Tips For Adjusting To Life After Traveling

Tips for adjusting to life after traveling:

1. Get involved

The one thing that you find when you're on the road is instant family. I was constantly surrounded by genuine people who were looking for adventure, just like me. We shared a common interest and it seemed as though we had an instant bond: to experience everything we possibly could while we were there.
The hardest thing about being back home is that you've landed back home but it feels more foreign than that little island off the coast of Chile did. So GET INVOLVED.
Get out and about, join clubs that interest you, share your stories online and stay current. I had this wild desire to hide away in my room and lament over all my lost friendships. Alas, they're still my friends and my world has just gotten bigger.

2. Keep your wardrobe simple

While you're traveling there is approximately 1 backpack of clothes you can choose from. It doesn't take long to decide what you're going to wear in the morning. Mostly it's the tshirt and pants that are clean that make the cut. Once you're back home and you open up all the stuff you left in storage, your wardrobe quadruples and you're left having to make these very hard decisions of  what to wear in the morning, and sometimes those decisions are so hard I end up not leaving the house.

3. Start cooking

Once you return home, you're back to cooking. Yup, no more Som Tom (Green Papaya Salad) on the side of the road for pennies in Thailand, or Taco Stands, Tortillas, Soups lining the roads of foreign cities. Get a couple of cookbooks and go to town. Try to remember some amazing dishes you ate in that little Spanish town, or on the boat cruising down the Mekong River.

4. Reflection

For you,
morning rush hour is now a time of reflection. You have so many things and projects on the go that there never seems to be enough time in the day. Be patient. After long bouts of travel time for reflection is very necessary. You never truly benefit from your travels and experiences until years later. Enjoy the moment and the fleeting memories that present themselves throughout the day once your home.

5. Be Thankful.

 Not everyone has been around the world and been able to experience the things you have.

And last but not least

6. Deciding what to do next. 

This is the biggest challenge for many returning long-term travellers. I'm yet to meet anyone who took a year or more to travel the world and returned exactly the same person. Dreams change, ideas change and your mind is expanded. Your world is now HUGE. There are foods in your memory, smells and sights that have changed you forever. We now want to put that into use, into practice, but we just don't always know how to do it.

So my best advice for you, is keep living like you're traveling. There is always something new around the corner to ignite your imagination and inspire your senses.

Today traveling is about connecting with LOCALS

I've been traveling on and off for approximately 10 years. I've traveled for my job, for pleasure and for adventure.
In some instances I was living in a remote base camp with soldiers. We shared a seaman with one other person and a bathroom down the hall with the whole floor.

At other times I was sleeping in dorms, hostels and camping in tents. I've had the opportunity to relax in 5 star hotels and immerse myself in pure luxuries of bath bubbles and hot tubs.
But nothing compares to meeting people who live in the city your visiting. You get to see their country, city, town, village from their eyes. The eyes of a local.

You should always try to stay with locals when you travel for 5 reasons:

1. You get to see these new, exotic destinations from the point of a local. The private swimming holes and the best taco stand that is not in your guide book.

2. Instant friends. You get get meet people who have similar interests to yours and you can share the adventures.

3. The new friends you meet will get to hear all about where you're from and you can share the experience by hosting them when they come to your country.

4. It's cheaper.

5. You can brainstorm the rest of your trip. Ideally you had a basic itinerary of what you wanted to see but in picking the brains of locals you'll get a better understanding of what sights are not to be missed.

In this generation, we have the ability to connect with all kinds of people from all over the world. Sharing ideas and lives has never been easier.

The following websites can make this very easy for you.

www.couchsurfing.com

www.airbnb.com

www.homestay.com

Now get connecting!

The Daily Grind

I am in love. In love with life, music, gardening, food and of course love. Absolutely in love with love itself.

After working for 7 years overseas, in a fulfilling career of Travel and Tourism within the military confines of camp, I find myself lost. In love with life but lost without purpose. Without substance. Without indentity.

In giving years of my life to traveling and working. Living in hostels and in camps where all 20 of us shared 1 bathroom, where privacy could only be found in the confines of your shared bedroom. When eating a meal alone  meant sitting across the table from other strangers in uniform.

Today, I find myself feeling more alone than I have ever felt. Floating on cloud, without roots or logic. I'm on a mission to find myself. On a mission to retrain my brain. To make friends, and organize my time.

This might sound like a mumble jumble effect but since starting this Blog in 2012 I never really stayed on top of it. So now is the best time to Start.

I will start with the extravagant lifestyle of the vagabond.
Living out of a backpack makes you realize how little you truly need. I miss the days where I'd wake up and put on what I was wearing the day before and be on my way with everything I owned on my back.

Leaving the place where I happened to be staying for a night or a week and sometimes a month. Leaving the people whom I adopted as family and of course the safe feeling of familiarity. Onto the next adventure. When you've conditioned your life to accept that the only constant is change, then it stops changing, it creates a sense of loss. Although, in reality change is the only constant ALL THE TIME. Yet now time seems to stand still.

The people in my life are those who suffer the most b/c I am intrinsically a traveler at heart. Always wanting the new, the fresh and unknown. Although, I am determined to make this relationship work, he is suffering b/c I am relying him for all my needs: Emotional, Intellectual, Physical and Cultural. Which no one person should ever have to bear the weight of.

This Castle in the Sand is getting a makeover. The tide is high.