Welcome to Issue #012 of Sojourn. Each week, I share two original essays to help you slow down, reconnect, and rebuild with intention (hence ‘sojourn’), in a private community that uses travel as a path to reinvention.
THE LIST TRAP
Travel culture often makes us collectors.
Countries, cities, airports—counted, ranked, displayed.
But I’ve realized: it’s not the number of places that matters.
It’s the one place that makes you different.
The one that shifts your pace.
The one that loosens something you didn’t know was tight.
The one that sends you home carrying more clarity than luggage.
WHAT CHANGED FOR ME
I’ve been to dozens of places, yet it’s never the list I look back on.
It’s Halong Bay, where mist between the islets slowed my breath.
It’s Kyoto’s bamboo forest, where the wind through the stalks hushed me into stillness.
It’s Florianópolis, barefoot mornings as a child, the ocean teaching me rhythm before I had words for it.
Those weren’t “destinations” to check off.
They were mirrors.
And what they reflected changed me.
HOW THIS APPLIES TO REINVENTION
Reinvention works the same way.
You don’t need 20 new projects, 50 new tools, or a perfect roadmap.
You need one shift that changes how you see yourself.
One ritual you keep.
One decision you no longer postpone.
One belief you’re ready to drop.
That’s the “place” that makes you different—the turning point that doesn’t stay in your passport, but in your pace.
THE SHIFT
Instead of asking: How many more places (or things) do I need to add?
Ask: Which one place—or one practice—is already changing me?
Because it’s never the quantity of stops that matters.
It’s the quality of the shift you carry forward.
PROMPTS WORTH PACKING
Reinvention rarely happens on schedule. It sneaks in during pauses, detours, or the moments we least expect. That’s why I think of prompts like companions on the road—they don’t give you a rigid itinerary, but they help you notice when the journey itself is trying to teach you something. Copy these into ChatGPT (or into your journal) and let them show you what you may be overlooking.
Prompts:
“What experience in my life felt unexpected, but left me changed after?”
“If a journey were trying to teach me something right now, what might that lesson be?”
“What practice or detail from a past trip has quietly stayed with me, and how can I use it as a guide for the season I’m in?”
Journeys don’t always wait for you to be ready. Sometimes they arrive first, with the change you didn’t know you needed. Prompts like these help you notice when the road is already pointing you back to yourself.
PLACES TO RETURN TO
These stays prove that one place, done with intention, can change far more than your itinerary:
Vigilius Mountain Resort — Italy
Arrive by cable car, leave with a different pace. Silence built into every view.
Juvet Landscape Hotel — Norway
Walls of glass that teach you how to see again. Forest silence that follows you home.
Eremito — Umbria
Candlelight, stone, and quiet. A modern-day hermitage where absence becomes presence.
Because in the end, the best travel doesn’t expand your list.
It expands you.
It stretches the way you see.
It rearranges what you value and what matters most.
A single place, a single stay, can shift what feels possible, long after the trip ends.
That’s the point: it’s not just to come home with just photos or stories.
It’s to come home with a slightly different version of yourself.
~Ana