Boo Hoo – Post Travel Blues

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If you saw the title of this post and expect all the answers to making post travel blues better, you’re in the wrong place. I don’t have the answers. Maybe if and when that day comes, I’ll write about that too! I started thinking about this issue when I read Ashley Abroad’s post “What I Miss Most About Long-Term Travel“.  I knew I was sad to not be travelling. but I hadn’t really thought about what I missed or what I wished I had done/was doing.

I guess I feel so “bleh” about everything as I had to cut my trip short for various reasons. I wasn’t ready to come home. There was still so much I wanted to do. To see the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields in Cambodia, the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam. To learn firsthand about the Secret War in Laos. I wanted to go back to Malaysian Borneo and spend more time in the amazing jungle there. I wanted to complete my Advanced Open Water  in Koh Tao.

I had spent months before leaving to go on my travels reading blog after blog, guide after guide. I even compiled a guide for each country so I knew where to stay and what to do, even how to get between destinations so everything could be easier. It breaks my heart that I haven’t got to do these things. It’s frustrating to be so far away from that. Body is at home but the head is in south east Asia. My heart doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.

I came home in June, and I’m still struggling with the adjustment (don’t even get me started on the weather – I’m wearing winter woolies in July). I am thinking about things I hadn’t planned on thinking about at this stage. When I was away I would avoid thinking about ‘what to do with the rest of my life’. These are things I’ve been forced to think about now I am home and I have no answers and instead a lot of questions.

That’s where I am now. I’m trying to figure out the things I enjoy and find jobs that would interest me long term. It’s scary thinking about these things, but it’s also exciting. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have the post travel blues. I have them without a shadow of a doubt. I’ve read in a couple places that they kick in 4-6 weeks after a major trip. I was definitely feeling them on the flight home (and a big thanks to the guy who sat beside me in our super legroom seat who got my life story and was a wonderful ear). I felt it when I barely left the house for a couple of weeks. I still feel it when I put that smile on in public.

There’s so much of this world that I want to see. I’ll get there – one little destination at a time!

Have you ever had post travel blues? How did you deal with them?