Mapping Out Your Future

For years I’ve been keeping maps on my bedroom walls with pins stuck in all the places I’ve been. It mainly keeps me connected to trips long past and serves as an inspiration for future travels. I’m not sure where I got this idea from, but I think the first time I ever saw it done was in the movie “Mask” with Cher and Eric Stoltz. Pardon the pun, but it has stuck with me ever since.

In the film, Rocky Dennis had pinned a map of Europe with all the destinations for his dream motorcycle trip, but when the dream fell apart, he took the pins out. Near the end of the movie, when Rocky dies, his mother re-pins the map and says, "Now you can go anywhere you want, Baby." I actually couldn’t find an English-speaking clip of this scene, but as this is a travel blog, I suppose an Italian version will do:



On a side note, the song you hear in the background of that scene is “Ripple” by The Grateful Dead, a great road song in its own right:

There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone.

But road songs are certainly another topic for another day. Back to maps, to avoid the issue of too many pinholes in the walls, I switched to marking them with star stickers. Yeah, I’ve definitely been laughed at for being a 37-year-old with maps and glow-in-the dark stars on my walls, but to me there’s nothing cooler than turning off my lights at night and seeing all the places I’ve been, light up.

But if maps on the wall are a little too "college dormy" for you, try creating a virtual map of the places you’ve been or the places you’d like to go.