The Evolution of a Traveler: My Journey to Self-Discovery (Again)

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Running through the dusty basement of a house I’ve never been in before, I was trying to find a place to hide. Hide from what, I couldn’t say, just hide. It was nighttime, and the walls were pale yellow, barely illuminated. Hearing a noise, I keep moving, trying to be as quiet as possible. Ahead of me there are dark stairs going down, the same dark stairs I’ve seen in my dreams since I was a kid.

Unlit and damp, they go down underground to empty, low-ceilinged rooms with claustrophobic, pitch-black murder caves leading off them. Standing there, I am terrified of what’s below, but afraid of what’s behind me, following me.

“Beep beep beep,” goes my iPhone, jerking me awake in the dark. Quite literally frozen in place with fear on an air mattress in my friend’s dorm room in Cambridge, England, I slowly regain my senses.

The nightmare quickly dissipates from memory, like water slipping through my fingers when I wash my face in the morning. The overwhelming sense of fear that gripped me just moments before eases away as I realize where I am and what time it is. Instead it is slowly replaced by a deep feeling in the pit of my stomach of both anxiety and exhaustion, two of my closest friends.

Como, Italy

4:30 in the morning glows my iPhone, burning my eyes. Too goddamn early.

Rolling over on what I’m convinced is the most comfortable air mattress in the entire world, cocooned in a huge down comforter with just the right amount of pillows (four), I turn off the alarm.

Time to fly to Rome.

Except, I didn’t want to go to Italy. Like, I really, really did not want to go to Italy.

Granada, Spain

4:30am wakeup call or not, the last thing I wanted to be doing was getting on another plane and going somewhere to the point where I was on the verge of tears. Of course it didn’t help that it was my first Ryanair flight in 4 years and I hate them more than Sarah Palin, which is saying something.

I should be thrilled right? I should be so excited? What person in their right mind in the world DOESN’T want to go to Italy?

How did I go from the girl who NOT ONLY said yes to every adventure imaginable but who ran after them like a thief, to a girl who couldn’t get out of bed with the prospect of a trip to Italy?

What happened? How did this happen?

Ancash, Peru

My life motto since high school has always been “You can sleep when you die;” I’ve never shied away from long travel, early morning wake-up calls or even just the whiff of an adventure. No matter how scared or tired I got, I was always able to dig deep inside myself and find enough courage and strength to overcome it.

But it was at that exact moment, approximately 4:32 in the morning of Wednesday October 9th, that I realized something profound  – I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I was lost.

This hit me like a ton of bricks.

Almost exactly 6 months earlier, I quit my job to travel full-time and move abroad again. I was following my dreams and doing what I loved, right? But why wasn’t I happy? Why was I feeling like this?

Wadi Rum, Jordan

How could I feel lost when I thought I finally found my path?

Have you ever felt this way? Am I alone in experiencing this?

It was that moment of self-realization that I finally became aware of a problem I was having. And realization is the first step to recovery right? Isn’t that what they talk about in AA meetings? (Not that I would know….)

At the risk of sounding like a whiny, pretentious little bitch, I was burnt out from too much travel – is that even possible?

Mentally exhausted, I could barely function anymore. 6 months of nonstop travel finally got to me. I was tired of sleeping in a new bed every other night. I was tired of planes and trains and buses and taxis. I was tired of living out of backpack and not being able to wash my clothes whenever I wanted. I was tired of eating food I didn’t make myself.

Stupid things that never bothered me in over 6 years of traveling and living abroad finally got to me. Why now?

Jordan

One day a close friend of mine commented on how negative I had become and asked me what was wrong or if something had happened. It hadn’t even occurred to me how much my bubbly, (generally) positive personality had subtly shifted over the past month or two.

It goes with out saying that traveling the world means everything to me; and every moment of every day I remember and I am grateful that I’ve worked hard enough to get to the point where my work and my passion are one and the same. But on that early morning, I realized I hit a big ol’ wall, and I needed to take a step back and reevaluate this path I’ve been barreling down. It couldn’t go on. I needed a light at the end of the tunnel.

This past year has been incredible for me, and realizing my dreams of writing and traveling the world. But I got so caught up in my desire to “make it” as a professional travel blogger, I had started to lose sight of the key aspects of travel that I loved.

I felt like I was offered a seat in a Lamborghini and now it was flying out of control. Was that what I wanted?

Would I rather have a short-lived blogging career in the backseat of a Lamborghini (do Lamborghinis have backseats?) or a long-term one driving my own vintage mint-colored Vespa that goes 25 mph? 

There on that air mattress, was when it hit me that I had bitten off more than I could chew. Afraid of missing out on something, letting people down or just saying “no”, I  had inadvertently spread myself so thin I reached a breaking point and I wasn’t happy with what I was doing. Things couldn’t continue this way.

If you haven’t already guessed it, this is why I haven’t been publishing as frequently as I used to on my blog. My creativity suffered, and as a general rule, if I can’t write something well, I ain’t writing it. Period.

Those 6 months on the road taught me an important lesson – I can’t travel hard and write well at the same time. An article that would have taken only an evening to write and publish 6 months ago now took me weeks.

I needed to find my voice again. I needed to find my creativity again. I needed to find myself again.

