What I Learned from a Year Without Travel

Shot by Austin Dalley on iPhone XR

On April 7th, 2020, which just so happens to be my birthday, I was released from my quarantine apartment in southern California and returned to my life in the States after a hastened return from Tel Aviv. While I won't repeat the whole story of what I was doing before the pandemic, I can put it briefly that I was on the path to working and living in Europe before being abruptly cut short by our infamous modern plague. Though novel at first, the pandemic became a well of uncertainty for myself and millions of others. How long would the pandemic last? Two years? More? Would we be able to leave our home countries in the soon aftermath? Plans for travel, work, and life were halted, and even if I wanted to leave as soon as possible, my last endeavor had admittedly drained me of money.

Now, I had grown accustomed to adapting to the unexpected through my travels. But this was different: right as I was making more career and personal leaps than I ever had been, I instead had to go back, all the way, to the little place in suburbia that I had been so desperately trying to escape. Sure, I could have quickly found a job and moved into a different, larger city in the states, but in a way that option felt ridiculous. I didn’t want to be in this country at all, so why waste money on a probably expensive apartment in a city I wanted to leave as soon as possible? As much as it pained me, I knew living with my family for some time was, somewhat ironically, the better option if I ever wanted to leave again, as I didn’t have to pay rent and I could grind for cash in the meantime.

So over the course of the next year and a half, I became a California boy again, got a job bartending, and tried to make the best out of this country I know I never really belonged to. And as the days of endless sunshine and nights of tequila and ice went by, I began to realize something. I had always felt that I wasn’t meant for the states. But after being abroad for nearly a year, and then returning, I began to see clearly the why of that inclination, and what a life of travel did for me that American life hadn’t done.

This wasn’t the first time that I had started to discern this. After college I was at a phase where life felt stagnant, and something deep in me said that I needed to just…go. Somewhere, anywhere, that wasn’t where I was from. So I moved to New York City; an ex boyfriend of mine had inspired me to do it and something about it seemed like what I needed. And my gut was right. Perhaps it was the infectious energy that’s constant in the city, or that I had to work so hard to survive there, but whatever it was, something about being somewhere bigger, so opposite from where I grew up, sparked something in me. It forced me to pull myself together. To organize what I wanted to do, and plan on how I was going to achieve it. Being somewhere new, where no one knew who I was, allowed me to start from a clean slate, away from my flawed past. Living in this chaotic but vivid place made me change, and after a while, I began to consider what might happen if I tried to go to the places that I knew I really wanted to go. A year into living in New York, I knew that it was time again. I booked a one way ticket to Paris, with not a ton of money and only somewhat of a plan, but with an inescapable feeling that it was right.

The next seven months I would end up in five different countries on three different continents, jumping from one language and culture and climate to the next. But while my surroundings changed, I didn’t feel as much change as I did in New York, at least not in the moment. Because to me, it was that same sensation of moving to a new place over and over again, a feeling which I quickly grew accustomed to. But then, of course, I came back. And in my readjustment into Californian culture I was finally able to see, and feel, how much different I really was.

Shot by Austin Dalley on iPhone XR

To be fair, I had always felt a degree separate from everyone else in the states, and many little preferences were just re-emphasized upon my return. How I hated American infrastructure, the ways Americans buy food, the way they drink coffee, how they’re educated to be so insular and unaware of other cultures and languages. But it was the larger and more personal changes in myself that really caught my attention. Growing up, I had always believed I was introverted. I generally kept to myself both at home and in social situations, save for the occasional close friend I liked to see frequently. Yet all of a sudden, after being gone for seven months, I was craving to go out, to talk to new people, to see friends. This desire to be social was made even more apparent as it clashed with the early covid lockdowns where all were advised to not leave home. As it turns out, I actually love being around people and socializing when it’s people I actually find relatable or interesting, which in the States had always been rare. Another altered aspect of myself was my sexuality, or, rather, how I expressed it. Pre Europe I had been out for some time, but something in me had always kept myself a bit discreet, an unintentional urge to keep people from knowing what I was. New York, gay capital that it is, did change that a little, but it wasn’t until being in Paris, London, and especially Tel Aviv, that I truly grew into and cherished being gay. Now I had a confidence in my identity that I never had before, and didn’t care if people knew I was gay or not. People having a problem with who I am is their problem, not mine.

More than anything though, and very much in line with the acceptance of my sexuality, travel through Europe allowed me to accept my own ability and belief in myself. Classically, I’ve never been one to hold myself in high regard. I always assumed that people wouldn’t like who I was, think I was uninteresting, that I really never had the means of accomplishing what I always dreamed of doing. But throwing myself into Europe, a place I only knew about via books and history, actually put me into situations where I had to believe in myself to have a life there. I had to learn the languages of the countries I was in. I had to schedule planes, trains, boats to travel from one country to the next. I had to find a means of supporting myself, and focus on a plan of how and where I wanted to work. And most significantly, I had to do all of this on my own. In the moment I hadn’t really thought much about it; I just did the work because I didn’t have a choice. But once I came back to the states, and in retrospection, I could see and validate all of the work I had done to make this dream of mine come to life.

Some reading this, those who are older or have been through their own trials, may be thinking that I would have reached this point on my own anywhere I lived, be it Europe, New York, or California. While I wont discredit the wisdom that comes with age, I can frankly state that I don’t believe I would’ve gotten to where I am as a young man anywhere inside this country. I firmly support that it was a lifestyle of travel, specifically travel to places I’ve always wanted to experience, that allowed me to blossom the way I did. Being somewhere foreign has so much more stimulation than ones home country, especially the States, could ever provide. There are learning curves of language, culture, and history that are so much more complex and nourishing to the mind than what even a city like New York could provide. Because these levels of differences force one to think in ways they may never have before and experience new things, which are inevitably the types of situations that stimulate us to grow beyond ourselves.

I will admit I enjoyed my time in California more than I assumed I would. Perhaps it was age, or perhaps it was working at a job that I enjoyed with people I equally enjoyed. But what really made the difference this time, was that I was back as my true self. Europe will always have many things that I love: culture, art, architecture, history. But its most valuable asset, to me, is what it produced. Europe made me, me.

In September of 2021, for the second time in my life, I boarded a one way flight to Europe more prepared than I ever have been to make the life on that continent I know I deserve. And though I may not miss everything about the States, I won’t deny what it taught me: how grateful I am to have found myself, and continue to find myself, in that place across the sea.

Shot by Austin Dalley on iPhone XR