Long Term Travel Isn’t for Everyone

I don’t want to be a nomad. I’ve seen the nomadic lifestyle up close; I don’t think I could hack the -40 winters in Mongolia. Of course, that’s not the only place you can find nomads. There’s more kinds than just the traditional kind of nomad. There’s also the less literal kind, the people that call themselves digital nomads.

A digital nomad is someone who does their work online, which allows them to travel as much as they want. Many of the digital nomads I’ve encountered online are writers or bloggers who travel a lot, or they live abroad in places that are cheaper than the country they’re from.

I may be a blogger and intending to improve my writing (to that end I am taking the MatadorU Travel Writing course), perhaps even picking up some freelance writing work. However, my goal is not to become a digital nomad.

Sure, I like to travel. It’s usually pretty fun and interesting. I have even enjoyed living abroad. But it’s not the lifestyle for me.

Constantly moving gets exhausting. But the real reason I won’t be packing up my things and living out of a backpack long-term is that being on the road like this, even with my boyfriend by my side, is kind of a lonely enterprise.

You’ll hear many people defend long-term solo travel as not being lonely, because it’s easy to meet people on the road. And that’s true, for sure. But I’d like to ask the constantly-moving blogging couples how they feel. See, being a couple on the road is kind of isolating. Often you feel that you have each other so you don’t need to reach out to others. Or, you can be like us, and attempt to reach out, only to find that many people are sort of uncomfortable hanging out with a couple, or assume that you want alone time all the time, or any other variety of reasons that means you don’t get considered in invites.

But it’s not just that. Even if you meet plenty of awesome people all the time, you’ll likely be on the move too much to see them long-term, or even if you stay put they might move around – it’s the nature of the lifestyle.

I’m sure, for many people, this is not a problem or they have ways to cope. But something I have found during this year and 5 months is that I really miss and need my close family ties and great circle of friends.

Up until college, I floated between friend groups without being that close to anyone save for a select two or three people. Then I created this amazing group of friends freshman year. The group shifted and changed but overall I maintained some close friendships through my years at William & Mary. When afterwards I moved to DC I was happy to keep up with some of those friends and make some new ones. By the time we left for Korea we had this amazing group of friends who we hung out with all the time.

And every day I miss that. Those strong ties of friendship that meant we never had to work too hard to find someone to hang out with – we just asked those people what they were up to. It wasn’t that we never hung out with other people, but it was just we could always rely upon our close friends. I’m confident when we move back to the area we can pick that up again. But in the future, I don’t want to be away from that great sort of network for so long.