I have been feeling very travel weary lately. More and more I spend time thinking about having an actual “home” again. A “home” where I get to sleep in the same bed every night. A “home” where I actually have a closet so finishing laundry doesn’t involve just putting everything back in packing cubes. A “home” where I can actually own more than a few changes of clothing and a few pairs practical shoes. A “home” where I have friends nearby that I meet up for happy hour, dinner, etc. A “home” where I have a regular grocery store and favorite restaurants. A “home” where I can buy some fresh cut flowers and put them in a vase on the table where I can enjoy them every day. A “home” where I can have dogs. A “home” where I can have a routine. A “home” where I have a regular yoga class.
I could go on forever but you get the point. A few weeks ago I finally admitted to myself that I am over this long term travel thing. I dread travel days and researching new cities, finding things to do, figuring out transportation, looking for hotel rooms, etc. I don’t get excited about looking at tourist sights anymore and it always sounds better to me to just stay in the room and watch Netflix, surf the internet, or read. Lately I even have been browsing vintage clothing on eBay and Etsy and fantasizing about what it would be like to just be able to buy something whenever I wanted.
I was reluctant to tell my husband I was feeling so much like this because I feel like a loser, a failure at the long term travel thing. I’m not quite sure why, we never have had the goal of traveling forever. When we left on this trip I think the husband and I would have considered six months to be a win and expected we’d be on the road about a year at most. Yet here we are, in a little less then a month we will have been on the road for two years.
It probably doesn’t help that I read so many blogs and many of them are about the things I no longer aspire to – travel and minimalist living. I want to own stuff again and I know that makes me sound so materialistic, but is it really so bad? I don’t want to go crazy, I mean we did retire early after all because we lived frugally for years so I clearly get the concept of not owning too much. But I do want to own more than what fits in a backpack.
And I do feel torn about the travel thing, there are still so many places to see but once we settle down and have dogs again we never will have this freedom to travel endlessly. Am I crazy for wanting to give this up?
I did convey my feelings to my husband and he was supportive. Of course he has no travel weariness at all and could probably keep going forever. But he did try to slow us down some to try to help me get over it – we did just hang out in Tirana, Albania for about two weeks (great place by the way), but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough. I have read over and over that you just need to slow down when you are travel weary, but I am pretty doubtful that will solve it for me.
And the reality is that my feelings aren’t really changing our plans much at all at this point. We have tickets back to the U.S. in August to go visit family and after that the plan is to go to Guatemala to study Spanish for three months. So we’ll keep checking out eastern Europe until August and then proceed with the visiting family and then going to Guatemala. Both the husband and I are hoping the family visit and staying somewhere for three months refreshes me because the original plan after that was to go travel around Central and South America and practice our Spanish. Yet we did discuss just settling down after Guatemala if I don’t want to travel anymore.
So I guess we’ll see. I still can’t help but feeling like a failure, but I also can’t help the fact that I am just not happy right now. I know it sounds absolutely crazy and I am so lucky to even have had this opportunity, but it is what it is.
What about you, have you ever felt travel weary and just wanted to stop traveling? If so, what did you do to get over it or did you just stop traveling? If you did stop traveling, how hard was it and did you end up regretting it?
My Wonderful World of Vintage 
I really appreciated the honesty of this post. You bring up a topic most bloggers – especially travel-centric – bloggers avoid. I think it’s absolutely OK to feel the way you do. While I consider myself a traveler, I made the move to a new country, and travel from there. I still feel I have “home,” and yet still frequently see new places, even here. It’s about having days (or weeks) where you don’t *have* to be adventurous. That’s how it is for me. I’d say, for what you’ve done, that’s still incredible. Take pride in sharing such a great adventure!
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Thank you. I really like what you have done, although moving to a new country is an adventure all on its own with its own set of challenges. I have to say, I am envious of a lifestyle where you can travel and see new places but still have a “home,” that may be the best way to do it.
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I started feeling this way about nine months into travel, I’m impressed you’ve made it to two years! By the time we actually stopped after 15 months I was a bit of a wreck. Like, liable to burst into tears because there my laptop charger wasn’t working and the hostel we wanted to stay in had no room for us that night. I missed having fun clothes, and I thought it was that I was sick of living out of a backpack, but now we’ve been stationary in our new home for 6 months my feelings have changed a bit. I think what I was really missing was being part of things with other people, like work and clubs and socialising with old friends. And also, bizarrely, variety. It started to feel like travel was all I was and all I got to do. I missed having other hobbies. I think these two things combined to make me feel like an increasingly tiny version of myself – disconnected and one dimensional. Having said all that, the travel itch is already coming back…!
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I have to admit that I’m a bit of a wreck myself right now. In Israel people weren’t the friendliest and one incident left me in tears on the street. It was pretty embarrassing since I’m not usually like that. I think you made a really good point about the variety, I do feel like all I am right now is a traveler and all I do is travel and all I ever talk about with anybody (other than my husband) is travel, so it is really old. What’s weird is that I feel like I’m not myself anymore, but I think this trip has also changed me a lot as a person so it will be interesting to see how I feel when we do settle down again. It is good to hear that the travel itch does come back!
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I truly can’t imagine being full-time nomads. My wife and I travel for about 5 months of the year. That gives us time to see the world, and takes care of our wanderlust (we’re truly gypsies at heart). For the rest of the year, we have a small house in a quiet village where we do have friends, a routine, a few more (but not many) changes of clothes and, yes, I even have a regular yoga class. I think we’ve discovered a good balance.
While we’re on the road, we like staying in one place for longer periods of time. A month here, a month there. That way, we aren’t constantly searching for and arranging the next spot, the next activity.
I’ve popped into your blog mid-way, so I’ll have to check the next couple of posts to see how this has played out for you. I think it’s important that we give ourselves permission to change our minds and to be flexible.
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Since I wrote that last post we have really slowed down a lot – right now we’re staying for a month in Medellin and a few months before that we were in Antigua, Guatemala for over two months while we studied Spanish. I am enjoying the longer stays a lot more and it makes traveling a lot more enjoyable. I like what you do, have a home base but still spend a lot of time traveling. That is probably the best of both worlds and I think we’re slowly getting to that point but aren’t quite ready for a full commitment yet. We are talking about spending six months in a couple of different places playing expat so 1) we can see if we are ready to settle down or if we get too restless after six months, and 2) to see how we like living longer term in a few other countries. When we left on this trip we always thought that we’d settle back down in the U.S. but now we’re wondering if it might be a fun to live somewhere else for awhile. We actually just hit our 2 1/2 year anniversary of being on the road and it’s interesting to see how much our travel style has changed.
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That’s a long time to be on the go. Wow. Even with our 5 montgs of travel, we enjoy some house sits that last a month or longer.
We like slow travel and unpacking for a bit.
I hope you find your happy balance.
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I travel quite a lot, although most of it is for work. After few months of that, I start getting tired. But then after the travel is over and I am back in a cubicle for a few months, I start craving for more travel. It’s such a love-hate relationship. I also move apartments pretty much every year, and at some point, I started getting tired of it and was dreaming of a permanent home. But then I had one and I thought, it is too binding and taking away my freedom. It’s funny how it works. Guatemala sounds fun. I have had a pleasure to work with some folks from there and they had the amazing work ethic and very friendly.
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We are having fun in Guatemala while we study Spanish and the people here are really friendly. Interesting what you said about moving apartments every year – we are talking about starting to spend six months in one place before we move on and I am feeling conflicted about it – on one hand it seems that is not long enough in one place, but on the other hand I worry that is too long to commit to stay in one place, so it definitely is a love-hate relationship.
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