We all know that travel is one of the greatest pursuits on earth. It’s enlightening, it’s inspiring and it’s an exponential amount of fun. Everyone enjoys its awesomeness to some extent.
Some people are content with a brief, annual holiday from the daily grind. Others make good use of gap years and career breaks. Both seem to slip seamlessly back into real life afterwards, patiently awaiting the next escape.
Sometimes though, the wanderlust impulse runs deeper, and the travel bug manages to burrow its infectious little way into your soul. One day you might wake up to find that travel has become a long-term lifestyle rather than a sideline pursuit. And like any addict, you only realize the extent of your compulsion when you try to quit.
Nobody sets out in life to become a slave to the Wicked Wanderlust. I certainly didn’t… but I definitely f*cking am.
I love travel and I love home. But they’re like a set of belligerent parents who can’t agree, and whom I’m constantly torn between. I recently returned to Dublin after five scattered years abroad, to try hang up my backpack and have a stab at the whole real life thing.
Travel rehab, if you will.
But all that glorious, treacherous travel experience has thrown some fairly unexpected spanners in the works. In fact, it appears to have largely messed up my chances of a normal life.
Sob.
My purse strings have become welded shut.
Over the years, various people have scrutinized my traveling ways and posed some skeptical questions about the financial element. How could I afford to travel so much? Did I come from a privileged family? Had I secretly won the lotto?
In reality, I hail from a distinctly working class background. And I once won a meat tray in a pub raffle which was delicious, but ultimately non-life changing.
No, the secret to my nomadic existence is simply scrimping on an almighty scale. I’ve worked at about 40 different jobs in total, and some of them have not been pretty. But cleaning toilets, beaches and dishes can facilitate your wildest, wackiest travel dreams if you guard your pennies mercilessly.
Dinner out? No, I can cook for a fraction of the price. Cinema? Nah, my laptop streams films for free. Pub? Grand… but I’m bringing my own drink!
Unfortunately this can be a tough mind-frame to escape from. Even when you’re not actually on the road or directly saving for a trip, you may start to flirt dangerously with the line between being thrifty and being a tight, miserly bastard. Recently, I painstakingly sewed a gaping hole in my handbag rather than splashing out on a new, operational one. I also seem to eat exclusively from the clearance section of the supermarket. Mmm semi-expired food.
I can’t seem to figure out how to actually surrender my money for day-to-day trivialities anymore. If the penny-pinching voices in my head keep getting their way, I may end up living in a tent, eating grass.
“Bosses remain unmoved by my abilities to navigate continents or survive inhospitable environments.”
I’m virtually un-hirable.
Occasionally, I become jaded with the “travel/shit job” cycle and consider dipping my toes into the waters of an actual career. Maybe dislodge the cobwebs from my dormant brain and resurrect the ambition behind four years of university study.
A tangible profession could be the gateway to better money, stability, the corporate ladder….all that dreary stuff other people seem to get a kick out of. There’s just one small problem: my CV screams “FLIGHT RISK!” at potential employers.
I’ve never stuck at a job for more than a year because I’m never in one place for that long. Bosses remain unmoved by my abilities to navigate continents or survive inhospitable environments. They’re concerned I’ll mosey out for lunch one day and never come back. Fair enough, really.
Then even if entrusted with an actual grown-up job, there’s all that character-building shit you’ve picked up on the road, like being independent and speaking your mind, which is apparently undesirable in the corporate world.
I was recently asked in a job interview:
“Will you be capable of thriving in a rigid corporate environment, complete with military-style punctuality and monitored bathroom breaks?”
Ehhh…no, I’m fairly confident I’d attempt to burn down your building if you tried to supervise my time in the toilet. Please keep your claustrophobic job and I’ll hang onto my functioning soul, thanks.
And don’t even get me started on the measly allocation of holiday days or I’ll have an anxiety attack.
*waits by the phone to be headhunted by NASA*
People grill me relentlessly about my life choices.
While I’ve dedicated the bulk of my 20s to pursuing the exotic, most of my peers and family chose the more traditional path of marriages, mortgages and kids. Meanwhile, I’ve fled from the perils of domestic bliss….which is grand, because everyone’s different, right?
WRONG. Apparently being a bit different is often confused with being a bit weird. A footloose man is a free spirit, but if a woman doesn’t stick to the societal script, she must be a bit peculiar. If we lived in the Middle Ages, I’d probably be a prime candidate for burning at the stake.
With this in mind, I’ve been questioned relentlessly about the prudence of living such a disjointed life. A lot of people seem equally bothered, and fascinated, by the idea of long-term travel.
“When are you going to settle down?”
“What are you running from?”
“You can’t live like this forever?”
“What are you going to do next?”
“Aren’t you worried about the future?”
Everyone just RELAX before I knock my cauldron over. I’m not running, worrying or even actually listening to your scaremongering. Let me float though my happy, directionless life in peace. You just concentrate on picking out wallpaper patterns for your cage/house.
“But non-travelers just can’t grasp the frustration of trying to squash yourself back into the hole you left in your old life.”
I've changed, man.
You know that scene in Castaway when Tom Hanks comes home after four years on a desert island, and sleeps on the floor rather than in his bed? Well that’s pretty much how I feel when I’m stationary. Displaced and disorientated.
I’ve become so used to living a life in flux, that the routine of “real life” makes me uneasy. After all, what could be more unsettling than waking up in the same house with the same people and eating the same breakfast every day?! *loosens collar*
I can’t summon the enthusiasm to get overly excited about the pub on Friday night or binge-watching Netflix. It simply doesn’t float my boat the way it used to. And of course, because I used to thoroughly enjoy these activities, people eye me suspiciously and conclude that I’ve come home with “notions”.
By way of both defense and explanation, I find myself frequently saying “Well I haven’t lived here in five years,” which prompts profuse eye rolling, and muttering which sounds suspiciously like “get over yourself”. I’m pretty irritating to be fair.
But non-travelers just can’t grasp the frustration of trying to squash yourself back into the hole you left in your old life. They can’t understand that you’ve totally changed shape, that nothing fits and that you basically feel like you’re wearing somebody else’s underwear; uncomfortable and itchy.
Is there a cure?
It’s early days, in fairness. I’ve only been in travel rehab a couple of months, and it’ll surely take longer than that to fully flush out all that roaming residue. Every transition has teething problems.
But I seriously doubt if I’m either capable of, or even interested in, going cold turkey forever. Why the hell would I permanently purge something that’s enlightening, inspiring and an exponential amount of fun from my life? Travel may make “real life” difficult and confusing….but let’s face it, it’s still awesome!
And that’s the real crux of the Wicked Wanderlust. You think you can beat it, and you give it a good go….until eventually you can’t even remember why you’re fighting it anymore. You just book some flights instead and everything makes sense again.
I recently came across a quote by Frank Zappa which goes:
“If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your parents, your teacher, your priest or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.”
Meanwhile, I’ve spent most of my adulthood listening to the voices in my head and allowing my travel addiction to spiral. And I’m happy to report that my existence is far from boring or miserable. I wouldn’t want to mess my life up any other way.