6 ms·

I grew up with no real sense of "home." I think probably because of that, traveling was never exciting for me. I did it. I spent months bouncing around various

by smeej 3y ago

I grew up with no real sense of "home." I think probably because of that, traveling was never exciting for me. I did it. I spent months bouncing around various places, but it didn't feel like anything unusual to me. Each was just one more new place. It wasn't until I turned 30 and abruptly made a decision to pick somewhere and stay there that I found the kind of satisfaction it seems like most people get from traveling. It's not challenging for me to adapt to new situations and experiences. It's challenging for me to navigate the depth of experience of the same people and the same places, day in and day out. It's especially challenging for me to face the depth of myself that I have encountered since deciding to put down roots. It's a lot less glamorous to invest my time into trying to understand and solve local problems with local people than it would be to create highlight reels of exotic locations, but I feel like I'm growing more this way than I would otherwise. It makes me think whichever type of experience you didn't grow up with might be the challenge you need as an adult. If you grew up with all the challenges of a small town people rarely leave and where everybody knows you, maybe you need the challenge of new places where nothing is familiar and you have to start all your encounters from scratch. But if you didn't "belong" anywhere as a kid, maybe what you need to develop in adulthood is the opposite.

xyzelement 3y ago
Perhaps different but connected - in my mid-30s I realized that I had "maxed out" travel. I was going to 20+ countries a year between work and pleasure and was super-confident that you can drop me anywhere in the world and I'll figure it out. In contrast, I realized that I didn't have a ton of experience "staying." Naively, settling down, marrying, having kids, buying a house sounds "boring" compared to picking up and going to Senegal on a whim, but at this point of my life the boring was much more of the adventure and unknown than the whirlwind. Looking back on it, I am definitely growing and learning much more from being a husband, a dad, a homeowner, neighbor, etc than I would from going on another 20 trips.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Now you get to combine the two when you start taking the family on some of those trips to share with your kids the perspective and situations of other people and places.
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  Would it have been different if you were required to live in the places you traveled to for a year each?
tasty_freeze 3y ago
A thought-provoking comment; thanks for sharing it. There is a parallel with personal relationships. Some people churn through relationship after relationship, always looking for a refresh on the exciting feeling of being with someone new and falling in love (or something like it). Others find a person and settle down into a long term relationship and are happy with it. Sure, the thrill of a new relationship goes away pretty quickly, but if you are lucky enough to find the right person, that is OK. As the relationship goes on, that shared history builds into its own beautiful thing. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I've thought about it this way. Studies show how unreliable memory is (see the Challenger disaster memory study [1]), and if a memory is only in my head, I can't be sure it happened that way, and ignoring that issue, it feels kind of like knowing a joke that I can't share with anyone. But with a long-term relationship, all those trivial things of your life are shared with someone else who gets the references and jokes and callbacks, and it makes it more real; it confirms that I really did live that memory, and you get more value out of it than if it is lives only in your own head. This might not make sense to younger people, but at 60 it is becoming relevant to me. Also, please don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying settle down for the sake of settling down. If you haven't found the right person, keep looking for them. [1] https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0128/Where-were-you-when-the-Challenger-exploded-Why-your-memory-might-be-wrong https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0128/Where-were-you-w...
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  > the thrill of a new relationship goes away pretty quickly A few minutes ago, I hugged my wife (one of the simple pleasures of WFH!) and after remarking how good it always felt to do that, jokingly said, "after all this time, shouldn't I be indifferent to you?" We've been together for 22 years. She replied, "it's probably because I have a million different personalities." Maybe to get that refresh it isn't necessary to meet a new person. Just to see the same person in a different way.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    That last line is surprisingly congruent with the article. A bit less breadth, a bit more depth.
yoyohello13 3y ago
Same here. I moved around a lot as a kid. New countries, new cities, new guardians. As an adult I just don't get satisfaction out of traveling. I have that same feeling of "just another place" when I travel. I also really relate to that feeling of never belonging anywhere. It was only recently I realized how damaging that was. I never really invested in relationships with people because I always had the unconscious thought that they would be gone tomorrow. I'm trying to work on that now.
emilecantin 3y ago
I've started my adult life with a conscious decision that I'd start my travels by visiting things close to home; my own province and my own country. There's so much beauty in Québec that most people don't know about: white sand beaches, breathtaking mountain ranges, quaint little villages, bustling downtowns, etc. At the height of the pandemic, we were in Tadoussac and my daughters were looking at a starfish in a tidal pool, and we heard someone say "I didn't know we had that in Québec". Since then, I've traveled a bit further, but always with "slow" transportation: First by car, but more recently on my sailboat. Last year we went to the Bahamas via Nova Scotia and the US East coast, and it only made me appreciate home even more. I never realized how much I loved winter until I skipped one! But yeah, picking a spot to live is an important step; one which I took at about 25. I'm now slowly realizing that all my interests (sailing, snowboarding) would probably be better served somewhere else, but I don't really want to start over. I live in a (very) small town where we all know each other, but it's very welcoming and there's a lot of "immigrants", so you don't have to have been born there to integrate.
- nicbou 3y ago
  I have left Quebec at the age of 22. It took me many years to realise how little I have seen of my home province. I was young, poor, busy, and for the most part without a car. It's a beautiful province, and I wish I explored it more before I left. I try to repair that every time I visit, but there is never enough time and it's hard to get around without a ride.
tony_cannistra 3y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I'm curious – how did you decide where to put down roots, after all that travel? Someplace you visited and liked? A relationship or job?
- smeej 3y ago
  I sat down with a map of the U.S., since that's where I'm a citizen. At the time, my parents were having health challenges, so I made a list of the cities from which I could fly directly to where they were living at the time (they're both much better now, thankfully). I wanted to live within an hour and a half or so from the airport, because any farther than that would be really inconvenient. This gave me a list of a couple dozen areas. From there, I looked at weather. I despise being overly hot, especially (but by no means exclusively) if it's humid, but I don't mind the cold at all. I would miss snow if I didn't get it every year. That narrowed it down to about a dozen, if I remember correctly. I prefer not to live in crowded places or dense cities, and this knocked a couple more places off the list (it's too dense for me almost everywhere within an hour and a half of JFK in NYC for example). I also wanted to be somewhere reasonably close to "stuff to do outside." When I got it down to 6, I ranked them based on places I had some connection to and decided to go visit them all, looking for wherever felt like a good fit. I didn't make it past the first stop, though. I went and visited the place on the top of my list, which I had spent some time near before, met some like-minded people and moved three months later. Ironically I'm not still in touch with the community I first wanted to connect with, but I got plugged into the area in other ways and made connections with other groups. After some immediate family chaos (several moves, a couple deaths, a divorce), my mom actually ended up moving out to the same area, and I think by now this has become "home."
  - tony_cannistra 3y ago
    Thank you. Indeed we are like-minded folk – I've followed nearly the same method, for much the same reasons.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    Out of curiosity, how did you afford to travel so constantly? A life of constant travel would seem almost impossible to most people where I'm from.
hall0ween 3y ago
Similar path, similar conclusion here. I appreciate you verbalizing your thoughts.
ornornor 3y ago
I also feel like I’m not from any place in particular but I’m now at a point where I’d like to settle. I’ve moved countries a lot, my immediate family is all over the place and also moved quite a bit. So how do you pick a place and country to live? Because all of Europe is an option, I’m lucky but also don’t know where (and how) to pick. Could you share the insights if any you got from your experience settling someplace?

