Although the majority of his music is synonymous with easy listening boredom, John Mayer is actually a rather funny dude. I mean, his impromptu stand-up has received positive reviews and he’s had funny spots on Chappelle’s Show and even Seasame Street. His Twitter is also a great source of humor…you just don’t expect the My Body is a Wonderland guy to be so random. A tweet he sent out the other day immediately struck me as an essential truth about travelling:
There’s always a moment on a trip when you decide you want to go home. Fight it. Because beyond that moment lies the best parts.
Especially in the case of long term trips, this particular occurrence is what I like to refer to as “The Wall”. Bikers and long distance runners will immediately identify this as the point where their bodies have consumed all readily available glycogen in their bodies and are starting to burn fat for energy, which is not as easily done. This is the time when fatigue becomes much more significant.
The same can be said about any significant time away from home. Undoubtedly, there will be a time when you feel like you would rather go home than continue on your trip, or the traveler’s version of “The Wall”. It can manifest itself in many different forms. I mean, if you are traveling with friends, you might feel like you’re getting sick of each other or people are nitpicking things or bickering with each other. If you are traveling solo, you could be battling a bit of loneliness and isolation. Either way, you feel like you’ve had as much fun as you can have.
Personally, I’ve been on many different long term trips where I’ve been away for months at a time and I can say from experience that “The Wall” can happen at any time during your trip. On my trip to Japan last year, it came near the middle on a particularly rainy day when all the trains were knocked out by a storm. Of course, many of the best moments of my trip came after that happened and I even decided to cancel my plane tickets home until I felt I was satisfied with my time in Japan. In 2006 while backpacking through Europe, it came just after my first week during our stop in Amsterdam. Of course, it could’ve been due to a mixture of the alcohol and…other…things but I was severely emotionally homesick the next day to the point where I had to call my family. Of course, all the best parts of the trip happened afterwards, including World Cup and a few weeks in London.
The key, really, is awareness that it is simply “The Wall” and remembering why you went on a trip in the first place. Just knowing is almost the whole battle. It is entirely natural to be homesick and regardless of how well-travelled you are, you are bound to experience it to some degree. There’s no solid, foolproof way to defeat “The Wall” but resisting the temptation to call it a trip or letting it drag on longer than a moment is important to how much awesoming time you’ll get on vacation.