, but to explore. The blank page becomes a mirror, reflecting your internal world as it shifts and adapts to new places.
But journaling isn’t just for solo travelers. It can also be a shared ritual, as Bosshard beautifully recounts from her 2008 trip to France with her family. Her two daughters, then ten and twelve, each selected their own journals before the trip. One evening, the whole family carried their notebooks to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Amid the hum of tourists and the twinkling lights of Paris, they huddled together in a quiet corner and wrote.
They may have drawn a few curious glances, but what they gained was far more valuable: a shared moment of reflection and a written time capsule of a night suspended above the City of Light. Each of them now has their own version of that evening—told through their eyes and preserved in their own handwriting.
Why Travel Journals Matter
We live in an age of Instagram stories and digital memory overload. But even the most stunning travel photo can’t always recall the full emotional texture of a moment. The nervous anticipation before boarding a plane. The warmth of a conversation with a stranger. The bittersweet ache of leaving a place that changed you.
A journal preserves more than what happened—it preserves how you felt about what happened.
It can be a map of your inner journey, as much as a log of where you’ve been. It helps you notice the small details: the smell of unfamiliar spices at a night market, the rhythm of a local language, the stillness of a sunrise over a foreign landscape.
And perhaps most importantly, journaling helps you slow down. In between itineraries, bus schedules, and sightseeing checklists, the journal invites you to pause, breathe, and reflect.
An Invitation to Begin
You don’t need to be a seasoned writer or an experienced traveler to begin. You only need curiosity—and a willingness to capture what’s true for you in the moment. Your journal doesn’t care about grammar or structure; it only cares that you show up.
Write what you see. Write what you feel. Write what surprises you. Write what scares you. Whether it’s a paragraph or a scribbled sentence, every entry adds to a mosaic of memory you’ll one day be grateful to revisit.
As Eric Maisel emphasizes throughout his work, journaling is not just a tool for writers or creatives—it’s a powerful form of mental and emotional self-care. And when done during travel, it becomes a grounding ritual in the midst of change.
So, next time you pack your bags, make room for a journal. It might not weigh much, but it will hold the weight of your experiences, your thoughts, your dreams.
And when you return, it won’t just be postcards or ticket stubs you carry back—it will be yourself, recorded and remembered through your own eyes, in your own words.
