I think I like the idea of traveling more than I like traveling itself.
Not like the staying at home is good type of thinking of traveling. Don’t get me wrong, I love being in a train that’s heading for the mountains. Let alone being in the mountains, hiking and swimming in-between them.
But there’s always a moment.
Not at the start. But slowly towards the end, let’s say at 65% of the trip this feeling starts to kick in. Small things like delayed trains or long walks with heavy backpacks to a hotel that you can’t find.
It’s small friction.
What was supposed to feel like freedom starts to feel like something I have to manage. Something I have to think through. Optimize. Control.
And then really slowly the feeling of wanting to go home starts to emerge.
Travel feels “clean”.
At least before I leave. It’s like I put all these plans and ideas into a little box that I’m looking forward to. Everything is theoretically perfect.
It feels like controlled freedom. The kind where you can imagine spontaneity without actually experiencing the uncertainty that comes with it. And I like that. I don’t like chaos or random things to happen.
That’s the version of my trip where nothing can go wrong because I’ve already thought it through.
But once the trip starts. No wait, once I’m at the place of destination, that framework disappears. It slowly starts to vanish. Momentum starts to shift and it itches. Because being somewhere else means that almost everything requires a decision.
At home, those decisions almost don’t exist.
They are automatic. See them as background processes. But while traveling, they move to the foreground. And one or two decisions is fine. But over time, they stack up like a very unstable tower.
Really, when you’re having fun and are hiking in the mountains you wouldn’t even notice this “tower” but when it gets higher and decisions get tougher, you’re getting tired of the travel, margin for error becomes smaller. Or at least it feels like that.
Nothing really changes. But in your head, it does.
You’re annoyed.
Because now you’re not just experiencing the trip anymore.
You’re managing it.
The weird thing about this is that you go away and travel to feel freedom.
But then, all of a sudden, when you are there doing that. It feels like this freedom turns into something else. It feels heavy, tiring and you desire to be back home.
Your comfort zone.
Because at home you do the things without effort. You don’t think about where to get coffee or how to structure your day. You just move through it. But while traveling, you need to create that rhythm.
Every day again.
And that sounds nice, for a couple of days it is. But in practice, it means there is no default. Nothing runs in the background anymore like at home.
You need to pay attention to everything. And that costs so much energy.
There’s this feeling, like a dark cloud hovering above your trail. Waiting to burst into rain.
It’s pressure.
You tell yourself, not out loud. You’ve came all the way here, paid so much money, did all this effort so it must be good.
And you force yourself to view your trip through that lens.
You want to make it worth it. Put so much into a certain amount of time or spending even more money to make it even “more worth it”.
And that changes the way you experience things. Because now you’re not just doing something. You’re evaluating it at the same time.
“Is this nice enough?”, “Should I have gone somewhere else?” Or “Am I missing something better right now?”.
The risk is that you end up doing nothing at all because you’re scared of missing out.
And somewhere in between all of that, another feeling comes back. Small and slowly.
A thought about home.
Not because you’re homesick or desperately want to go home. Not because something is missing.
But because something there doesn’t require effort. Your energy is drained.
You want simpler things. A place where you don’t have to decide every step. Where things just happen in the right order and where you don’t need to constantly adjust. At that moment that feels more appealing than whatever you’re doing at that moment.
It’s not the same as homesickness and wanting to go home straight away. It’s more subtle than that. You’re still there. Still doing things. Still enjoying parts of it and when I’m hiking in the mountains with the fresh air onto my face I don’t think about this.
But the edge is gone. The effort becomes more visible than the experience.
And you start thinking about the end like “finally”.
Like a quiet acceptance.
That’s it’s enough, and that’s okay.
And then, the inevitable moment of returning to your home soil. And you feel a sort of relief. The same place that felt normal before now feels different. More stable.
You start appreciating it more.
You don’t have to think about basic things anymore like on the trip so it feels relaxing. You can just go with the flow.
What’s interesting is that nothing at home improved or changed at all.
Just your mindset. Your perception of it.
You’ll have a period where you won’t feel like traveling at all.
And then, slowly, that feeling fades until it’s gone and you regain that desire to travel again.
Not all at once.
Just gradually.
Home becomes what it always was. Normal and predictable. Boring even. Not because home is bad. But because it’s known. And you start imagining something else. A different place. A different rhythm. A different feeling.
And again, it feels clean.
That’s the loop.
You want to leave when you’re settled and you want to return when you’re away. Both feelings make sense. Because they come from different needs.
Maybe this isn’t something to fix, it’s just something that is.
Maybe the reason travel feels better as an idea is because it removes the friction. It keeps the freedom, but not the responsibility. But real travel includes both.
And maybe that’s why it never fully satisfies.
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