Melbourne, Australia

Slowing down

It wasn’t til month six of never being in a place for longer than a week that I realized this is not the kind of traveler I am anymore. My travel style has changed and evolved, and I need to be ok with that.

I was rushing. I needed to slow down.

I’ve done so many intense backpacking trips since I was 19, I’ve lost count. The difference between then and now is that back then I always had a home to come back to, time and space to recover between adventures – not anymore.

I’m not cut out to be a global nomad, indefinitely living out a backpack…FOREVER.

That’s not me. That’s not my style.

Luxor, Egypt

That being said, I’m also not cut out to be living in an apartment in DC working 9 to 5 either. I want to travel slowly, live abroad and take my time.

It’s not to say I’m throwing in the towel on fast -paced, backpack-style trips, rather that I want to at least have space to recover between them. 6 months in a row without stopping is too much.

Will this change in a few years? Probably.

Jökulsárlón, Iceland

Digging deeper

When I went on my first big solo backpacking trip 6 years ago, I felt like there was so much I had to see, that I had been missing out on my whole life, that I needed to catch up and make up for lost time. This meant see as much as possible. Over the years, that idea didn’t change very much for me until recently.

I valued passport stamps more than learning experiences, and counted cities like I was competing. Competing with who?

Are you ready for a massive cliche?

Quality over quantity most definitely applies to travel, at least for this blonde.

Istanbul, Turkey

It took me a long time to realize this, but I would much rather have a slower, more in-depth and profound trip where maybe I see a lot less, but take away more, than an action-packed trip that flashes by in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, I somehow stepped away from this in exchange for traveling as much as possible and saying yes to every travel opportunity and then some.

Lately the terrifying realization hit me that I couldn’t even remember some of the amazing things I was getting to do. I would literally wake up in the morning and I couldn’t recall what I did the day before, where I was or what I was doing.

This summer in Europe, I found myself saying on an almost daily basis, “Oh wow, this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Oh wait, no, THIS is the most beautiful place, no wait, this is…” On and on and on, til they all blurred together in my head and I could no longer distinguish them.

I HATE THAT! That’s not why I travel!

I realized that I was doing so much that each amazing, beautiful, one-of-a-kind experience I was having was losing value to me to the point that I couldn’t even remember them, let alone cherish them like I should.

Superficial travel is not for me.

I would rather be a turtle, take my time and really get to know one place, than visit dozens of places in one go just to cross them off a list.

I thrive now on experiential travel, on the people I meet, the stories I hear, the choices I make myself and then any inspiration I can provide later on about those places. I like to take my time in a destination, to dig and really get to know it, not spend a night there and pretend to make major, ground-breaking cultural observations about a place (cough, cough, major travel blogger pet peeve, cough, cough).

For me, in the long run, less is more, maybe not in terms of nutella or cupcakes, but definitely in terms of travel.

Ollantaytambo, Peru

Prioritizing better 

Subconsciously I think I was aware of this for a long time, since 2011 and my last year in Spain, where I somehow managed to balance both a healthy traveling lifestyle with working abroad.

I think it’s the same reason I dreamed about moving to New Zealand for so long. New Zealand means so much to me I need at least a year to do it justice.

Ultimately, I think that’s why I reached the verge of a breakdown in Europe a month ago – that was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in New Zealand – that’s the goal I spent the past year working towards, and yet I was halfway around the world.

While I don’t regret going to Europe because it opened a lot of doors for me, and hopefully will lead to some big opportunities in the future, I was not emotionally ready to be there. My heart was back in New Zealand.

Shifting focus

But all is well because I’m back in Wellington! But now what?

Another flaw in my brilliant plan. I spent so much time planning the journey TO New Zealand and dreaming about the day where I can just sit still for a while, now that I am here, I don’t know what to do! Help!

Please comment and tell me where I should be going in the North Island, what I should be doing, who I should be meeting, and most importantly, what I should be shoving in my mouth.

I just moved into a beautiful house that may or may not be falling to pieces but who cares because it’s mine! It overlooks the city and is in a great location, and I’m here at least until February, when I most likely will hoof it down to the South Island.

Iceland

Now I want my time here to be all about New Zealand. And maybe Fiji. And Australia. But mostly Kiwi, ok?

This is my time to heal, calm the hell down, and at the risk of sounding like one of those New Age hippies I can’t stand, become balanced again.

Who knows what kind of traveler I will be in a year? Or how I will evolve and grow? Or maybe I will revert back to my 19 year old self again, living off Kinder Bueno bars and Surge while sleeping in airports and never paying my rent on time.

We shall see, dear ones, we shall see.

View from my crib in Wellington – not too shabby!

And now that I am standing here, at the top of a winding, dark and scary staircase of doom, with god knows what below me, and something terrifying behind me, I look up and realize there was a third way out that I hadn’t noticed before.

A ladder leading up to a bright circle of light. Grasping the bottom rung I haul myself up and begin to climb. Maybe there is a dragon at the top waiting to make me a meal. Maybe it’s Gandalf the White reaching down a gnarly old hand to help me up and pull me towards something amazing.

Only time will tell. Wish me luck!

Have you ever experienced a burnout? From traveling? How did you cope? Has anyone out there gone through something like this? Any advice for me?