The Return

I've successfully ignored this blog to the point of distraction and so that it's become so big a task that I can't wrap my brain around it. Is it because I've been so busy having a fabulous time that I've stopped tearing myself away from the fun to record it? Or, is it because travel has become so very normal that I'm not sure what to share? (After a while, how does one really describe the craziness of travel when one moment you can be swimming in the Bay of Biscay at 8:00 a.m. drinking a beer and the next moment you are waking up in a tent in the middle of the Czech Republic with a horse staring at you).

Well, I can't avoid it any longer and I'm facing a difficult job summing up how the last few months have been. But, as I'm now unemployed and have a delicious amount of time on my hands, I'll give it the good ol' college try.


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After a certain amount of time on the road, travel changes. A corner is rounded. You start to feel the strain. The peaks and valleys are higher and lower. The plateaus are endless.

I've spent the majority of the last three months in Spain continuing to learn Spanish. After Nepal, the transition to Spain was tremendous and painful. Returning to the first world is not easy. After the initial wonderment from electricity and running water, the bustle and routine of real life is hard to come back to. There is more distance between people and I feel the strain of social obligations. People have their lives and keep to them. I felt the isolation immediately and missed the days when you met people just walking down the street. In the first world, it's weird if you just approach someone on the street to start a conversation. I was a traveler lost in the middle of normal life.

And so, I found myself much less inspired in Spain and it was a time of language learning and introspection. As plateaus go, this was a long one and I had a lot of time to think and stare down the barrel of the rest of my trip. I wrote little and counted the days. The Fear of returning started to creep in, despite an intense longing to be done with travel. Was it going to be like this when I returned to the states? What exactly am I doing, anyway? I was in a rut.

I was saved from myself when my brother met me in Spain and I started moving again. Trains, planes and buses. Hostels, shitty dorm beds and travel shenanigans. I lay looking up at the underside of my bunk bed and I see all the bunk beds. Suddenly, I was a traveler again and it was good. Travel is like that, just when you think you know what to expect, it changes - it gets harder or easier, or you just stop noticing it all together.

After three weeks of racing around Spain and Portugal and eating as many fried baby squids as we could possibly shove in our mouths (a lot, it turns out), Dylan and I had a race to the airport and then - goodbye! On to the next. I was off to the Czech Republic to meet my boyfriend and start the last leg of my trip. Wine tasting in Moravia and a 3-day music festival in Slovakia. Camping at the beach in France and catching up with old and new friends in England. After the silent panic of my sojourn in Spain, I stopped thinking about what would happen after The Return, and found my old friend the travel groove.

Movement is a good thing, and I've had plenty of it. I feel instantly at ease once the train starts pulling away or the bus tickets are booked. And so, I find myself starting the most difficult part of my journey: returning.

Once a traveler, I'm now just broke and unemployed. I'm excited to find a new job and start over but I'm overwhelmed with the task at hand and how to go about reintegrating into normal life, doing things that are difficult under normal circumstances, with the added difficulty of adjustment and a new identity.

It is great only owning a backpack and a few possessions, but not so easily explained in a job interview. It's romantic in a novel having only $50 in your bank account and a fresh start, but in real life it poses obvious problems.

And the big question: What do I want to do now? Well, I am not quite sure. I feel changed, obviously, and I don't want to lose all that I gained on the road. I am not anxious to get back to office life; I have no interest in rushing back to the grind. I'd like to do much more intentional work and I am not in a rush to define that. I guess I am not interested in returning at all to my old life, but rather continuing. There is no going back now, it's all forward.

And so, it continues. Now, I'm just a traveler, paused. I am going to continue to write, although I think I'm just writing to space. It's no longer "How to quit your job and travel the world," but rather, "How to travel the world and return."