I have a confession to make. This “forget about everything else that’s standing in your way and travel the world” thing- it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not all that I’ve cracked it up to be.
In the true spirit of the travel blogger, I have been pushing this idea for a long time that anybody can travel the world just like me. They can, and they should, because in fact, it’s not as difficult as you think and you only live once, so, quit making excuses and just, go!
You wouldn’t catch me dishing out advice like that to anyone these days. I’ve been silent on the blog for a while now as I’ve found myself in the thick of a serious change of heart and perspective in this regard, which has resulted in a change of direction in my life.
Traveling Carly is very, very tired
Of course, I know that I am not in any kind of position to complain about having been priveleged enough to sustain long term travel for all of these years. But I would like to share some or the hard realties of this lifestyle (the “confessions”) because I think it is often overly-glorified on social media and made to look like this is a glamorous and carefree life, the life of the #traveladdict, when it’s not. Like anything else in life, it has it’s ups and the downs that come along with them.
I laugh to myself when I come across images of exotic places on Instagram accompanied by the hashtag “travel addict” or “travel OD”. I’ve been there. If anyone can call themselves a travel addict, it’s this girl right here. The word “addiction” has negative connotations for a reason. It indicates the abuse or misuse of something that is supposed to be done in moderation or recreationally, and when taken to the extremes it can result in a loss of touch with reality. A travel addiction is no different.
#TravelAddict
I guess that I, like many other millennials and digital nomads of my time, have been trying to make travel work as a lifestyle because I am part of the first generation to have this possibility available to them: to work from a laptop and live wherever you want, at a time when travel is cheaper and the world more accessible than it has ever been. So why wouldn’t I? All these years and countries and flights later, I can give you more than a few reasons.
When I came home from my last backpacking trip through South America- just about a year ago now- I was unwell in many senses of the word. I was in debt. While I have boasted about having figured out how to make money as I traveled around the word by working from my laptop as a Digital Nomad, that’s not as easy to pull off as I made it sound, and I ended up having to exhaust all of my savings and put the rest on credit cards.
It’s probably easier to work full time if you are ok with staying in one location that is close to a reliable and strong internet connection to work from, but a lot of the most exciting places to travel to are not like that. No, that wasn’t what I had in mind. I wanted to move around and see entire continents while I worked from my laptop. That required me to plan my work around my travel when it should have been the other way around. This is one of many instances of my falling out of touch with reality because of an addiction to travel.
You give up a lot for the “freedom” that comes with never being tied down anywhere. I always feel weird complaining about this to my friends, like it’s not allowed. I know what they’ll think: How can you complain about getting to travel all the time? How dare you complain to those of us who bust our butts working a 9-5 every day while you are out discovering the world and seeking new thrills? Recently I opened up about it to a friend of mine who I was visiting in Spain, and my desire and struggle to phase into a more stable lifestyle after all these years of wandering the world. She listened silently while I worried what she was thinking. “You know, I just can’t imagine,” she said after some relflection. “When I go on vacation, at the end when it’s time to go home I feel so happy that I get to return home and sleep in my own bed and be in my own house. It must be so uncomfortable to just never get to do that.” I wanted to reach over and hug her. She gets it, I sighed with relief.
Freedom comes at a cost
There is a certain stigma we attach to the idea of “settling down”. Like when you choose to settle down, that’s when life starts to get boring. Yet, there is something to be said for the stability that comes with settling down. Bloggers and #traveladdicts will boast about how in love they are with their routine of constant change, and I wonder how truthful they are really being- both to themselves and the audience that they are boasting to. Anyone who has gone on vacation knows how inherently unpredictable travel can be. Imagine living in that state constantly.
Of course, life can be unpredictable for all of us, but when you are moving about unknown territory, it’s a given. At the same time that you are beginning to learn the lay of the land, new obstacles are continually being thrown in your way. Just when you think you’re getting the hang of things, it’s time to move on again. Yes, has it’s thrills as well or we wouldn’t do it, but accumulatively, over the years it’s exhausting and unsettling. I wouldn’t call it “good for the soul” when taken to this extreme. I would never say that I “found myself” traveling, like so many set out to do. Far from it! There came a point when I was feeling beyond lost, so lost that I could not go on and had to stop and think about where I was really trying to go in my life. Everything that I had seen and done so far felt so ultimately, aimless.
I’m glad that I spent my 20’s traveling, I mean, how can I say that I regret seeing as much of the world as I have? But it has come at a cost. Not just financially. It’s been hard on my relationships, meaning, I haven’t been able to have them. Before I can start to develop something meaningful with someone it’s usually about time for one of us to leave. That’s been hard because as the years go by, I find myself longing for that companionship. But the kind of people you meet traveling usually aren’t looking for that. If they are not traveling with their partner already, they are usually pretty attached to their own freedom while they’re on the road.
It’s been hard on my family as they wonder how things are going to turn out for me. More than anything, it has been hard on me emotionally. An old confidant of mine once reminded me that “the outer world is always reflective of the inner.” I don’t know if any words had ever rang so true. My surroundings were unstable and constantly changing, and that’s how I felt inside. The excitement of never knowing what was next lost it’s luster and feelings of anxiety began creeping in. I knew I had to take my life in a new direction.
In the next post I will reveal the new direction that I have found and how I got there. But I do want emphasize one more time that while my “confessions” sound melancholic, that’s because the purpose of the post is to discuss the negative parts of the nomadic lifestyle that I have been living, because I don’t think that many people ever do. I wanted to honestly offer up another perspective: that it’s not as carefree and glamorous as it looks in the travel blogs and on Instagram. Of course there were plenty of beautiful, amazing, unforgettably positive experiences too, and I wouldn’t take any of it back, the good or the bad. Joni Mitchell sang it best, that “Life is for Learning”, and that’s just what I’ve been doing.
CurlyBird Travel 