I really want to go on a trip. And, to be perfectly honest, not a trip back to the Old Country. I used to kid myself by saying one of the reasons I stayed close to my family was so that I wouldn’t have to spend vacation time to visit them — while I miss them dearly, vacation time should be saved for new adventures, not re-hashing old ones.
At this point, I don’t even think I’d be all that picky. It doesn’t have to be Hawaii or Paris or Tokyo; I just want to wake up and not have to see my alarm clock and the pile of laundry that never gets any smaller first thing. I was thinking about this the other day, how my mood is so often set by my surroundings. Being in a strange place sets me on edge enough that I don’t get bogged down by the routine. Consistency can lead to redundancy, and it’s much easier to have some external force mix things up rather than having to do it myself.
What good comes of travel? A big driver for me is food; every place should have something worth trying, and I do my best. Being a wannabe photographer means I’m constantly squinting and searching for a different set of pictures to take. There’s the people, too; there’s nothing like seeing a big haired Texan, or a broad-shouldered Chicagoan, or an aggravated New Yorker in their native environment. The Bay Area is so accepting, or so busy with other things that it doesn’t have time to care, that we don’t have one stereotype that’s useful for generalizations and jokes. Finally, there’s the little differences: stop lights oriented horizontally rather than vertically, pizza shops instead of taquerias, Duane Reed drug stores instead of anything else. The little differences are the salt on any trip.
One of the saddest things that comes from even being a little environmentally conscious is how not friendly airplane travel is. The thought that something that feels so right, so useful, so important, can be wrong and will someday be even less accessible is very disheartening to me. Until then, it’s just another shameful and decadent pleasure, like a red sunset or a bottle of fizzy water from a far off land.
Everyone that has wanderlust dreams of getting in the car or showing up at the airport and just picking a destination and hoping things work out for the best. I’ve been almost seething with jealousy when I read about others’ travels lately. I either need to decide the barriers I’ve put up around taking some time off are either unimportant, or they’re insurmountable enough that I should just let my mind wander for now and hope that my body can follow later.