When I tell people that I’m a travel blogger and constantly on the move, I mostly get two very different reactions: some find it totally cool, and are super interested in what my life looks like as travel blogger. However, others can be much more critical and sometimes reproachfully ask me about “what I’m running away from”.
I’ve heard this question so many times in my life that I was eventually forced to ask myself if I was actually really just running away. I started to question what I was doing here and why I really love living this life.
Constantly traveling and moving on from place to place.
Is it because I’m on the run? Fleeing from something?
How could I possibly start answering this question? What if I really am running away? Well, I’m about to share this with you in these next very personal lines.
But be careful: I’m going to talk really honestly about all my feeling and thoughts. So after reading this post you probably need to ask yourself some really uncomfortable questions about your own path in life!
My life as a travel blogger
Dreaming away in Tarifa with a view of Morocco! (Jacket and pants from Tatonka)
Why my wandering doesn’t mean I’m running away!
This one uncomfortable question
Imagine you meet someone new, you talk to each other about everything–life, what jobs you have, what you do day to day.
You tell them that you’re a travel blogger, constantly traveling, and therefor have no fixed home anymore. At first the person you’re with will be very excited and won’t be able to believe that this lifestyle is even possible!
Their infectious enthusiasm quickly turns to sympathy, though.
Suddenly the mood gets very serious as your counterpart says that he could not imagine living such a life. Although travel is all well and good, they think it could present incredible difficulties constantly being on the move.
Would I miss my home, family, and friends?
Would I miss waking up in my own bed, under my own roof, to familiar surroundings in the morning?
My answer is almost always the same: I not only have one home now, but many distributed around the world. I have friends in Berlin, Tarifa, Cape Town, Australia, Nicaragua, Bali, Thailand. More importantly, though, my visits home are much more intense and meaningful as I don’t get to meet with my friends and family at home in Germany very often.
Therefore, I don’t think about everything too seriously. I am much more of the opinion that I now get to live in the here and now by constantly traveling. The moments and times I get to spend with others are much more enjoyable. I know that the time you spend together is something special and should be valued accordingly.
Of course I miss sleeping in my own bed, but instead I get to wake up for a month in a beautiful villa in Ubud overlooking the rice fields. Next time I get to wake in a camper straight by the sea on the South Island of New Zealand. The other time I get to wake up in a really cool hotel in South Tyrol with views of the Dolomites.
In my old apartment in Berlin I would’ve been staring at the walls of buildings and in to an empty courtyard with dumpsters. Frankly speaking, in this case I prefer sleeping under a duvet that doesn’t belong to me.
And anyway, why should you really have your own bedspread?
I traveled for a few years only with hand luggage and in the fall of 2015 I sold all my stuff. My property is limited to the stuff in my backpack, my laptop, my camera, and a box of personal belongings in a storage box in Berlin.
Hardly owning anything and living as a minimalist is so incredibly liberating! I don’t have my own bed or blanket, pillow, plates, silverware, shelves, unnecessary clutter or even toilet paper. I am so much happier without a ton of possessions.
Of course, all of this sounds plausible and like a nice and great thing, but something about it is quite shady. No one likes to travel permanently, every person needs their own retreat.
And then it happened.
The one uncomfortable question that no one wants to face:
What are you running away for?
Well.
I would be standing there confused and with no response.
Endless beaches for reflecting in Hermanus in South Africa!
Do I travel to run away?
Is the reason I travel just because I’m running away from something? Am I a travel blogger just so I can justify being on the run?
Fleeing from myself?
Running away from all the everyday problems I don’t want to face?
Taking flight away from reality? From real life?
I often hear that my lifestyle could not function well in the long-term. The fact is thrown around that the profession as a travel blogger isn’t sustainable. Eventually I would stop earning money, right?
Do I just live a dream that I’ll wake up from one day and reality will settle in again?
But what is this reality?
I believe that people simply don’t know, or understand, how my life really looks as a travel blogger.
It’s not that I just sit on the beach eating fresh coconuts all day only experiencing adventures – throwing myself off bridges by a bungee cord, then going hiking, having a surf session in the evening, and uploading my day’s photos to Facebook and Instagram. And then every few days I’ll sit down in a café with a delicious Flat White to post about my experiences.
No.
A huge chunk of my time is spent in front of my laptop taking care of all the background stuff. Optimizing SEO or newsletter marketing, doing my bookkeeping, editing images, cutting videos, building relationships with companies and replying to reader comments and emails. Posting things on social media only takes a small sliver of my time. Even less time is spent outside plunging head first in to exciting adventures.
Even though I’m constantly on the road, not even in the midst of adventure, people don’t understand what role it plays in my life. I don’t really have a holiday or take vacations like other people.
My job as a travel blogger is therefore quite a clear reality. Sure, it was once my dream and still feels like one often. But now, it’s my reality.
It is my life.
