EDIT 2022: You can now find me at www.nomadcopyagency.com or on Instagram here, or LinkedIn here.
About a month ago, I had one of those mini breakdowns. You know the type. Every few years (months? weeks?) when you doubt everything you’ve done in life up to this point, then pledge yourself to becoming a monk because it seems easier than whatever this is.
The good news is, I’m not becoming a monk.
The better news is: I gave up on blogging. So now I’m going to blog about it, naturally.
What you should know before you read this whole thing:
When I’m sad, angry, happy, weepy, or whatever else, I write. If you see me writing in real life, it’s because I’m emotional. I’ve always known this about myself.
That’s how my blog was born. I was so excited about life, about travel, and about sharing it with the world.
Then, I kept blogging because I’d started blogging, not because I had any grand feeling toward it.
It culminated for me one day about two months ago. I told myself I’d sit down for the day and fix the bugs in my site, then crank out a post or two. Instead, I just sat at my desk and had an anxiety attack.
After the funny heartbeats and shortness of breath went away, I started to write. Not here, but in my journal. The place that my fears, my sadness, and my frustrations go. That’s where the best of my writing and the worst of my thoughts go.
So, here it is.
And, for the record, it’s not what you’re used to from me. It’s a stream of consciousness, and I’m not asking you to like it. I’m not asking you to share it, either. The weekly readers might send an email about it, and that’s fine. I appreciate the support.
Also, I’ll keep writing on this blog. But I’m doing it for myself from here on out rather than for the shares and the traffic. Writing has always been my outlet, and when I have them, I’ll share stories, too. But from here on out, I’m going back to the way I like it.
Everything below this heading is what came from that journaling session.
We’ve all had something taken from us this year. So perhaps I’m not special in thinking this. But there’s plenty to be gained as well.
Between extra time with my family, finding comfort in solitude, and seeing kids learning outside of the classroom, it’s hard to feel this salty. But I do. I want to take all the time that everyone got back from their endless commutes and use it for something beautiful.
But I can’t. I don’t feel like I can. In fact, I feel like all the work I did and all the things I tried in the last 6 months were for nothing at all. So much of my lifestyle disappeared with the travel industry. I thought that if I dug my heels in, I’d be fine. I thought that if I just pivoted, I’d be good. Maybe if I learned a bunch of cool blogging skills that I’d be able to pull old stories out of nowhere. Worst case, I’d learn a bunch and overcome, best case, I’d come out ahead.
So I did. I put my head down and cranked out 60 hour weeks. Then, I learned about coding and SEO and Pinterest strategies. I took what I had done intuitively with my blog and learned the ‘right’ way to do things.
And I hated it.
In reality, all that learning and trying and whatever else left me feeling more stuck than before. So, I decided to ignore the thoughts that came up when I thought about ‘blogging’.
I don’t want to do it anymore.
I don’t want to write to the masses, and think about if Google will rank my post. I don’t want to code in intricacies and network with other bloggers. Bloggers are mean! I don’t want to write about ten things you should do wherever and what water bottle you should buy.
Instead, I want to sit in a stranger’s presence until they aren’t a stranger anymore, and learn new words, and share a laugh, and then tell you about it. I want my life to be lived without the context of how, or if, I’ll share it later. I want to share it because I have feelings about it.
And with blogging, I can’t do that.
Not if I want to be ‘successful’.
So, screw it. I’m done with blogging. It’s not my job, and unless I do all the things I don’t want to do with my words and time, I’ll never make it a job.
Instead, I’m going to keep traveling, and learning through my experiences. And with the current situation globally, I can’t do that in good faith.
I can’t go sit with a stranger and be sure that I didn’t carry the pandemic to them. And I don’t want to promote anyone else doing it, either.
I will continue to write, and share what I write. Of course I will. Right? Write. I’ll do it publicly, in captions and blogs. But they won’t be ‘optimized’. I’m stripping it back to just being me.
