A Little About Me

Okay, let me back up, and tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Mark Tytell, I'm from Boston, Massachusetts and I just graduated high school. I'm passionate about street photography, writing, and travel, but I also play ultimate frisbee, I love to hike and ski, and I have 2 cats at home.

Soon I'll be going abroad for a gap year across Europe, New Zealand, and Australia (with some other stops along the way). This is by far the biggest turning point in my life, and so I decided to start this blog to document my travels and record any stories I encounter along the way.

You might be wondering why I even decided to take a gap year in the first place. After all, where I grew up, most people go straight into college after high school, and taking a year to travel is far from a common course of action. I guess it all started in the first semester of my freshman year of high school, when my dad took a sabbatical to go work in Lausanne, Switzerland, and moved the whole family with him. I went to an international school, made friends from all over Europe, and saw much of Switzerland, as well as visiting Paris for the first time (which quickly became a favorite city I knew I had to return to). 

Even though it was only 4 months, spending an extended period of time abroad and experiencing a different way of life at that age altered the way I looked at the world, and gave me more of a global perspective. It was a short enough time that nothing much changed upon my return to Boston - I still graduated with my class, and I had a very standard American high school experience - but I felt I gained so much in that time that I could have missed out on, and I'm extremely grateful for that. This sparked a love for travel within me, and the idea of taking an extended period like that again started taking shape in the back of my mind. Over the next 3 and a half years, I would quietly save most of my money in the hope that maybe my dream of taking a travel gap year could become a reality. Coincidentally, soon I'd pick up street photography and fall in love with it, which further bolstered this idea taking root in my mind. Spending my days wandering the streets of different cities across the world, staying in hostels and meeting tons of interesting people every single day, it seems idyllic, and I can't wait to get started.

Honestly, I'd be lying if I said that I don't doubt myself each and every day, especially as my departure time gets scarily near. I'm worried this will turn out to be a solitary experience, or even just a waste of time while all my friends get a head start on their degrees. But the thing that drives me to commit to this trip, to spend countless hours researching and planning and organizing, is knowing that I'll regret it forever if I don't leave. Everyone I've talked to says they wished they could've done something like it, and so I am confident that this year will be pivotal and awesome. You could say that part of my reasoning for starting this blog is to hold myself accountable. By forcing myself to reflect on and record my adventures, I'll hopefully bring some additional meaning to my year abroad.

As it's my first time doing anything like this, I have no real plan on how I want to structure my writing. These entries will mostly contain stories about the unique experiences I undergo and the diverse catalogue of people I will meet. I guess they will also be a place for my own personal anecdotes, where I can share new things I learn as I travel. I'm fully expecting it to evolve over time, so if you're planning on being a consistent reader - which you should - I ask you to remain flexible and just come along for the ride.

Another goal of mine for this gap year is to shoot and make art every single day, and build up a cohesive street photography portfolio to accompany this blog. You will be able to find my work on my Instagram and also on this website. All the photographs I use in these blog entries are my own. Who knows, maybe eventually I could even turn all this into a book!