On Traveler's Guilt and How To Alleviate It
ππΌ, this is the first issue of "Life Reliability Engineering". Thank you so much for signing up! I'm very excited (and a teeny bit nervous!) about having a corner on the internet where I can share what goes on in my weird brain and not feel embarrassed about it π I'm gonna try and experiment with both the content and format in the next few weeks. Ideas and feedback are very welcome - please feel free to reply or tweet at me.
I'm traveling at the moment, so I wanted to write about something I've coined as "traveler's guilt" over the course of all of my travels. I've been traveling a lot over the last two years, around 2+ months in a year. While it's super fun to discover and explore new places, cultures and meet so many amazing people, it's also very exhausting, both mentally and physically. Folks who travel a lot with short breaks in between trips or take very long trips must be familiar with this feeling I call "traveler's guilt" β it's when you just wanna sit in your Airbnb/hotel and chill or do nothing, but your brain constantly nags you to go out filling you with intense FOMO. For me, it usually goes like this:
Me: decides I'm exhausted and I just wanna watch Netflix or read a book indoors
Brain: nooo, you've traveled all this way to do nothing??? Seriously, you're just gonna sit here and miss out on everything waiting for you out there???
Me: oh, nooo - I should probably go explore and not waste my time sitting indoors
Brain: yes, you can go home and rest, you may or may not come back to this city! If you're gonna be doing what you'd be doing at home anyway, then why did you fly thousands of miles to come here? You could've just stayed there and done the same thing, you know?
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In fact, I'm struggling with it as I write this sitting by a cozy fireplace in Seattle. I walked a lot yesterday and I just want to stay indoors and read a book today. But my brain is constantly telling me to go out there and explore despite my body stating otherwise.
Over time, I've come to realize that it's just one of the way your brain tricks you into not tending to your needs and taking care of yourself properly. If your body and brain are demanding some time off and you try to go against the tide and push it, it's not gonna be very rewarding. This is applicable to a variety of circumstances! Remember the 2am debugging sessions when your body is telling you that you should sleep and come back to it tomorrow, but your brain is telling you that you're very close, you should keep going! And often you wake up the next morning with a solution miraculously! Sleep works as the best debugger more often than not. Similarly, even if you do go out, chances are you'll be weary and won't end up enjoying it as much as you would have if you'd have gone with a fresh mind. It sucks, doesn't it?
So the above conversation usually ends this way:
Me: shoooo, Brain, I'm gonna take the time I need to rest and then figure out how to utilize my time in the best way I can.
It's okay to take time off for yourself when you need it. Yes, chances are that you might not come back to the city you're visiting but whatever experiences you do have there, you'll be fully present in the moment instead of being tired and wishing you were doing something else. Doing things out of sheer fear almost always diminishes the experience. Taking time to take care of yourself is important - respect the needs of your body and brain.
Brains are weird and I don't really understand them. But over time, what I've found is that sometimes telling your brain that you know what's best for you and that it needs to shut up is the best way forward. This works well in a lot of situations! Brains are stubborn, yes, but they do listen to you if you tell them something enough times! This was truly one of the biggest realizations I've had tbh. Sometimes you need to put your foot down and trust yourself to know what's best for you even if you've got a few doubts. It works out well, mostly.
Happy December! Take care of yourself and keep shining on. β¨
Picks:
This is an experimental section where I'll try to link to cool stuff I've come across lately.
π Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine [cw: suicide]
This was such a wonderful and engaging read about the human need for being love, belonging and care. Highly recommend it if you're suffering from a reading block.π Living Computers Museum in Seattle, WA
Omg, this museum is amazing! If you love computers and ever visit Seattle, you should definitely take a trip here. Their collection of old computers is mind-boggling, from PDPs to Ataris, to Apple IIs and the iMac, you name it. It's a fun wonderland of old and new computers to get lost in!π Are Your Lights On?
I'm more than halfway through this one and it's been a really fun read about problem-solving and the various gotchas associated with a problem - how to define the problem? how do we know if we're solving the right problem? how do we know we have got the right solution and need to stop looking? It tries to reason about these and other questions through various situations.