Working as a travel blogger in Dubai!
Professional travel blogger – a convenient excuse?
Even when I explain all that, another question comes my way:
Are you just using this “professional travel blogger” role to make up a convenient excuse while you travel constantly?
Am I just being a travel blogger so I don’t have to deal with this issue; never asking myself what I’m running away from?
When traveling I’m always so happy. I first went to work in Australia, then to a University in the Netherlands and an exchange semester to Bulgaria. I then went on for an internship in Bangkok. In all of those places I was of course well traveled and enjoyed my freedom at the time.
Until I was faced with the decision to accept a permanent job in Bangkok.
But I didn’t take this job offer because I wanted to continue to pursue my real passion: traveling! To travel and be free, discover new countries and cultures, have incredible adventures and meet cool people.
So I decided to become a travel blogger and to make this a business that I could live on one day.
And today, I can.
But just because I’m a travel blogger, I always have that easy excuse. It’s my profession; I’m not running away. It has nothing to do with my heart or what concerns me, it’s simply my job.
But is that true?
The urge to be constantly on the move, to move from one place to another, existed long before I became a travel blogger.
And so, I came back to the same question:
Was I traveling just to run away from something?
Do we travel to run away?
I wasn’t the only one who asked this question. Ultimately, every other world traveler faces this question at some point.
People like me are constantly on the move either because they’ve decided to take some time away from life or because they have the ability to work anywhere. They can then combine working with travel. But this question still comes up at least once in their lives.
So why do we go?
Why do we prefer to be constantly on the go when could just settle down in one place and have a home?
Are we afraid of something?
Do we, for example, fear commitment? Can we not stand to get close to other people and be vulnerable?
Or is it fear of getting close to ourselves?
I hear again and again that I’ll get lonely, I still can’t have real friends, and something is just not right with me.
I’m running away. From others. From myself. From life.
Am I really doing this?
Do we all? All of us who travel and are always on the go?
We don’t run away, we do what makes us happy!
I say no.
For me, my wandering and adventures have nothing to do with running away. I’m not lonely in any way.
I think a lot about this question and all the issues that come with it. But I think the answer is simple:
Travel simply makes me happy.
Skydiving in New Zealand
I travel not to run away or because I’m afraid of something. I travel because traveling makes me happy.
When I travel I feel so free, so incredibly alive, and so indescribably happy!
This feeling of traveling makes me so much happier than I’d ever be if I settled down in my own place with my own bed.
I do not have a home for my happiness. I am my own home.
I don’t need a place for it. No bed. No things.
I just need me and the adventure that calls me.
To travel means to live!
Meeting new people, immersing myself in foreign cultures and questioning their own lifestyles. That’s what makes me travel.
To learn to know who you are every day and to experience adventure and transcend yourself, that’s the greatest thing about traveling.
Home, in my own bed, may be comfortable and familiar, but it’s boring. For me at least.
The same routine every day does not bring me happiness.
Every morning brings the same drive to the same office to the same job at the same time. As if every single person has his or her productive phase just between 9 am in the morning and 5pm in the evening, for sure.
But this routine, this daily routine, always felt like a terrible idea. I simply cannot imagine permanently living that kind of life.
For me, such a life would be worse than death.
For me, traveling means truly living.
House sitting in South Africa
Each person is different
But here’s the crucial point: every single person is different.
I can absolutely understand when someone can’t imagine my lifestyle. But my traveling has nothing to do with the fact that I am running away or don’t want to face the anxieties of “reality”.
Just because someone does not understand this, it doesn’t mean I’m sick or my traveling has to do with pitiful reasons.
It may be that many people need a home, a social environment, and routine that makes them happy.
Because, honestly, routine is just convenient.
Routine means not having to stress. You know what to expect. Routine means you’ve “arrived” and no longer have to search.
For many, routine means security, and acts as a sort of manual for life.
Routine vs. the search for true happiness
But I don’t need a routine.
Because let’s face it: isn’t life about something else?
Not knowing what tomorrow or next year will bring?
Not having a plan, but letting life come at me in whichever way it wants time and time again?
Continuing to seek, and not immediately settle for the convenient answer?
To search for happiness until you’ve truly found it?
Until you really know what you want and what makes you happy?
In Zell am See in Austria
Why I’m not on the run
Here’s my answer, right here:
I’m not on the run, I’m simply looking.
Looking for true happiness, for adventure, for myself.
So I don’t run away from myself or my life or “reality”.
On the contrary, I travel to truly get to know myself and really live.
My answer is clear but what about yours?
So I found my answer. I know I’m not running away from anything.
I know that I travel because it makes me happy. It allows me to find myself and truly live.
If you were sitting across from me today and asked me the same question I started with, I’d be able to answer you exactly.
But I’d also ask you something:
Are you really happy with your life? Are you happy with what you experience doing every day? Or do you want to make a change?
Posted on Off-The-Path