BootsnAll Travel Community

Almost everyone here has had it. That feeling when you step out your door on your way to work,school,home, or anywhere.
"What if I just keep going?" "Is there anything I really need here?" " Do I want to be here?" "Who will miss me?" "Who will I miss?"
I mean it's hard to get on with the day to day drudgery of "normal" life, when all you want is "the sun on your face, the wind at your back, and the road always rising to meet you".
To those that have never felt the pull of the compass needle. I pity you for yours is a grayer life than mine. But I might also envy you For you will always be closer to contentment with your lot than I. So who is to say which of us is the lucky one, for we are both biased. Be it in agreement or oposition.

I keep my bag packed and my spare money bottle right next to it. I leave my bag at home much to the incomprention of my friends who ask "If you have it packed why don't you just leave it in your trunk?". I just shake my head and change the topic or walk away. Cause how do I explain to them that I need to have something I need to go home and get so I have time to think about what I'm gonna do and why I'm gonna do it.
This way I can be sure my reasons are true. Because when next I leave I want to be sure that all my accounts are settled and my affairs are in order. I want to be running toward something not away from it.

So when asked If wanderlust is a blessing or curse. I reply both, because you can not have one without the other. It is a blessing when you can embrace it and follow the wind. It also a curse when for reasons understandable to know but yourself you must stay . This I know For at the moment OI suffer from it. I feel the pull every morning when I wake and every night before I sleep. But I know that someday maybe soon I will again be able to respond to the call of the road and feel the bliss it brings. And it is that which makes all the waiting and resulting pain worth it.

If I am alone in my plight I understand and can accept that but if not I ask that you add your plea to mine. So that If there are those out there that suffer their demons in silence they can know that they are not alone.

Thank You
E.

I've thought about this a lot. I agree with you that it is both a blessing and a curse...as are many things in life. As another example, my boyfriend and I have a little joke, that we'd like to get stupider as we get older, because both of us tend to think too much, and I sometimes agree with the maxim 'Ignorance is bliss.' But I'm going totally off-topic now.

I have an itch to see and experience as much as possible, which would be the wanderlust aspect of my life. What I've noticed though is that it is most strong, and most unmanageable, when I'm very unhappy with my current situation. When I'm not at peace with myself, and I'm not happy with my current lifestyle/job/relationships/etc, that's when I have an urge to run away from it all. But I, like you (I think), want my reason for travelling and seeing new things to be a really good reason...not just an escape (although I wonder if travel isn't always some type of escape??), but something to ADD to my life.

I guess what I'm saying is that I am beginning to not trust my feelings - if that makes sense. I mean, I trust my core desires and core intuition, and part of my core desire IS to travel as much as possible, but I know for me, my overall emotional frame of mind has a huge impact on the wanderlust thing. So ---> when I feel at a complete loss as to what I want to do with my life, and I feel completely lonely, or depressed, or am just in one of the big dips in my life, that's when I become desperate and I feel travel is the only option I can live with, and that it is the only thing that will make me happy.

I'm trying to be more in tune with myself, and build a life in the here and now, and solve for the ultimate inconsistencies in my life and where I see it going, so that travelling isn't an act of desperation for me, but rather something to make my life even more complete.

Don't know if that addressed your post, but that's how I am.

Lynn

I'm always surprised by how many people I share this blessing / curse with. Obviously this is the place to find more.

I always thought that I was kind of strange for being more happy going to a place than actually being in a place. Then I read some of the Ishmael books by Daniel Quinn. His second book, especially, talks about how entire sections of society feel alienated because they don't fit the mold of stationary, blissfully anchored worker ants.

I've worked a little bit with the homeless population here in San Diego, and it turns out of lot of people who live outside are just like that. They're not alcoholics or addicts. Many of them actually work - they just store their money away so they aren't tied down anywhere, and they move about freely whenever they want.

The only problem is, cities aren't designed to accomodate large numbers of people who enjoy living outside and they are often humiliated and punished. I suspect the same thing happens to a lot of us here, just in a more subtle way. I'd love to see communities be more open to nomads.

I read a quote once, and I wish I remembered who said it. "There are two types of people in the world: dynamic and static." For us, living statically is the worst kind of torture.

The other day I was thinking about my friend who just became a pharmacist, got engaged, etc-- lots of good things happening in her life and she's really smart and fun. But I wonder, doesn't she want to go anywhere? Don't other people want to see new places? My sister got married young and has a bunch of kids and hasn't been anywhere, and when I asked, she said she doesn't really care to go anywhere (except maybe a tropical island) and that just boggles my mind....being happy in one place! When I watch travel shows on TV or read travel blogs I just get that feeling in my gut, an anxiety, like, "I gotta go somewhere." And it's strange to me that some other people don't have the urge to go new places.

Springsteen knows what you mean,

'Had a wife and kids in Baltimore Jack,
I went out for a ride, and I never went back.
Like a river that don't know where its flowin',
I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin.
Everybody's got a hungry heart...'

Personally I think its a mix of blessing and curse.

E
I've often wondered the same thing and unfortunately i don't have anything new to add. i agree with the others that it's both a blessing and a curse. mornings are the worst for me, maybe cuz i'm not a morning person. once i get on with the drudgery of everyday life i can muddle through okay, but every morning sucks (work mornings that is). i fear that if i take the big trip i'm planning that things will be 1000 times worse when i get back, and i don't know if i could handle that. oh well, guess i'll find out when the time comes. thanks for bringing this up too. as always it helps knowing that others think and feel the same as you, especially when you feel like an outsider amongst friends/family.

sue

The wanderlust alone is neither a blessing or a curse. It's just a piece of you. But I think it's the interaction with your other desires and personality traits that can make you feel blessed or cursed to different degrees over time.

For example, there have been times when my desire to succeed in structured society (desire to fit in, make people proud) was in conflict with my wanderlust. When I could reconcile this, I felt like my wanderlust wouldn prevent me from ever feeling satisfied. But right now my wanderlust is rather in sync with the direction my life is going. So I can be on the road, in that wonderful romantic sense, and that's a blessing.

I just want to go. Get up and go, in search for that answer. I want to feel it all, I want to see it all. I want to get laid, I want to make love I want to be loved and adored, I want to feel good. I want everyone to love me. I am tired of looking into eyes and not seeing souls. I am tired of not caring what anyone else has to say when it is of such little importance. Even though it is just as much importance as the next mans comment. I am tired of being lazy, of being human. I am tired of feeling singled out, outcasted, misunderstood. I am beautiful, we are beautiful, it is all so very beautiful.