by smeej 3y ago

xyzelement 3y ago

Perhaps different but connected - in my mid-30s I realized that I had "maxed out" travel. I was going to 20+ countries a year between work and pleasure and was super-confident that you can drop me anywhere in the world and I'll figure it out. In contrast, I realized that I didn't have a ton of experience "staying." Naively, settling down, marrying, having kids, buying a house sounds "boring" compared to picking up and going to Senegal on a whim, but at this point of my life the boring was much more of the adventure and unknown than the whirlwind. Looking back on it, I am definitely growing and learning much more from being a husband, a dad, a homeowner, neighbor, etc than I would from going on another 20 trips.

sokoloff 3y ago
Now you get to combine the two when you start taking the family on some of those trips to share with your kids the perspective and situations of other people and places.
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
Would it have been different if you were required to live in the places you traveled to for a year each?

tasty_freeze 3y ago

A thought-provoking comment; thanks for sharing it. There is a parallel with personal relationships. Some people churn through relationship after relationship, always looking for a refresh on the exciting feeling of being with someone new and falling in love (or something like it). Others find a person and settle down into a long term relationship and are happy with it. Sure, the thrill of a new relationship goes away pretty quickly, but if you are lucky enough to find the right person, that is OK. As the relationship goes on, that shared history builds into its own beautiful thing. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I've thought about it this way. Studies show how unreliable memory is (see the Challenger disaster memory study [1]), and if a memory is only in my head, I can't be sure it happened that way, and ignoring that issue, it feels kind of like knowing a joke that I can't share with anyone. But with a long-term relationship, all those trivial things of your life are shared with someone else who gets the references and jokes and callbacks, and it makes it more real; it confirms that I really did live that memory, and you get more value out of it than if it is lives only in your own head. This might not make sense to younger people, but at 60 it is becoming relevant to me. Also, please don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying settle down for the sake of settling down. If you haven't found the right person, keep looking for them. [1] https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0128/Where-were-you-when-the-Challenger-exploded-Why-your-memory-might-be-wrong https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0128/Where-were-you-w...

