Why Travelling Has Ruined My Life

Most people my age, at some point, get the daft urge to quit their jobs and travel.

The idea usually emerges after a major life event. Graduating uni, finishing college, or when considering  a career change.

Don’t do it, it’s a silly idea.

Especially out of your continent. It will ruin your life.

You see, venturing beyond your home town has a way of messing with you, and you’re far too impressionable in your late teens to early twenties. You should wait until you have more life experience, maybe in your 40’s or 50’s, because you should have probably figured it out by then. Besides, it's not like you'll never be this young and burden free, ever again.

But as a young adult? Don’t be ridiculous. You’re asking for failure.

Have you ever spun around in circles and then suddenly started twirling the other direction — it makes you feel sick and dizzy, right? That’s exactly how your entire world will feel once you travel.

I worry that many of you are too stubborn to listen, but hear me out.

Believe me, I have been there, and I deal with the consequences every single day.

Huh? But is that not the wonderlusters dream? Camper van around the world, living simplistically whilst waking up to a new waterfall or orange coastline, every single day. They say it changes ones perception of the world forever, no?

… that’s the problem, it does -  and you young people are far too susceptible to the side effects of travel. Don’t worry though, by the time you hit 30 you’ve probably acquired a career, loans, a family, debt, and many other obligations which protect you from the nasty repercussions of venturing beyond your normal realms.

You can kiss goodbye to the person you once was, they won’t exist anymore. You won’t even feel your old self slipping away. As you engage with new cultures, something begins to take over. Their views on work, leisure, quality of life, art, architecture and tradition begin to submerge into your brain, in the flick of a switch.

You begin asking yourself things such as:

“Do I really want to work 60+ hour weeks with just 28 holiday days out of my 365 in a year?”

“There has to be more to life than this, surely?”

“How come young people in other countries aren’t crippled with student loan debt?”

“What is most important in my life?”

“Why didn’t I study a foreign language?”

“Maybe other countries do some things much better than we do them back home..’’

“How are people with so little, so damn happy?’’

It doesn’t really hit until you’re back home, when you’re sat in your once familiar comfort zone, and realise that the place that once represented stability doesn’t exist anymore either. ‘Home’ is no longer truly ‘home’, because your heart was left somewhere else, oceans apart. It’s disorientating, like you’re wearing somebody else’s glasses. It leaves you restless, and uneasy.

You’ll no longer relate to your friends and family. Your dreams become alien to peers who think you’ve sipped too many moon shakes in Thailand. You’ll tell them all about what you ate, saw, and experienced, and how this whole experience was a completely transformative journey, but believe me, eyes will quickly gloss over. This will happen just about every time - ‘but don’t you think you should start saving for a mortgage? I mean you are 22..’ they won’t understand, and many won’t really care. Tread carefully, as friends quickly tire of your stories.

But that’s not alll.

You’ll find you’re no longer, ever satisfied. Trying to focus on your dead 9-5 becomes almost impossible, because the lure of travel constantly calls your name. You’ll find yourself subscribing to nomadic websites, finding work for free placements and homestays, calculating how much you can save in X amount of time to escape again. You’ll seek out restaurants that serve food similar to what you discovered at the other side of the world - but it will never be as good or authentic as sitting on the floor of a local food stop, eating curry with your fingers talking trash with friendly locals. God help you if you ever acquire a taste for Peach Soju, because your bank account will suffer.

Spending time on Facebook and Instagram will become almost unbearable. Material things don’t matter anymore. Seeing the same people, in the same places, doing the same things week in and week out become tedious. Watching people dying to climb the social ladder makes you weep at how small minded the western world has become.

BUT THE WORST THING ABOUT TRAVELING IN YOUR TWENTIES IS THAT YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO STOP.

You’ll spend your entire life traveling. You won’t be able to shake the travel bug. Whenever the possibility to visit another country arises, you’ll take it. You’ll spend less time at the bar or choose a home-cooked meal over a restaurant so you can add a little more to your travel fund. You’ll find other ways to skimp and scrounge because you have no choice but to see as much of the world as possible.