Working Vacation’s Reflection

A Natural Painting

Random Observation/Comment #246: I thought backpacking was the way to go, but I guess I never stayed at a hotel with this view. I guess I can still hang out at hostel bars and tell them I live in a hotel…

I am torn: traveling alone in hostels or traveling with close friends in hotels?  I had always chosen the hostel route because I thought everyone has their own unique interest-factors. Not that this isn’t true – if people weren’t unique, I would need to rethink my whole view of life – however, it’s not rare to see that people I meet traveling are lost in their own ways and minimally motivated. It confuses me how they live the life they do without a backup plan.

I understand the backpacking world, as it provides a lot of support for a lost soul in a sea is lost souls. In many cases you can create a community just hanging out with lost souls. It had its run with my soul, but I may have grown out of it. I don’t feel the same stimulation as I did a year ago when I heard the same stories. If you asked me a year ago, I would tell you a deeper connection with these individuals and speak their feelings.  They would give me comfort in knowing that it is all unknown and life twists and turns as it wishes – we’re just all in for the ride and making the best choices we have within our opportunities.

Somehow this mentality has shifted. It’s liberating to give it all up, but I feel way too rooted and stable to do the outrageous. Believe me when I say that this line of thinking is against years of my values, but I think a mature part of me wants my options to narrow. I dream, yet I don’t want to always have thoughts of leaving and becoming the photographer/writer. I really want to keep it a hobby because I know if I ever took it seriously enough to make money – it would stop being fun. I think it may be the same with traveling – I don’t want it to be a lost route. I find a level of comforting knowing that life is complicated and confusing for a majority of people, yet I want to make sense of it all. Is it enough to just live in the search?

There is a balance. I think you can thrive to search without being lost. In comparison to last few years of travels, I found that the travel is to learn about life – not career. When everything is about life, it becomes less stressful than deciding and weighing what we’d do for the rest of our lives. It seems like a career is just the way you group yourself in hindsight and the way you give yourself expectations when you’re shuffling ahead.  It becomes focused on the thrill of experiencing and building options on opportunities.

I guess I am only trying to awkwardly explain a shift in mentality. No longer is it to desperately settle, but rather see things for what they are. Although I will never stop over-analyzing this world, I do want to stop living in the clouds.  I already knew from the beginning of my travels that I was too chicken-shit to give it all up and just do something for the perks, yet I had the stress of thinking of ways to foil the system. It’s not that people don’t find their niche and some amazing life, but I truly believe that my personality fits into stability and planning.  I may wish that I tried to make it as a travel writer one day, but I wouldn’t have found a whole slew of new things I see while on this separate path.  There’s no point trying to control it and think of the what-ifs.  I think the best choice is to just do it and enjoy the ride.

~See Lemons Rethink Travel

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