I’m a sucker for the online world, everything about it. Youtube, Instagram, blogs honestly the whole nine yards. I love reading and watching someone else’s experience in a place I’ve been or better yet, to a place I would like to visit. Since we started traveling back in 2016, what I’ve seen a lot more of is people selling everything they own and hitting the road. Honestly, I LOVE IT! I’m completely infatuated with our generation’s love for the open road.
Stefano and I began our journey of full-time traveling back in 2014. I found an incredible book about a girl and her experience solo traveling around the world for a year. I was instantly hooked. In 2014 traveling full time for an extended period of time and documenting it, was far less common. Simply put, this book changed my life. From that day forward, I began working full time as a waitress, while getting my university degree and for the next 2 years, I saved every penny, amassing over $30,000 all on my own. From 2014 until November of 2018, my life revolved around this big trip. From saving and planning, to living life on the road, this trip defined who I became as a young adult.
In all of my research I can recall reading just one article about what life would be like upon my return. Hardly anyone talked about how long it would take to reintegrate back into “society” and about what life would be like AFTER that journey.
If you’ve experienced it then you know just what I’m talking about. That freedom and adventure, that feeling of never-ending inspiration. Seeing how others live, encountering the good and the bad changes every fiber of your being. No matter how hard you try to go back to a “normal” life, you’re never quite the same. The ambitions you once had no longer seem important. Don’t get me wrong, it was the best decision I ever made to travel full-time, and I would never change anything about it. So, I guess the question becomes now what? The honest truth, I have no idea. Did travel kill my ambitions? I guess I can say maybe, but what it definitely did was change what I value and define as success.
It’s been about 2 years since our return and I would love to say it’s gotten easier but the truth is, it has gotten harder. I would be lying if I’d said I don’t think about it often. I find myself dreaming of exotic sunsets, long train rides, and unknown places. I find myself craving culture shock and a new hotel room every night. I miss the never-ending adventure, the pantomime conversations with strangers. But perhaps what I miss most are the meaningful interactions with people. Some of my most fond memories include a person or people I meet while traveling. From interacting with locals to spending hours in a common room at a hostel chatting with a fellow traveler. These are the memories that I find the most challenging to leave behind. Somehow the watercooler small talk about your weekend just doesn’t quite cut it anymore. It’s the question I get asked time and time again, what now? What’s next? Are you going to travel again? Once again, the honest truth, I have no clue.
One thing is true, the world has changed me. It’s left me uncomfortable in the places I’ve once found familiar. Living out of a big closet, having more than 3 pairs of shoes, and a refrigerator where I don’t need to label my own food somehow brings me a general sense of dissatisfaction with life.
It’s no secret travel changes you, it rocks your world upside down. But perhaps I’ve been living with this all along, this nomad spirit. Perhaps, deep down we all have a part of us that was born to roam free, to journey, and call the open road home, but only a few of us have the courage to chase it, to seek out that unknown.
