If you ask most people, they will admit that they hate leaving after they experience travel. I ask myself each time how I can find a way to live in the current destination so I don’t have to go home. I thought this feeling was a phase that would fade once I started spreading my roots back home. After 5 months of travel, I began on the job hunt and settled back into my old routine like before. I reconnected with friends and family, acquired a job, and tried to find it within myself to enjoy being back home. Being reunited with my family and animals was a huge benefit but I still had this cavernous hole in my heart that wouldn’t go unnoticed. Finding joy in the things that previously satisfied me were no longer satiating me. I started to read more books to get the feeling of being transported somewhere else. Speaking to those who haven’t experienced long term travel find it hard to relate, expecting me to only live again through 2 weeks of PTO that is rationed with the days that I’m ill.
What I’m getting at is living a stationary life with a nomadic heart is purgatory. Sometimes I hate that my heart yearns so badly to be a nomad. It would be so easy to be fulfilled with hobbies that didn’t require me uprooting my life and such an excess of money. I chase that feeling each day never being fully successful. To everyone else I’m just a person who can’t commit to being an adult and there is some truth behind that. I don’t like working. Not because I’m lazy but because no one wins in the rat race. Underpaid workers slaving away giving so much of their lives to help the rich get richer. I rather not bend the knee and walk in my purpose of traveling the world even if that means I have nothing.
How do I fight this feeling while I’m stuck behind a desk you might ask. Skyscanner has become my oasis to distract this jaded mind of mine. Planning trips with their convenient search engine that allows flexibility showing you the cheapest dates to fly to your desired destination. The website also offers an “everywhere” button so you can plug your departing airport in. The cheapest destinations populate for the airport of your choice giving you new ideas for future trips that you never considered before. I also stay up to date with world news and not specifically just American news. American news channels tend to broadcast only national news leaving a small percentage for international news. By researching international news, it gets me outside of the fearful mindset of what local news channels push to their audience. I recommend everyone to reach outside of American news and keep up to date with what happens around the world. The last thing that helps me not implode from being stationary is connecting with the people I met while traveling and looking back at the memories. The friendships you make while traveling is beyond special and will last a life time. Staying updated on their lives and planning visits always warms my heart allowing me the sense of home being everywhere.
So, will I ever be satisfied with having a stationary life? Probably not but I make my days full with the possibility of one day traveling long term again. I continue to search for remote jobs and even ones abroad. I appreciate the time I do have with family and my pets and keep hope alive. Until I’m unable to physically move, I will always strive to get out in this world and explore.