How to Get Off Your Butt and Travel the World
How do you make the leap from cubicle daydreams to life on to the road?
There are plenty of guides on the practicalities of traveling the world — like planning an itinerary, booking cheap flights or living in hostels — but sometimes the harder questions go unanswered — how do you find the courage to travel?
Even for those that want nothing more than to escape a life of monotony, even for those that hate their jobs, even for those that feel like they have no life and desperately need some excitement, it still isn’t easy to actually get on a plane and go.
I know. I’ve been there. I decided to travel to world when I was 24. I left to travel the world when I was 29.
For five years I found excuses to postpone my dreams, not consciously of course, but there was always some excuse to stay. Only years later, once I’d made it all the way to India, did I realize what held me back — fear born of inertia.
Inertia is a powerful thing — both imprisoning and liberating at the same time. The negative aspect is the inertia that imbues our lives in the form of habit. We get up, we go to work, we come home, and the same thing happens the next day.
The first law of thermodynamics says, more or less, that bodies in crappy ruts tend to remain in crappy ruts.
The good news is that bodies on the road tend to remain on the road.
The question is: how do we make inertia work for us rather than against us?
The answer is that it’s going to take some energy. You have to make the change happen. You must decide to save yourself.
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• Athens, Georgia
We mythologize trains because they harken back to an age of community travel, a real, tangible community of travelers, not just backpackers, but people from all walks of life, people traveling near and far together in a shared space that isn't locked down like an airplane and isn't isolated like a car; it's a shared travel experience and there are precious few of those left in our world. Read it »
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Leonardo Da Vinci and the Codex on Bunnies
• Birmingham, Alabama
A few pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks make a rare trip outside Italy, to Birmingham, AL, of all places. But the Birmingham Museum of Art is home to far more alarming works of art, works which depict the eventual, inevitable, bunny takeover, after which all the elements of our reality will be replaced by bunnies. Seriously. You heard it here first. Read it »
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Elkmont and the Great Smoky Mountains
• Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee
Pigeon Forge is Myrtle Beach in the mountains. Redneck weddings cascade straight out of the chapel and into the mini golf reception area. Pigeon Forge is everything that's wrong with America. But we aren't here for Pigeon Forge, it just happens to have a free condo we're staying in. We're here for the mountains. Smoky Mountain National Park is just a few miles up the road. Read it »
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Rope Swings and River Floats
• Mountain Cabin, Georgia
Two weekends ago we went up to the mountains, just outside of Dahlonega GA, and floated the Chestatee River using inner tubes, various pool toys and one super-cool inflatable seahorse. Unfortunately, proving one of my travel mottos -- you can never go back -- a return trip proved disastrous. Read it »