INSPIRATION | GROWTH | TRAVEL

So You Might Be a Travel Whore

But there are worse ways to live

Are you a journey junkie?

A restless wanderer?

A trotter of the proverbial globe?

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re one of us. Or at least dream of it.

We’re not just talking about travel in the sadly often-American way:

“Oh my god I have to take my two week paid vacation, this is our only travel chance! Let’s slam it all into fourteen days and blow it out, then back to the grindstone and hopefully the boss isn’t too mad that I was ‘selfish’ and actually took my vacation time.”

Seriously, that’s just painful.

No, I’m talking about interspersing little extra-long weekend jaunts or mini-retirements into a well-lived life, between work projects or assignments.

To know there are other ways to live.

As Tim Ferriss said in his ahead-of-its time book, The 4-Hour Workweek:

“Travel during retirement as a goal or as final redemption is flawed… it is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. Nothing can justify that sacrifice… ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”

I can hear you thinking, oh great, another unrealistic YouTube travel-the-world weirdo who’s 22 and doesn’t have a single responsibility in his life.

Not quite, just a 50-year-old recovering people-pleaser here who’s finally doing what he wants to do with his one and only life. I’ve pinpointed that oh-so-mysterious “when I feel the most alive” jewel, and the undisputed winner is Travel (or even the planning of the next road trip or journey).

My brain fires on all cylinders; I feel alive and in the moment.

Some of you reading know exactly what I’m talking about.

But I’m curious, when did this shift in priorities happen in your life? When was that epiphany where you realized that incessant travel was going to be your way of staying sane in this life?

Some lucky kids were backpacking Europe during college or had parents who instilled travel into the blood as not just a time for vacation, but something that expands the soul and opens your mind to just how small our little problems are compared to all the inhabitants on this little blue marble in the vast universe.

So my fellow travel junkies, when did the shift come for you? When did you transition from a two-week-paid-vacation-all-expense-resort-or-cruise-blowout person to something more ever-present?

In my early 30s I had befriended a legit travel writer who wrote and edited for a magazine (this was way before YouTube vlogs and Instagram posts made everybody seem like a pseudo travel writer.) But Monica was the real deal, and my ears would perk up as she detailed her latest expenses-paid trip to Fiji to write about a new resort opening.

Did people really live like this?

I remember telling her I was suddenly magnetically being drawn to magazines like Travel & Leisure. Thankfully she cited them as a bit outside the normal person’s budget and redirected me to Sunset Magazine for American West road trip inspiration. Sunset became my font of inspiration.

One evening, standing in the grocery checkout line with the other schlubs questioning life choices, my eye landed on a 2010 Sunset cover, “Amazing West: 100 Must See Destinations” with a waterfall I couldn’t imagine was even real in this world. Though the price was a steep $11.99 (for a magazine?!?), I willingly took it home and started making travel goal lists.

Two years later, I’d made it happen.

I was hooked. I never made much money in my artistic pursuits, but it didn’t matter, this was now a priority because of how it made me feel.

Where’s Joe? Oh he’s on the floor in the Travel section, books on Croatia, Norway, Costa Rica and Montana strewn about.

You like books, you say? Come to my cozy nook and notice the Rick Steves books piled high. Scan the library and find early Bill Bryson, A Year In The World by Frances Mayes, All Over the Map by Laura Fraser, The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner and my new favorite, John Steinbeck’s non-fiction Travels with Charley: In Search of America.

And MAPS! I live for old maps.

But it wasn’t always this way.

Picture it: the early 2000s. I’m dressed in a cool ‘60’s suit, hanging out with the other extras — correction, “background players” — on the set of the movie Catch Me If You Can, waiting to be placed again in our airplane-interior scene with Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Cool? Yes. The height of showbiz glamour? Not exactly.

I’m in my mid-20s, chatting up another extra, a guy in his mid-30s, who explains how he’s designated the income from that day to be for his travel fund — and that he always is planning his next big trip.

“It’s so, so important,” he kept saying to me. “Nothing better.”

And my snotty little brain’s reaction? I felt sorry for him.

“How sad,” I thought. “This poor little soul obviously will never be a successful actor or have a true career like I will. Just look at all the money he’s wasting on these trips. That’s money he could be using on new headshots, on an acting coach, a workshop, pursuing an agent. He’s obviously not committed or focused on making it.”

Snort.

I’d like to slap the old me. I suppose wisdom does come with age.

What can be the reason for that reaction? My middle-class family never exposed me to a global-travel-expands-the-mind philosophy. I didn’t know people in college who planned to backpack through Europe at age 22. Or maybe I did know those people, but was instead always hyper-focused on some play or theater piece.

It’s about priorities. And perhaps making up for lost time. I no longer consider travel a luxury only for the wealthy, but a requirement for life, a true-north calling for my soul. Hence, my partner and I are always off exploring some little hamlet in Central California or calculating airline miles for overseas jaunts.

“So where is this leg of the Blond Ambition World Tour taking you?” my friend Jim jokingly asks. (Yes, we’re gay, and if you were a kid of the ’80s or ’90s you get the reference).

“I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine” — Caskie Stinnett

Some wonder if there’s a money tree in my backyard, or they point to my Instagram pics and think, “Where does he find the time? Isn’t he a struggling voice actor?” Some might say I’m running away from something, dissatisfied with real life.

But real life is short. A favorite aunt of mine worked herself to the bone, retiring finally at 70, planning to take her first cruise. Cancer derailed it all. She left us in 2014 only a few months after diagnosis, never living “the good life” of retirement.

I don’t know how many years I have left on this earth — do any of us? Who knows when my aging parents will need much more in-person, dedicated care? Who knows which Northern California landmark may soon be wiped out by the next wildfire?

So the important question, children: what’s next on your list?

What’s on there that you truly believe you’ll do?

Could you be further along in your career? Perhaps.

Could you have more money? No doubt.

Life is more enjoyable with balance.

You could be known as the guy or gal who played it safe.

Or you could wear the Travel Whore crown with pride.

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