As a traveller, constantly in motion, sometimes you stop to catch your breath and you get a little too comfortable. Sometimes it may start to feel that you aren’t a traveller at all anymore. There is a balance, but it isn’t always the easiest thing to keep. The most important thing is to remember why you are here in the first place.
What is it that you love about here?
I love Sydney, first and foremost for the amazing memories it brought me and the immense life lessons learned. You never forget your first experience abroad. I had to decipher my first French accent here, I got on my first international flight alone, I traveled with someone I hardly knew and I got to choose exactly what life I wanted to live. My choices depended on no one but me.
Now, back after two long years, Sydney is a city that I get to discover all over again, every day. Back then I was so happy to go to exactly the same Irish pub ten minutes away from my house every single night out. I was happy to go out four nights a week (hey, I was still in Uni). Classes were secondary. Today I’m here, living a ‘real’ life. I have friends that want to go for after-work drinks. I commute with the city bus crowd. I have to wait for a second bus if the first one is too full.
How did I get here?
I love it here.
I travel because I want to meet the world. There are so many people out there and they have so much to teach. I want to see the sights, the kind of history that my own countrymen could only dream they knew in their own backyards.
Most travelers will shun me for saying it, maybe it’s sacrilegious by means of some traveller’s code, but the truth is that I love my job. I love my 9-5. I love it.
Maybe I’ll change my mind, I’m still new to this world but the truth is that at 25-years old, it’s about time. I won’t say that I’ll be in this kind of position my whole life but for now it is exactly where I want to be. I have travel plans and I will realize them whether in the next three months or the next three years but right now, I want a home. Somewhere to buy furniture for and those giant round wine glasses from IKEA (even though I’ll immediately break them). I want a puppy, more than anything in the world. I want Lorenzo and I to be able to live in the same country without having to get married.
I’ll never stop traveling. It makes up such a huge part of who I am. But I can’t say that I’ll always be a constant traveller, a non-stop nomad; it’s probably not the life I want.
Sue me.
Sure there are days that I envy the non-stop travellers, the fact that they have the freedom and talent to be full-time freelanceers and I can’t even string a consistent number of posts together. But in the end, at least for now, I want to settle a bit and to find a place in the world.
I’m still learning, discovering and I’ll never shun an experience. For me, it’s possible to be any and every kind of traveler if you want, and I intend to be all of them.
