If you’ve ever come home from a trip and have come home only to feel a little restless and listless, you are not alone.
Sure, you come home and are excited to get back into routine. You get together with friends and try to answer the impossible question ‘what was your favourite part?’, without going through a day-by-day account of your adventure.
But (at least for me), once the initial excitement of coming home wears off, you’re left with your life, almost-exactly how you left it, weeks/months/a lifetime ago. You may have changed, but home may not have (and, good or bad, that’s really what home is there for!).
It becomes difficult to squelch your adventure into a little presentable box that is easy for others to understand, and preferably presented in a 5-sentences-or-less scenario.
It becomes difficult to resume activities that may have happily occupied your days before, and depending on what you experienced and where you traveled, reverse culture shock, and likely, because you’ve survived with just a backpack, you may come home to the realization that you just have too much stuff. (🙋guilty over here…)
So to combat the travel blues, here is what I’ve tried and found to be successful. At least until I can travel again 😉
1. Sort through photos If you’re like me, you come home from travels with thousands of photos. Inevitably, they probably aren’t all priceless photos, and some can be culled and either deleted or separated from those worthy of public consumption.
Additionally, you’ll probably find people want to see trip photos, but they don’t want to sit through more than about 100, or even less, even if your actual photos numbers many more times that. Sort your favourites/best shots into a separate folder that can be called up and shown to those interested.
Plus, going through your photos is an excellent way to bring back those amazing trip memories!
2. Send out postcards I like to collect addresses and contact information from travel friends I meet. Mostly, this translates into a plan in some unknown future trip that can become a bed to crash on, however, a great first contact is to send postcards to these new friends. It’s also a great way to show off your hometown! Any photo can be turned into a postcard, or any tourism bureau usually has a few available.
Of course, if you’re on a long trip, these can be postcards from your various adventures. Friends you meet travelling are probably at least as interested in your travels as those back home, and maybe more, as they shared some of that adventure with you!
3. Keep busy There’s nothing like being home to convince you why you left. 😝.
But also, keeping busy with all the activities and things you may have missed while away is a great way to remember what is so great about home in the first place.
4. See loved ones Whether it’s friends, family, or pets. Chances are someone you love was at home while you were away. There’s something to be said about someone who’s known you forever. Someone who finishes your sentences, understands your weird tv/movie/book/music choices, and is happy to see you back from your adventures.
Perhaps the happiest loved one to see me return.
While you may find an immediate affinity with those people you bond with over cold showers and soggy hostel breakfasts, it’s true that nothing will compare to childhood friendships
5. Make your next trip easier You probably have some idea of where your next travels will take you. Consider what kind of trip you came back from. Was there something that you could have done or learned to better prepare yourself? Something that may have made your experience more authentic or your visit easier?
A few things to consider:
Offer your spare couch/room/bed/company up on couchsurfing.com. Not only can you meet SO many new travel friends, but couch surfers who have vouched for you on the website will make your next couchsurfing attempt that much easier. Nothing says ‘hi! Let me into your house for a few days! Trust me, I’m not a serial killer!’, than an anonymous vouch-for by another stranger on the internet…😝
Not comfortable welcoming a stranger into your home? Check out your local couch-surfing meeting. There’s usually one in most major cities (if my home town of 250,000 people has one, you probably do too!), and it’s a great chance to meet fellow travellers, and potentially introduce yourself to a cheap place to stay on your next trip! If nothing else, it’s a chance to meet people for a drink who might be able celebrate/commiserate your best/worst travel story 😉.
Learn/brush up on a language you’ll need in your next destination. I started learning Russian after my first brief trip in 2013. It took me two years after that trip to finally get back to the country, but by that time, boy was I ever confident in asking for a cup of coffee or directions! Nothing makes your journey smoother than a few words in the country’s native language.
6. Journal, journal, journal. I don’t keep a diary of my day to day life. But I try to when I travel. Sometimes it’s as simple as a few jot notes of what I did that day, or a neat experience or something I saw. Sometimes it’s five pages of how amazing something was. And sometimes I’ve been home three months before I do anything with the notes. But I always love going back through past trip journals, remembering the good, and not so good, the lessons learned, and the experiences I had. I’ve never regretting finishing it off once I arrived home.
This is my ‘all things related to travel’ journal. Travel definitely is one of those things that make me happy 😊.
7. Pack What!? Pack? Nope, no mistakes there. While you will absolutely unpack your clothing and everyday items, I usually replenish my ‘travel items’ and keep this packed. Usually this might just be my liquids bag. But I know that it’s ready to go for my next adventure and I don’t have to spend the night before my trip scrambling trying to find a travel-sized tube of toothpaste.
It’s also a good idea to review your packing choices. Did you bring anything you absolutely didn’t need? Anything you wore once and not again? Anything you will need to replace before your next trip? These are things that you can take of, and remember not to bring next time. Was there anything you needed but didn’t have? Now is a great time to remember that, before you next trip when you need the item and it’s been forgotten at home again.
8. Book another trip When all else fails, or really, because this is the best, and likely only way to really get over the post travel blues.
Surround yourself with like-minded individuals adventuring in close, or far off, lands.
Book yourself a weekend, week, month…never come back?
If you’re fortunate enough to have had the taste of adventure, what else can really beat those post trip blues, but more of the unknown that we crave.
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