I got back from a road trip with my boyfriend a couple of weeks ago, and perhaps that’s made me want to write about travel. I love travel, but I also realized it wasn’t something I wanted to do all of the time. This is a bit about how I got to that conclusion.
At one point, mostly when I’d felt so overwhelmed by job as a clinician, I was going back and forth on many ideas for how I might be able to shape a more sustainable life long-term. One possibility that I pondered was full-time travel. Along with this, I imagined at different points all of the following: building a tiny house to haul behind a pickup truck, when I realized parking the tiny house would be challenging, I shifted to thinking about converting a van (hashtag van life), and then I also thought about just generally living life as a wandering digital nomad, perhaps taking up freelance work to fund me travel. Like many of my other hobbies that came and went, tiny houses and vans have sort of faded into the background. But I thought more seriously about the third possibility–how I might be able to live life as a full-time traveler.
I didn’t end up landing in a life of full-time travel, but it’s not for lack of trying. Funny enough, I actually gave full-time travel a shot–going to southeast Asia for two and half months to travel slowly after leaving my job and before starting a PhD program. I took a total of four months off backpacking Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and traveling some of the United States as well.
This was supposed to be my “travel time” before going back to school to start my PhD. But I think I always had it in the back of mind that if I loved full-time travel enough, I would figure out a way to make it work and not do my PhD. That permission to leave things, while it may be a hinderance to my hobbies, has been a benefit to my mental health. Reminding myself I can always go and do something else. I am not bound to any one path. That mental space is freeing.
But, it turned out I did NOT want to pursue full-time travel instead of a PhD. Here’s why:
- I didn’t have a goal to work toward like I would working on projects in my PhD. Sure, I could read books, learn new things if I wanted, etc. But I needed more external structure to focus my curiosity.
- I actually really didn’t like moving too quickly between travel destinations. This was how I end up traveling at a slower pace. I spent more time in cities compared to my fellow travelers. And I really enjoyed setting up a regular routine in those cities, going to write at a coffee shop each day, and coming back to my hostel to meet new friends. This made me feel like I would be happier staying in one place for longer.
- The happiest moment I had traveling was a day when I thought I might try to apply for a scholarship. I didn’t end up applying for it, but just going through the process of thinking about the scientific questions I wanted to ask brought me the sense of connection to something I loved and wanted to work on that I had been missing while traveling.
Don’t get me wrong, full time travel was an absolute dream. I actually found myself loving the social side of it (odd given my social anxiety). I met so many interesting people at hostels, shared family dinners and cheap beers over steaming plates of curry. What made the social interactions easier though was their structure. What do I mean by “structure”? Well, nearly everyone I met for the most part was a backpacker wandering southeast Asia. So you could ask them where they’d been and where they were going. You could get ideas for your next leg of the trip, and you could share ideas with them of where you’d been. I liked this predictability, and it eased some of the cognitive load I tend to feel in conversation.
Beyond just these conversations about travel destinations and logistics, we often also shared as travelers some kind of life change we were going through that made us want to travel. Leaving a job, graduating, leaving a relationship. While not the case for everyone, more often than not I met people who who were upended in some way and also possibly heartbroken. I could end up in the deeper type of conversations I enjoy with people much more easily than I would have if I was back home in “normal life.”
Even with just spending a few months traveling, I can’t even begin to count the number of strangers who quickly became friends and who comforted me when I was going through challenging times on the other side of the world.
I’d recommend everyone take a vacation longer than a couple of weeks–to travel with nothing back home to worry about immediately. I know this is easier said than done, especially with terrible vacation policies in the US. But I know having had that space to wander–while it isn’t what I’d choose for my entire life–was a gift I carry with me, even now.
Recommended reading for those curious about full-time travel: Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.
The Lazy PhD 