I took my Roadtrip during the summer after my freshman year in college, which was six-and-a-half years ago.

At the time, I really imagined myself embarking on a career in documentary film…I wanted to make films in the style of “The Open Road,” films that included the cameras and the people behind the cameras. I still love that style. In many ways, my grant video was that for me.

I’ve continued to shoot videos since then, even though it hasn’t become my one-and-only passion. During college I was totally swept up in the sustainability movement, and I became the co-founder of a sustainable farming community in Texas (http://glasscenter.org) during a time when I wasn’t enrolled in classes. After spending my entire life in a classroom, I craved useful skills in the physical world. Farming and carpentry gave that to me. It took me about eight months of participating in this community before I realized that we were WAY in over our heads. That’s kind of another story.

So, I went back to college and graduated (with a degree in Film Studies), then I returned to community living. This time, instead of acting as the bold founder of a new endeavor, I took the role of a “work-exchanger” in an already-established community in North Carolina. For a year and a half, I apprenticed at a nursery that grows fruit trees and berry bushes and sells them to customers all over the bioregion. With the nursery, I produced a how-to video series that’s gotten over 100,000 views on YouTube (and counting!).

After my commitment was over at the community, I decided to move on. I could have stayed indefinitely, but I really felt that I was not done traveling yet. I also wanted to take the opportunity to live with one of my brothers. After hiking Mount Kilimanjaro (it was my dad’s suggestion; I produced an audio documentary about it), I moved to Richmond, Virginia to live in a house with my younger brother and four other guys. My brother and I teach/tutor at nonprofits in the neighborhood (I made a promo video about the one where my brother works), and I plan to be working/living here at least until the end of this school year, working in the classroom and doing part-time work on the side.

This summer I’m not sure where I’ll go. I have a brother in Dallas and a brother in San Francisco, so I have already started opening my eyes to opportunities in both those places. There’s a good chance I’ll stay in Richmond, and there’s also the possibility of some other crazy opportunity that I have not yet recognized as such…I’m really just planning things year by year at this point.

I feel super grateful to Roadtrip Nation for empowering me to get out the door and onto the Road. Something really special happened for me when I realized I could do something that fun and have someone else paying for it. Now that I’m at least as old as Mandy was when she was in the position of grants coordinator (or whatever her title was), I feel bad for how much I asked of her and the other people at Roadtrip Nation (post-college life is hard!)

I attached a screenshot of a Paul Frank Roadtrip Nation quote. I think about that quote on a weekly basis, whenever I’m working on something that just doesn’t feel quite right. I just have to sit, breathe, and remember what’s fun about what I’m doing. It feels good to read it now, because I’d just been working off of my memory of it.

-Will