It's surprising how many people ask me "Do you miss traveling? You used to travel all the time and now you don't! I guess when you do something a lot, that kinda becomes entwined with your identity. Sometime that defines you to others and, to some extent, to yourself.
The truth is that I did miss it very much at first... for about six months after my non-stop travel ended. I had become so accustomed to it that it seemed normal, and not traveling seemed like things in my life were not normal. It was like I didn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't flying off to Honolulu for a couple days to present at a conference... then flying to San Francisco for an overnighter to see that paperwork was handled... then flying to Vegas for a few days for one reason or another. I was gone for 1/3 of the year, now I'm home 99% of the time.
And yet... two years later now... I am quite happy to stay at home.
Sure there are some places in the world I'd still love to visit, but the drive to actually go there has subsided. Now the idea of spending hours upon hours in airports and in planes just doesn't appeal to me. At all. Maybe once COVID has finally been eradicated I'll join up with another charity to keep fighting the good fight and start traveling again, but the longer I'm going nowhere the more I doubt it.
Maybe it'll just be a vacation here and there.
Though I don't mind saying... the idea of a staycation where I'm just building stuff in my garage woodshop sounds like it would be the best vacation ever.
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“Maybe once COVID has finally been eradicated I’ll join up with another charity to keep fighting the good fight and start traveling again”
Curious what charity work you’d be doing? I suspect I’ve missed something over the years as you’ve no doubt blogged about that at some point.
I really haven’t because it largely involved raising money, recruiting volunteers, and developing programs for medical endeavors, and that had some touchy privacy concerns … and I also had many trips where I was dealing with individuals which had even more privacy concerns. On one hand, it’s regretful because there’s so many interesting things that went on which would make good blog fodder… but, on the other, it was nice to have another part of my life that didn’t need to be broadcast.