Travel tugs at two conflicting parts of me. The sensible, responsible individual that fears the growing rate at which her debt grows – a remarkable amount for a 24-year-old girl (woman?) sans student loans or loans of any kind for that matter – and the person that gets that itching, can’t-take-the-monotony of the everyday, 24-year-old with no perceivable strings to hold her down. It’s the latter of course that always feels the urge to give in.
It’s not an everyday struggle, really. It only emerges when I peek at my 365-day Places to See Before You Die Calendar, or when a Travelzoo Top 20 Travel Deal blips its way into my inbox. Or when someone passes me by, uttering some foreign tongue. Where is he from? What does she do? How do they live? I want to speak to them in their native language, live their life for a day, in their nation. What does the world look like from their nook in Bulgaria. Or is it Croatia? Serbia and Montenegro?
The dozen or so travel deals beckon me. “6 nights in Paris for just $799!” $799?! That’s a great deal. It’s not even in the quadruple digits and it includes the hotel stay. My mind races. Food, transportation, entrance to museums, day trip to Nice. I could take the train. Then again, why not hop over to Germany while I’m on the continent. Could it really be this easy?
All traces of debt and career responsibilities seem to vanish. My mind vanquishes them as I blaze through airfare search engines. Adding, subtracting, comparing. Just how much would I save? I could be on my way to the airport Friday at 3:30 p.m. on the dot. Traffic doesn’t exist. My boss won’t care. And it’s not like my projects can’t wait another 10 days to be completed. It’s Paris for $799 for goodness sakes! This doesn’t happen every day. I could be eating a baguette as I stroll down a Parisian street. No destination and no place to go, just people-watching. Period.
See, it’s not my fault. It’s that travel-dependent, spontaneous sliver of me that must be fed. If I could just get a tiny taste for a weekend, 4-5 days in Mexico or Cuba even. Call it obsession or addiction or even wanderlust; it must be tamed. If not for my sanity then for my waistline. Travel is pointless without multiple tastings of the local cuisine.
If I’m not careful, a calendar and a travel deals e-mail could be all it takes to makes me fall off the wagon…push me off in fact. Addictions are aggressive, and they make you anything but sensible or moderate. And a travel addiction doesn’t care that I’ve decided not to travel until at least 6 months from now…because ideally I’d like to be debt free before the barrage of expenses that come with marriage and children arrive at my doorstep.
I will admit, out of any type of addiction, it’s a nice one to have. It stops gnawing at you for at least 2 months following your latest getaway. Yes, it inevitably comes back, but you have fresh photographs, videos and memories available for it to nibble on. It’s those tiny bites that keep it at bay so long, in spite of the travel deals.
I’m making travel and wanting to travel sound horrible. But truth is it’s only horrible when it dominates you. Because when you dominate it, it’s a beautiful thing. $799 trip to Paris vs. $15 book full of Paris photography vs. $1.99 iTunes video (“Simply Paris”; a 30-minute view of Paris right on my laptop). All that travel budgeting comes in handy after all. See, hopefully another thing you can count on making an appearance in your everyday, apart from a craving for travel, is your imagination, and the ability to dream up wonderful experiences. You walking into an Italian cafe, in hand the fresh pastry you grabbed at the pasticceria beside it. “A macchiato, per favore,” you say. And both are free in your mind. And you’ll do both when you make it back to Italy. Responsibly. When the time is right. And at peace with how you’ve left things back in the real world. There’s no better way to travel.
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