A love letter to print media from a Traveller
This article was first published on “Write your World” on Medium. If you’re a Medium member, you can access it here →
When I was a kid, I fell in love with magazines. First it was my brother’s gaming titles, then his music ones — which quickly became “ours”. Then came the teenage girl mags from my country, then the big international names. Eventually, I even launched my own digital magazine.
Fast-forward to this year, and I’ve had a revelation: I can get a print subscription again — for a quid or so, delivered to my door. It’s not just about the price; it’s about finally holding those international magazines I used to dream about at uni back in South America, the ones you just couldn’t buy locally.
Now that I’m living in Europe and travelling here and there, the whole world feels available again. And for me, it always comes back to magazines.
I can still hear my mum moaning about the boxes of old issues I left behind when I moved away to study. Until recently — nearly twenty years later — there were still a few boxes of my subscriptions gathering dust back home. I didn’t stop because I fell out of love with them. I stopped because, as a traveller living out of a backpack, there’s no address to send them to. Every time you pack, you relearn that “less is more” rule and end up shedding stuff you actually care about.
The 4th of August 2016 was the day I left home to start life in Australia. Since then, I’ve lived a thousand lives, picked up a few languages, and accumulated a ridiculous amount of fun facts. But it was only today, 20th September 2025, that I received the first print magazine from my new subscription. My first small sign of settling down.
Travelling has plenty of moments when you crave a sense of home. God knows it’s exhausting to always be on the move and never have the little things that make a place yours. But there are also moments — as only travellers get — when the literal weight of carrying those things feels like a trap.
When the craving for home hits, you grab whatever anchors you: a flag from home, photos, a pillow, flowers. It works for a while. You can make a studio, hostel or flat feel home-ish. But deep down, you know it’s temporary.
Then comes the moment you finally have an address. When that first bill arrives with your name on it, and you can immediately see the next steps to actually putting down roots.
I’ve done the usual tricks: joined gyms, got to know the neighbours, signed up for the library — little rituals that make a new town feel like home. But books and magazines have always been different. Even though I’ve bought plenty at airports and train stations — sometimes in languages I don’t even speak — they were more about passing time between departures than putting down roots. My travel snacks for the mind.
Lately though, I’ve been making space in cupboards, lining up the old mags I’ve been carting around for the past three years. And I’ve started subscribing again.
Today, I opened my first delivery: the October 2025 issue of GQ UK.
I’ve admired this magazine since my first trip to the US from South America as a teenager. Beautifully written English-language features about places that felt like a film. Later, at journalism school, I let myself fangirl over the publications I once thought were out of reach. And eventually, I even daydreamed about writing for them.
It’s the features that fill my heart. This magazine — even though it’s marketed for men — runs some of the best writing out there. Reading a slick, glossy story that’s as smart as it is fun is what made me realize magazines would always be part of my life, as a reader and as a journalist.
And nothing beats the feeling of that first subscription issue with your name on the envelope. That’s the moment you know you’re settling in.
Right now, as I sit in a lounge chair overlooking autumn-colored trees from the window of my new home in England, coffee in one hand and my October issue of GQ in the other, I know: I’m home.
Little Chilean 