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Rolf Potts is a celebrated travel-writer and best-selling author (over a million books sold!). Besides writing best selling books, teaching writing in Paris each summer, occasionally hosting a television travel show, and inspiring the polymath, phenom Tim Ferriss to embrace the Vagabonding philosophy (as well as give Potts’ book of that same name the coveted spot of “first book in the Tim Ferriss book club”), Rolf Potts lives in rural Kansas and saves for extended world travel. And there’s also the gangsta rap project.
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A philosophy of life, travel and seeing the world.
Vagabonding and the “time-wealth” value-adjustment from which action naturally follows.
(video by Tim Ferriss)
Time is treated as a commodity but thinking of how we will spend our days and our lives can poorly reflect a life we really want and actualize time well.
Travel is not an expensive indulgence. Freeing up the time to travel can be the greater obstacle (mind-frame) for living well.
“time-wealth”
Seeing Time as the true wealth of our lives.
5:20
The repercussions of “the selfie stick” for the modern traveler.
How technology affects how we travel.
6:30
Technology can have you living through a screen instead of traveling or living at a firsthand level.
Tourists of everyday life. Is performance engaged enough?
7:40
Counting selfie sticks in Paris.
It can advertise that you are there to harvest photos. (The least obtrusive selfie stick I could find, in case the temptation for better shot is too much.)
Comic book Wenamun the ancient Egyptian travel story.
If we get bored, lost, or lonely while traveling you are forced to be more imaginative and be more engage with the people and place where you actually are. These are gifts of travel.
10:20
Discipline and the ability to wean off technology and allow life to happen can give us richer experiences. More surprises and more vulnerability can make for a better trip.
Put the smart phone away.
12:10
Asking people where to eat who actually live there.
14:40
How he has evolved as a world traveler?
16:00
Being a Korean ex-pat for a few years and understanding how cultural is a gut-level thing that helps to learn while living there so that the abstractions change into lived experiences.
18:30
Rolf on having a provincial perspective and how it has been a benefit to him because he appreciated the smaller towns and places and not judging the place for their perceived lack of sophistication. People have more time for you in small towns. Big cities can have more arrogance toward other more rural places.
21:00
His recent travel adventure: Renting a car in France with a 100 page road atlas but no guide book. Seeing the beautiful town and eating Beef Burgundy.
Ladder of abstract in writing. We meditate the world through abstractions. Root myself in the concreteness of travel and use my 5 senses.
25:00
The crap shoot of how he choses where to travel.
Visiting friends feels less like travel than it does like reunions.
On traveling alone and winter traveling.
29:20
Places with bad reputations can be the best places to travel. Syria, though, has become too dangerous, but had been one of his favorites.
Egyptians are very accommodating except near the pyramids where it’s very tourist-heavy.
China is a giant country with many things to experience.
Russia also has a lot to experience.
32:00
Less traveled parts of the world can be more interesting and people can have more time for you.
New projects:
Comic book (Wenamun) inspired by reading about travel in the ancient world. The anti-hero is Wenamun who bumbles through his travels. Proceeds go to help Syrian Refugees, Save the Children Fund.
Gangster rap was about the crack-era urban decline of certain areas.
Gangster rap in the 1980s and 1990s was the first black music form in the 20th Century that wasn’t appropriated and sold “with a white face”. Authenticity was so important in the art form is was done differently.
40:40
First exploring the 5th Ward in 1995 and going on a police patrol ride-along and seeing the crime from that vantage point and coming back in 2015. People ride horses in parts of the 5th Ward. The inner city in often a troupe. In Houston, the ghetto is place-specific and Rolf enjoyed writing about the history of it too.
Investigation of place.
44:30
Where to find Rolf, his writings, his books, and travel photos: rolfpotts.com
visit roofpotts.com to view more
May you see world travel in a different way. It is accessible.
Sorry, this is only a partial recording! The LIVE viewers got a great Q & A with Rolf. Don’t it out on the next one. Show up on TUESDAYS at 8pm EST / GMT -4 for the guest of the week.
By way of a recap, I’m suspending my blogging for a while, but I’m still going to post a few more interviews. I hope you enjoy them.
