The Opposite of Travel

This time last year, I was a few months into my first full-time internship in a field that I care about. While I should have felt lucky, all I felt was stuck. I spent most of my free time planning an escape from the routine in which I found myself lodged. I applied to study abroad (for the third time in three years) and plotted over potential summer trips.

It’s not the first time I’ve sidestepped settling into a schedule using travel. After a childhood spent moving from country to country, my adolescent life seems to have been defined by how effectively I can avoid routine. I spent my college years bouncing between studying overseas and working internships. By the time I graduate this spring, I will have only spent four semesters as a full time student on my campus in Boston.

As graduation creeps closer, my old habits are dying hard. With nothing left to bind me to my city, the jobs I seek out are as far flung as they are different from one another. I still cringe a little at the thought of anything over a year long commitment. I daydream about packing a car full of everything I own and driving west.

Denver, Seattle, Vancouver, San Francisco: they all hold a fascination for me. I find myself thinking about what my life would be like there, wherever “there” is. Of course I’d have the right job, one that makes me hate Mondays just a little less. I’d go on adventurous trips every weekend and pick up interesting hobbies. And in these situations, I’m a mysteriously better version of myself, too.

As I finish out my time in a great city that I sometimes feel stuck in, I’ve been thinking a lot about travel’s much less interesting but incredibly important twin: staying put.