Which leads me to this:
There’s no guidebook for how to stop traveling.
My identity was wrapped up in my ability to travel. Even before doing it full time, my lifestyle was that of a traveler. And then I spent six months in one place. And now another 4 in another. Not a single night away from my own bed.
I went from a month here and a month there, with aspirations of a few weeks in another place, to nearly a year of small circles and a cloudy crystal ball.
There’s nothing that tells me what to expect when the road comes to an end. Will the next road be built? Will I build it? I’m no engineer. I can’t change visa laws or create vaccines. I can’t even see through the fog.
People were cheering for me.
But what happens when I stop cheering for myself? There’s no wind. no sails, and the anchor is still down. I couldn’t continue on if I wanted to.
So here I am, having stern chats across the alley with the neighbor in broken Spanglish. Chats telling him that his dogs bark all night and I can’t sleep. They bark all day and I can’t work, or take calls. Calls to promote a blog that I no longer want to write because the most authentic Mexican experience I’ve had is yelling at my neighbor about his damn dogs.
I don’t even get to say that I’m done. The universe decided that one for me.
Does that leave me to go home with my tail between my legs? No. Just because the ‘passion project’ that stemmed from the passionate life is an endangered species doesn’t mean that I have a home.
Home? That place that my parents live. Where my bank accounts are held. Where my LLC is registered. The place that I pay taxes. I don’t feel like I have a place there, either.
Life is better outside. It feels safer here in so many ways.
Travel will change you.
Travel has changed.
And ‘home’ has changed since I left.
The world blames my countrymen. My countrymen point their fingers at China. China points at a small population outside of any government’s control.
These aren’t the unknowns I asked for
I no longer work in travel.
I no longer work AND travel.
Options
Cyprus. Cuba. Caymans
Macau. Malaysia. Mauritius.
South Korea. Singapore Seychelles
Taiwan. Turkey. Thailand.
I saw an article that said that all of these countries can visit more countries than the U.S. can right now.
If I go to the U.S., I’ll be grossed out and frustrated by blame. Is it so wrong that I’d rather take a 38% tax rate and be taken care of than my 25% and see no protections. It’s a culture I’ve long struggled to respect.
So a trip to Osaka will now be relegated to Omaha. Cali to California. South Africa to South Dakota.
I did my best to relieve myself of all of this. These aren’t the unknowns I asked for.
Reactions
I travel because I run in to complicated situations, and get to learn them out. Feel them through. Emerge better.
So, what happens when I take the adventure and freedom, then strip it down.
Put spontaneity in it’s corner.
All that’s left is being far from home, and alone.
I went through the phases
Houseplant murderer. You know, for an aspiring plant mom, I didn’t do a very good job. Sorry, mom.
Duolingo needs dusting off. Now, thrice daily, a green owl leaves me feeling personally victimized by my ambition
Tiktok isn’t just for Gen Z. Honestly, I came out on the other side with a few dance moves and a ton of respect for the young ones. The kids are alright.
Of the many phases of isolation, I didn’t expect to land on ‘quit your passion project but keep living exactly the same as you were’. But here we are.
I wanted to shower the world with little stories. Little drops of hope that one day, hopefully soon, they can travel too. My only desire was to make the world a little smaller by bringing new ideas into peoples’ awareness. Bury, bloom, grow.
What I got was a metaphorical monsoon.
I once was blind
If freedom gets twisted into ‘F you and your mask’ and good American values mean selecting a rapist to make decisions about how I handle my body, then the American dream is off the table. It only ever existed for people almost like me, anyway. How can I feel good about contributing to the ethnocentric cycle of what it means to be an American when the title is no longer desirable.
It used to be a question of where was safe to visit. It feels daunting to think of going home.
If it feels that way for me, I can’t imagine how it feels to be born in the ashes of what was built on backs.
And the best-case scenario is that one old white man who is deplorably out of touch with the needs of his constituents will win the right to further sink the ship.
But now, I see.