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
> the thrill of a new relationship goes away pretty quickly A few minutes ago, I hugged my wife (one of the simple pleasures of WFH!) and after remarking how good it always felt to do that, jokingly said, "after all this time, shouldn't I be indifferent to you?" We've been together for 22 years. She replied, "it's probably because I have a million different personalities." Maybe to get that refresh it isn't necessary to meet a new person. Just to see the same person in a different way.
- nicbou 3y ago
  That last line is surprisingly congruent with the article. A bit less breadth, a bit more depth.

yoyohello13 3y ago

Same here. I moved around a lot as a kid. New countries, new cities, new guardians. As an adult I just don't get satisfaction out of traveling. I have that same feeling of "just another place" when I travel. I also really relate to that feeling of never belonging anywhere. It was only recently I realized how damaging that was. I never really invested in relationships with people because I always had the unconscious thought that they would be gone tomorrow. I'm trying to work on that now.

emilecantin 3y ago

I've started my adult life with a conscious decision that I'd start my travels by visiting things close to home; my own province and my own country. There's so much beauty in Québec that most people don't know about: white sand beaches, breathtaking mountain ranges, quaint little villages, bustling downtowns, etc. At the height of the pandemic, we were in Tadoussac and my daughters were looking at a starfish in a tidal pool, and we heard someone say "I didn't know we had that in Québec". Since then, I've traveled a bit further, but always with "slow" transportation: First by car, but more recently on my sailboat. Last year we went to the Bahamas via Nova Scotia and the US East coast, and it only made me appreciate home even more. I never realized how much I loved winter until I skipped one! But yeah, picking a spot to live is an important step; one which I took at about 25. I'm now slowly realizing that all my interests (sailing, snowboarding) would probably be better served somewhere else, but I don't really want to start over. I live in a (very) small town where we all know each other, but it's very welcoming and there's a lot of "immigrants", so you don't have to have been born there to integrate.

nicbou 3y ago
I have left Quebec at the age of 22. It took me many years to realise how little I have seen of my home province. I was young, poor, busy, and for the most part without a car. It's a beautiful province, and I wish I explored it more before I left. I try to repair that every time I visit, but there is never enough time and it's hard to get around without a ride.

tony_cannistra 3y ago

Thanks for sharing this. I'm curious – how did you decide where to put down roots, after all that travel? Someplace you visited and liked? A relationship or job?

smeej 3y ago
I sat down with a map of the U.S., since that's where I'm a citizen. At the time, my parents were having health challenges, so I made a list of the cities from which I could fly directly to where they were living at the time (they're both much better now, thankfully). I wanted to live within an hour and a half or so from the airport, because any farther than that would be really inconvenient. This gave me a list of a couple dozen areas. From there, I looked at weather. I despise being overly hot, especially (but by no means exclusively) if it's humid, but I don't mind the cold at all. I would miss snow if I didn't get it every year. That narrowed it down to about a dozen, if I remember correctly. I prefer not to live in crowded places or dense cities, and this knocked a couple more places off the list (it's too dense for me almost everywhere within an hour and a half of JFK in NYC for example). I also wanted to be somewhere reasonably close to "stuff to do outside." When I got it down to 6, I ranked them based on places I had some connection to and decided to go visit them all, looking for wherever felt like a good fit. I didn't make it past the first stop, though. I went and visited the place on the top of my list, which I had spent some time near before, met some like-minded people and moved three months later. Ironically I'm not still in touch with the community I first wanted to connect with, but I got plugged into the area in other ways and made connections with other groups. After some immediate family chaos (several moves, a couple deaths, a divorce), my mom actually ended up moving out to the same area, and I think by now this has become "home."
- tony_cannistra 3y ago
  Thank you. Indeed we are like-minded folk – I've followed nearly the same method, for much the same reasons.
- wholinator2 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, how did you afford to travel so constantly? A life of constant travel would seem almost impossible to most people where I'm from.

hall0ween 3y ago

Similar path, similar conclusion here. I appreciate you verbalizing your thoughts.

ornornor 3y ago

I also feel like I’m not from any place in particular but I’m now at a point where I’d like to settle. I’ve moved countries a lot, my immediate family is all over the place and also moved quite a bit. So how do you pick a place and country to live? Because all of Europe is an option, I’m lucky but also don’t know where (and how) to pick. Could you share the insights if any you got from your experience settling someplace?