The following is an excerpt from the preface of my #1 Amazon bestselling book, Everywhere But Home: Life Overseas as Told by a Travel Blogger (2020). I am republishing it here to provide a free sample, the introductory words, of my book, which is now available on Amazon.
From the preface:
When I first launched my blog, Phil’s Next Stop, in August 2018, I had no idea what I was doing or where it would take me. Nor did I realize it would be my ticket to work overseas as a full-time writer and editor, or that it would eventually entice me to pursue writing as a career. I had created it with the modest goal of documenting my travels and improving my writing. For months, I could count all my readers on one hand (and my parents alone made up half of that).
This collection of writing changed my life long before it became this book. While it has not earned me a single dime, my blog has accumulated 150,000 hits over the course of two years (to more influential individuals this may be but a modest number; to me it is astounding), and played a role in earning a scholarship to a top-ranked journalism program. Along the way I’ve become a more conscientious and confident traveler, writer and individual.
In revisiting the ideas I have penned these two years, I’ve noticed recurring themes that I did not see at the time of their writing. To name a few: the difference between knowledge and wisdom; the joy of putting serious leg-work behind a passion project; and deconstructing the idea that one must do what everyone else is doing.
I have learned, above all, to enjoy the journey. This is what I most eagerly hope to impart. When I say “the” journey, I do sincerely mean your journey — the personal, heroic, and epic journey that is unique to you and only you. This journey is at once severely personal while also frighteningly universal: each of us must pave our own untrammeled way, just as everyone before us has done and everyone after us is destined to do.
What seems to get muddled in this equation is how the journey of the individual stands in relation to the journey of others. There remains a delicate balance. Letting others accompany you on your journey is something I encourage wholeheartedly — hold hands, sing songs, strut alongside one another merrily and forthrightly. But to let others pick your path for you is something I have learned to avoid if at all possible — the road one follows can be full of resentment, regret, and malice if it is a road chosen for you.
To briefly interpose with a word I return to often: “kismet.” Kismet is the Yiddish concept of destiny, taken from the Arabic qisma which means something along the lines of “what you are allotted.”
A word more commonly used today, “fate,” on the other hand, comes from the Latin fatum, meaning “that which has been spoken.” Fate asserts that our paths have been previously spoken into existence. I gravitate to kismet because kismet allows room to believe that we speak our own paths into existence, that we as individuals determine for ourselves what we are allotted in life.
Kismet grants the possibility of interaction between the things one does and the things that happen. To me, this rings more true than the belief that we simply fall into a path dictated by anything other than our own volition. Conceptually, at the very least, I would like to believe I have a say in the things I am allotted. To not even try to believe this, one runs the risk of demolishing any semblance of striving or ambition. Thus I posit that publishing this book could only have been kismet.
Though I won’t be doing much traveling within the next year, this physical compilation acts as a small, personal memorabilia from my time abroad. If I am lucky others will take an interest too. What is more likely is that this is read far less often than it is used as a paperweight (such are the perils of writing a book).
I told myself two years ago that before I sat down and claimed to be a writer, I must first live in such a manner that is worth recounting. I endeavored to devour experience and novelty, to partake in the buffet of escapades that adventure provides. If travel has taught me anything, it is that you never really know how to attain wisdom exactly, and even if you do attain some you can never be sure how to put it to good use. The only option that remains seems to be to keep your eyes wide open and hope to pick up a few things along the way.
Today my blog is still running and I continue publishing work into the void that is the internet. As always, the future remains uncertain. What I am certain of is that I will continue to write. I hope others will continue to read.
Writing, though a solitary activity, is always done in conversation with the reader. I write these words because I have something to say to you — yes you holding this book right now — and I hope they are worthwhile.
In this sense, the path of learning and growth happens not for each person individually, but always in relation to someone else. As a group, an ever-expanding community of humble and curious people. That’s really what this is all about.
Phil Rosen, July 2020
My book is available now on Amazon. Click this link.
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