The Voyager Diary— between escaping and escapism.

There is a self-expression in travelling that the human spirit is barred from in regular life. Much is made of the places you see, of the people that you meet while journeying through this world. Yet I’m not sure that’s where it’s at. The traveler can not be understood through a few sights snapped for the viewing pleasure of Internet strangers, carefully penciled and scheduled to allow time for gift shopping and trains in another country (ah, a language unto itself crafted of confusion and travelers' checks).

Rather, to reach that travel-exclusive nirvana, one must examine the very fabric of our voyaging. Not the pretty pictures, but the sentiment of freedom and guilt-free indulgence that we carry with us long after the snapshots are gone.

Everyone knows holiday calories don’t count, so why should they count in real life?

Eager to understand (and capture) that elusive essence of my wanderlust, I started breaking apart some of my favorite memories and invariably arrived at food.

On the road, eating is promoted to a veritable raison d’etre, something to build the entire day around.
We’ve seen appealing restaurants on Instagram we want to eat at.
We all want to try the cannoli, or the baguette, or the fish’n’chips, and get the “proper” experience. Top that with the positive social connotations of eating, it becomes the main part of the trip.
Yet I don’t think foreign-sounding foods is all there’s to it.

Escapism /noun/: the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities.

At home, we follow rigorous diets and workout regimens. We encourage ourselves (and each other) not to stray, and inevitably feel guilty when we do eventually have a “cheat day”.

Even the name. Cheat day. You know you’re doing something illicit and reprimandable. And perhaps, in a way, it adds to the pleasure, but truth be told, a pizza on holiday will always be guilt-free, whereas a slice at your local locale will have you depressed the rest of the day, and pulling an extra set at the gym tomorrow.

When you take into account the resentment, self-doubt, self-chastisement, and inevitable punishment, the at-home pizza becomes more trouble than it’s worth, which leads to privation.

Same goes for spending.

Obviously, many tourists operate on a “foreign money is Monopoly money” directive that simply wouldn’t be sustainable in their regular lives.

And yet, personally, I operate my spending abroad with an entirely different ethos than back home, and I don’t think I’m alone.

When abroad, we gladly fork out 10, 15, 20 EURO to visit some ruins for half an hour. Yet back home, would we as eagerly spend that money (or its equivalent) on a night at the theatre, or a quirky art gathering? We might want it as much (or more than, even) as the ruins, but at home, we quickly discredit it as frivolous.

I don’t need it.

Escaping /verb/: to get free.

As a self-confessed, self-committed travel addict and digital nomad, choosing to stay still in my native homeland felt like drowning. I felt I could not be my true self there, and it took some deep diving to accept that it wasn’t the croissants or the Spanish shores making me my true self.

It was what resided in my head. I understood that I could be at home, and have my abroad personality, which is what I was really after.

See, for much of the year, we live one life, only to be transported for a week or the occasional weekend into another. A better, happier life where we prioritize our own enjoyment and finally remember to carpe diem.

We love traveling for the art and the culture and the food and the music and the people and the dancing. Obviously. But I think the reason we love it best is that it allows us to be new people. Perhaps better people.

And the good news is, we can cultivate those people in our regular lives back home. Though it will take some getting used to.

I love travel me because she’ll go to a quirky art show on a whim. I love her because she won’t judge herself too hard over a delicious treat at the local bakery. I love her because she’ll try new things that I normally wouldn’t have.

Until I got to wondering…well, why not? If life back home could be infused with spontaneity, and museums, and art, and pain au chocolat that didn’t have me kicking myself, and interesting happenings, and all that wonder that is traveling — why shouldn’t it be?

To master a new language, you must practice daily. So must you, I’d argue, to master a new version of yourself. Your travel self which, as it turns out, is not a travel-exclusive, after all.

Who are you when abroad? And how different is that person from the you back home?

Thank you for reading! I’m fairly scatterbrained, and this was one of the many random subjects that pique my interest.

I recently put out my first book (the first in a fantasy trilogy), and am working on the next two. So there’s a chance I’ll be talking about that, sometimes.

So if you’re someone who enjoys that kinda writing, well, why not subscribe? It’s free. And I’m desperate. So there, honesty.

All pictures are my own.