The bio of Rolf Potts reads like a who’s-who of celebrated travel writers. His NO BAGGAGE Challenge last year highlighted the idea that travel can be much simpler than we tend to think. He trekked over 30,000 miles without a single bag to weigh him down.
The same mentality can be helpful in life too, according to Rolf. Enjoy watching this short chat we had, (and subscribe to the youtube channel for more great stuff).
Besides his website that contains some great articles, blog posts, and case studies in vagabonding–here are 2 of Rolf’s book that make great reading:
We don’t just have upon us a crisis of faith, but also a crisis of faithfulness.
We’ve been reviewing Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love. I encourage everyone to read it. It’ll do you good. Also, it makes an interesting and thought-provoking small group study, or Sunday School class.
"Crazy Love" by Francis Chan
This last lesson was on Risk and Faith. Chan asked everyone to do something in their regular life that requires faith. He asked that we abandon the typical planning we do to minimize our risk. We should do something others could think of as silly, and allow ourselves to live and act in a more vulnerable way. We shouldn’t rely in our stuff to satisfy us. We should live bigger lives.
Along the same lines, Rolf Potts leads this sort of recommended simpler type of lifestyle. He calls it vagabonding. (I found out about Rolf through the Tim Ferriss site. Thank you, Tim.)For Potts, a travel writer, his style is not just a method of travel, but a way of life. It’s unlike the American way of life, because it does not trust in stuff.
I’ve wondered if it’s the case that in America we seem to act like “in god we trust” refers to the money itself, or the things we can buy with it.
We do a lot to feel safe. We buy insurance to minimize various kind of threats. We buy things we feel sure will help us, or at least soothe us. What is the lasting consequence of this approach? A false sense of control? Feathering our pillow of self-sufficiency? Other things…
Rolf Potts takes the theme of traveling light to a whole new level, as he now begins hisNo Baggage Challenge: Traveling to 12 countries in 6 weeks—With NO baggage (not even a man purse/satchel). [His blog details his travels, and his packing techniques are also quite useful.]
The journey of faith is the same way. When we seek out the comfortable, and we travel heavy, by preparing (mentally or physically) for every potential event, challenge, or threat–something important gets left behind. Perspective for one thing. But what else?
In the life of faith, “taking nothing for the journey” means that one must trust in God’s provision (and hisway of providing), trust others, and build relationships. It’s not about what we’ve packed (prepared) for, it’s about the trip itself. It’s about being brave, and opening up to others, and the experience of not being weighted down (both literally and figuratively) by our presuppositions: What we think the trip should look like, and feel like.
You don’t like bumps, you say? Sorry, it’s bumpy. You just might have been insulating yourself. For some perspective… Think: padded cell.
The spiritual journey (journey of faith) is undertaken so optimal preparedness is removed as an option: It’s a method of living, not to be comfortable, but to survive, live, and eventually thrive, where you are, as you are. You come as you are. When the going gets tough–and it will–you stay. [The only thing you “plan on” is love and loyalty.] You work it out. You don’t let yourself have but that choice. You live has though you don’t have a chance/option to flee–like we are too often ready to do. We trust others, and God with abandon, despite the risks, or pain that may/will come.
Why? Because it is the surest way to growth, more rewarding experiences, and a sense of being in a Story bigger than yourself and your self interests. In spending ourselves, we gain our lives.
When we take a risk to help or love (without examining the our potential losses, and assessing all the personal risks) we live by and in faith, not by sight.
[Now, realize, I’m not talking about a life of folly, or veritable reckless behavior. I’m talking about being okay with discomfort, and sacrificing the known and manageable, for something greater at stake.]
What could that look like for you? Please-Leave your ideas.
Maybe giving away the extra car to someone who needs it? Opening up your home for someone else to live in? Inviting a family to your home for supper once a week? Using a paycheck to buy someone groceries?
What kind of faith will you live by?
In this sense, a little pain goes a long way. Soon, our sights move away from ourselves in pursing selfless faithfulness.
I wanted to share this video, by travel writer Rolf Potts, because I appreciated Rolf’s worldview, and attitude about enjoying life. I think we’d be better off absorbing his 5 tips, than doing, or seeking a great many other things.
Rolf’s begins by telling viewers that time (not money, achievements, or things) is our greatest temporal treasure.
