Travel

I want to see new things and new places. I want to explore. Even if it’s just in my state, I want to explore. I want to find out everything I can and experience new things. I haven’t travelled much these last few years. I’m so busy, so caught up in my routine, that I never really go anywhere. I want to change that. Parks, landmarks, friends I haven’t seen in a long time or don’t see regularly, famous places, unique places, I want to see them all. I want to go to beautiful and odd places. I want to find things I’ve never found and see oddities I never even considered.

The world isn’t that big a place. It’s big, sure, but it’s not so big you can’t experience all of it for yourself eventually. A four- or five-hour drive isn’t that bad and a night stay at a hotel or a campground isn’t that expensive. See the world! I’m going to. Family and friends aren’t that far away. New things, unique places, new experiences, all just a drive away.

We get so caught up in our own little patch we forget there’s a whole world of new experiences out there just waiting for us. It’s easy to immerse yourself in your routine, in the day-to-day grind of work/eat/sleep. There’s a reason it’s called the daily grind. It wears away at your heart and your soul. It has to be done to make the money to enjoy the grand experiences but it’s not the entirety of life. I’d rather die in debt and live a great life than die rich and have nothing to show for it.

Speaking of riches… You don’t have to spend a lot of money to have a good time. People tend to think they have to spend and spend to enjoy themselves. Sure, there are lots of great things worth spending money on, but they’re not the only things. There are parks and the wonder of nature, famous landmarks and the feeling of standing in important points in history, the graves of famous people, visiting and wandering around famous cities, and visiting friends you haven’t seen in a while for the sheer joy of it. Travel isn’t just about going to wildly expensive exotic locales and paying boatloads of money for expensive experiences. Sometimes it’s just about going somewhere new and different and a little exciting and seeing what happens. It’s about the new, the different. It’s about invigorating your life by injecting the world straight into your veins. The world is wonderful. I’m going to go experience it. You should too.

My Own Bed

It’s wonderful to go new places and do new things but there’s always something you miss from back home. It could be your fridge or your dogs or even your own yard. There’s one thing I always miss when I travel and stay overnight and that’s sleeping in my own bed.

Our bed’s a queen size that sits on the floor, no frame. We have our pillows, a body pillow, the pillows that went with the coverlet, and then some throw pillows. We’ve both got our own bedside stands, mine set up with a lamp so I can write and read in bed. The dog gets his blanket that we put on the bed so he can get up on it without leaving his smelly doggy scent. Frames are such an awful creaking mess to have that we just went with putting the bed straight on the floor. It’s a nice setup, very solid.

Sleeping elsewhere’s always a challenge. It’s completely new, no established routines, no typical sounds or typical feelings. The sheets are different. The cover’s different. The sounds are different. The light’s different. The smells are different. Not necessarily bad, just different. It’s just an unusual experience fraught with oddities and some physical and mental discomfort. There’s a whole new set of thoughts going through your head, feelings and sensations and impressions that overwhelm you. It’s a difficult thing to get used to.

If you stay for more than a day, you start to acclimate to the change in surroundings. The bed feels a little more comfortable, the surroundings a little less strange, the mental state more used to what’s going on now. You still crave your old bed but this one will work.

There’s nothing better than going home after time away and getting back into the same old swing of things, back under the same sheets, listening to the same sounds, having the same surroundings, the usual smells, the established routine. You may have become used to the new bed but the old bed is where you’re happy, sated, comfortable. You like it there, you feel a completely different way there, and you’re glad to be home.