With rampant inflation, it’s difficult to travel as luxuriously or as often as we might want. But we can always make the best out of staying home by being more judicious about how we spend our free time. One way to do this is by living more like we travel – incorporating novelty and excitement into our regular lives.
Why travel seems so much more exciting than being home
People who travel obsessively may think that they crave the feeling of experiencing new cultures, eating different cuisines, and checking out beautiful scenery. But what underlies all these things we associate with travel is actually just novelty. And you don’t have to go very far to experience novelty, most of us just choose not to seek it out in familiar surroundings.
Rather, when we’re home, we lazy around the house because we’re tired and go to the same restaurants and bars because we’re familiar with them. Vacations are tiring too, but we make the effort to get up early and do something exciting and new because we don’t want to waste our time in this novel destination. Yet we’re more than happy to waste the time we have at home.
When we travel, we’re forced to try new restaurants because they’re all new to us. But how many restaurants and bars do you regularly neglect to try in your hometown in favor of the same three places you go all the time? Your city probably isn’t as boring as you think it is, you just make no effort to seek out new experiences until you travel somewhere different.
Stop prioritizing the familiar
One of the easiest ways to live like you travel is to stop going to familiar places. Need something from the mall? Visit one you’ve never been to instead of the one closest to you. Don’t feel like cooking? Try a new restaurant instead of ordering from the same place where you get takeout every Friday. In fact, try a new cuisine! You don’t have to travel to Ethiopia to have Ethiopian food. You don’t need to fly to Greece to have a spectacular Greek meal. While it’s comforting to have your favorite meal at a restaurant where everyone knows you already, it’s nice to try something new every once in a while.
Get out of your comfort zone
Do you ever catch yourself doing something on vacation that you would never do at home? Like seeing a local football game even though you don’t follow football. Or taking a bike tour of a city even though you haven’t been on a bike since you were a kid. Or spending an entire afternoon in an art museum even though you don’t really care much about art.
If these are the activities that you find yourself filling your travels with – activities that are so memorable and enjoyable – why wouldn’t you do them at home? Even if it feels out of character, maybe you should go on a pub crawl on a random Saturday night or go see an art exhibition. All of these things will add novelty to your day-to-day life and make it less boring and routine compared to your travels.
Spend less time Netflix and chilling
No one loves staying home in pajamas more than me. But after a full week of working from home and a whole weekend of binging TV, you kind of feel like a useless sack of shit. As much as it’s nice to be home and do nothing, it can be even nicer to get out of the house, especially if you’re craving the excitement of a new experience. When the weather is warm and there are outdoor flea markets and summer concerts and art fairs and sidewalk dining, why would you waste away inside? Even just taking a short walk can be energizing. So look up some local events, meet up some friends for drinks, go see a midnight movie. Next time you’re feeling like you desperately need a vacation, spend the whole day out and you might find that you were able to scratch that itch.
Do a lot with your day even if it’s tiring
When we travel, we fill our day to the brim with activity. On the other hand, when we have free time at home, we become allergic to doing more than one thing a day or even over a whole weekend. Haven’t you ever found yourself declining a brunch invitation because you have plans the night before and you need to recover? Or staying in after an afternoon at the beach? Ask yourself, what would the you on vacation do? When you travel, you’re waking up at the crack of dawn and you’re out from sunrise to sunset and walking 10 miles every day. Then you do it all again the next day.
Of course, not every day of your life can be like this – who has that kind of energy? But every hour of free time shouldn’t be spent wasting away in front of your television either. Try dedicating one or two weekends a month to living it up. Take a ceramics class and then go to happy hour. Then make the effort to go out to eat instead of ordering in. Don’t want to spend too much money? Spend your whole day biking around the city and have picnic sandwiches in some park nearby. Come Monday morning, you’ll be surprised how much you got to do with your weekend.
Take day trips
Day trips are almost exclusively a travel thing even though there couldn’t be a less convenient time to take a day trip than when you only have 3-4 days somewhere. Why don’t we take more day trips from home? Day trips are like Travel Lite. No need to pay for a hotel or take time off, but you get to experience somewhere totally new to do some sightseeing or hiking or just generally relax in a completely novel setting. No matter where you live, there are probably dozens of cities, national parks, or coastlines nearby that may not merit a whole vacation but can bring a whole lot of excitement to your regular life.
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