You don’t always need to travel. Sometimes the real adventures lie right in front of your doorstep.
I’ve been on the road for most of the year, making one trip after the next. When I wasn’t travelling, chances were I was planning and thinking about another trip. If you’re flexible and have some experience researching online, you can find many cheap deals. New York, Los Angeles and Hawaii return flights, all for under € 1000 – and yes, that’s the total for all three trips.
Most of the time, this style of planning works out just fine; however, as a good friend put it: “I could not plan travelling this way. How should you know what type of vacation you’ll need two months from now?” Shockingly, this turned out to be very accurate. Instead of a ten-day adventure in the U.S., I cancelled everything at the last minute. At this point, slowing down felt like the only right thing to do, so I enjoyed two weeks at home:
- No responsibilities
- No plans
- Just spontaneity
- Meeting friends and family
- Checking the long term todos on my bucket list
- Enjoying every moment and getting my life back together
What I got rewarded with were two weeks of beautiful autumn days, each one still warmer, sunnier and even more beautiful than the one before. Even without that, this would’ve been one of the best decisions in a long time. Your surroundings, environment and all the things happening around you much less influence happiness, than you think – instead it’s a state of mind coming from within.