why i travel

I'm just back from a trip. It doesn't really matter where. The effects are always the same. You can be on the other side of the planet, or the next town over, it will still happen.

My eyes open.

When I arrive, it's like waking up. The time between has been a dream. This is real now. Time stretches out like a cat to its natural length. Days linger and weeks stretch on and on and on.

When I am at home, routine is unavoidable, and it's routine, I suspect, that does the damage. I can't help but to compress things, label things, reduce things. If I walk the same route to work or college, I see nothing. Everything has been converted into some sort of mental prefab, a symbol of reality.

what is going on?

• Human204
• Car6
• WinterTree7

I suspect that it is this "prefabing" of reality that causes much of the sleepiness I experience.

Going somewhere new is the easiest way for me to break out of this. Once we are on the road, my travel buddy and me tend to move about, not staying anywhere for more than a few days. My mind never gets a chance to fully index a place, and thus I am forced to see. 

But I can't keep moving for ever, that is of course, unsustainable. So how then, can I offset my stationary malaise. I try things. 

• Walk a new route
• Learn something new
• Eat in a new place
• Try to find 5 things you have never seen before of my usual walk

They work, to an extent. But nothing will beat the overwhelming flood of new data of a new place. I will use them to try and lift my lids until next time I can venture out into the new once more...