Today’s rumination focuses on travel. I’m currently packing and preparing for a planned trip to Utah for a few days, and its got me thinking about the nature of travel, why we crave it, and how a year of enforced motionlessness has changed the way we relate to travel.
And do keep in mind, when I say we, I really mean me. I can only speak for myself; I have no idea how anyone else has taken this, and everyone else is different than me. The next person over may not care about travel at all. The person next to them could have lost 2/3 of their income due to Covid travel restrictions. My experience is not theirs, but maybe what I have to say will resonate with you, or make you think. The best that I can hope is that someone calls me a dick, or even better, reaches out to one of their friends to talk about travel-and how Covid has changed the way they view it.
First, I think I’m much more nervous going into this trip than I usually am. I will admit, I did a tiny bit of travelling during the pandemic, I’ll detail the long, long list for you here:
2 days spent in Astoria, Oregon in October 2020
2 days spent in Utah for an Emergency trip in January 2021
The grand total of my travel since January 1st, 2020 being (drum-roll)-an astonishing 4 nights and 5 days spent outside my home. In 15 months.
You may say, ‘what’s the big deal Brandi? Plenty of people travel that much in a year on a normal basis. Stop being such a whine ass!’ Ok, maybe you won’t add that last part, but my nasty little sub-conscious mind likes to call me bad things, get over it.
This is a big deal because-in the year previous to Covid, this would have been 2019-I spent only 6 months in my own house-I was traveling the other 6 months of 2019. So, when I say that spending only 4 days outside of my house in 15 months is a big deal, it kind of is. I think anyone would agree that that is a massive change to my normal, which makes me just like just about everybody else this past year.
I recognize how privileged I am that this is perhaps the biggest change to my normal due to Covid, I am fully aware, but this is a discussion on travel, not on the socioeconomic, racial, or regionally biased impacts of the pandemic. We’ll leave that discussion for smarter thinkers. For now, suffice it to say, I know that I have nothing to complain about and that many people have had it so much worse. Remember that horrid little voice that likes to call me bad things? Well, this is about where she comes in, so let’s leave that topic and focus on what this has done to my relationship with travel.
So, back to the nerves. It’s been so long since I travelled that it took me the better part of an entire day to pack. I used to have everything already ready to go-overnight bag, easy change of clothes, a backpack-add a toothbrush and some pills and I was good to go! Well, not today. No, today I agonized over every single thing I put in my bag, added too many things, took things out, wandered back and forth, got distracted, forgot what I was doing, you name it, I was doing, or not doing, it.
And then there’s the process of booking hotels along the way, I procrastinated doing this until the very last moment! Why? I’m not sure. I only know that every time I started trying to visualize the journey, the days that I would be travelling in real time, and the accommodations I would need, my brain went to this weird foggy place of avoidance. My guess is that in my anxiety to plan something that-after 15 months of social distancing brainwashing and propaganda-made me very nervous; my brain simply switched off, moved on to different things. Its been a long year, and even someone as antisocial and cultural-masses-mindset resistant as me has been affected-heavily.
I didn’t want to admit it at first, but it’s true, I’m way more nervous about travelling than I ever was before. I think it’s a combination of the hiatus and the long time away from social interaction. You know how when you don’t do something for a long time, it can get a little scary? Like, you don’t go swimming for years, when you come back to it, you probably feel a little trepidation at getting in the pool? Something like that. But I still crave it. I’ve craved it all year, to the point that my mental health has been negatively affected by not being able to travel. But this stillness has also forced thought. It has forced me to get to know myself better. It has enabled me to spend more time in my house, do more projects, and oh yeah, get another dog.
Maybe we all need something, and when we can’t get the thing we need-which, for me, is travel-we find other ways to satisfy that need. For me it was a hard process, and it certainly has not been easy. But I’ve learned that I can survive without travel. I might possibly get a lot weirder, but I will survive it. When you take away the things we seek, we seek out other things. What did you replace travel with? Or maybe you never cared about travel anyway, in which case, what activity did you lose to the pandemic? Everyone lost something they loved doing, surely you did too?
But what will travel look like now? When will we (normal non-celebrity people) be able to travel again? Has the nature of travel changed forever? What if we stopped using planes? What if we run out of gasoline and everyone has to rely on electric cars? What do we do when we can’t use those anymore? Will human culture start aging in reverse?
It is the year 2150. Humanity has been reduced to travel by wagon and horse. People communicate via carrier pigeon. Farming is the biggest economic sector. Welcome-to the Twilight Zone.
All questions for another time. I hope I gave you something to think about. Safe travels.