In 2016, after finishing my first long trip, I fell into a very sad mood. I wrote in my diary

At that time, I watched as the graduating students began to get on track, while I was still wandering in the same place. This made me doubt my decision for a while, and this emotion reappeared again and again after returning home from every long trip, until I understood the reasons behind it and began to solve the problem instead of continuing to be anxious.

Later, I discovered that it was not just me, but that it seemed to have become a common phenomenon of "on the road syndrome." Just a few days ago, a friend who was "on the road" came to me and told me that she had decided to go back to work. We began to discuss why most travelers fall into anxiety, confusion, or even depression after returning to life.

If you plan to embark on a trip in the future, I hope this article will prepare you some mentally in advance.

Traveling is a wonderful thing. I have always felt that we need to give ourselves some rest time to travel inward or outward. Deciding to set out is the decision I have not regretted in the past 27 years. The process of exploring unknown destinations has accelerated my understanding of myself and the formation of a worldview.

Let me start living a "self-examining life".

But in everything, if there is a positive, there must be a negative. Anyone who has had long-distance travel experience should have had a period of "stopping". This sense of gap puts people into a cycle of anxiety.

Why on earth is this? I summarized the following reasons

1 Travel is a low threshold

But it will give you the illusion of being "different"

I have said many times that I don't think it's worth showing off to how many places I have traveled, because I know that travel is a matter with a low threshold. What is really worth cherishing is the courage to "dare to jump out of your comfort zone."

But precisely because most people do not have the courage to take the first step, very few people have actually set out. This group of people constitutes a small group of "traveling friends". More than half of these people set out because they escape from real life. Of course, there must be curiosity about the world.

Traveling can disconnect you from regular life, and you don't have to follow the established rules of society. What you encounter and are about to experience are unknown. People no longer talk about things in the secular world such as five insurances and one gold, so you feel that those things are no longer important.

When everyone lives a life of "living today and thinking about tomorrow", your psychology will be assimilated and all current situations will be rationalized. Of course, it's not that this is bad, but the point is that you don't agree with it from the bottom of your heart, nor can you really give up the fame and fortune title of the secular world, but just be assimilated due to the influence of the environment.

Travel allows you to enter a simple niche circle and a utopia in the real world. Be blinded by the superficial "coolness" and rationalize your own state of being out of the way.

And this kind of unfounded belief will come back with you

2 Travel cannot be a job

Yes, one conclusion that may disappoint you is that travel cannot be a job.

First of all, what we need to be clear is that "people need work", not necessarily for fame and wealth, but simply need to have something to do. If you go out to play for a week or a month, it's okay to play purely, but if it's for half a year. What about a year? No matter how beautiful the scenery is, we will be tired of watching it. We need to find grasp in life and find our place and sense of social responsibility in this world.

This can be writing or painting, or even picking up junk.

When anyone is too free, they will think about things. This is the anxiety that travelers are most likely to face at the beginning. Especially when you accidentally return to the city and find everyone is trying to run forward, this anxiety will immediately intensify.

You may want to "make money by traveling", but if you think about it again, are those people really "making money by traveling"?

Our common ways for travelers to make money are as follows:

1. Travel agency means purchasing good goods from all over the world. The essence of travel agents is purchasing and sales.

2. Travel bloggers are people who export valuable content through video or radio to harvest traffic and then monetize it through traffic. The essence of travel bloggers is content creators, and the threshold for content creators is much higher than that for simple travel. (For example, my account has the same name on the entire network: Meatball Lili,)

3. Travel customization means customizing unique travel routes for customers to earn service fees. The essence of travel customization is a product service provider.

Besides, the digital vagrants I mentioned a few days ago who "make money while living" do not use travel to make money. They are all outstanding people with outstanding professional skills in the same field.

Although travel is not as costly as everyone thinks, it does cost money, and a traveler is not an identity. It can only be said to be a way of life or a pastime.

As Mr. Xiong Peiyun wrote in "Freedom on High": It is not enough to just strive for freedom and independence. The reason why we strive for freedom is to better achieve ourselves and thereby obtain a lasting creation and guaranteed happiness.

Who were you during the trip? It is something that requires serious thinking.

3 Compared to leaving just as you say, what is more difficult is to return

The moment you decide to separate yourself from life within the system, you are seen as "different" by those around you.

Either you find that you really love this kind of life on the road, find a freelance business model that suits you, and decide to nomadic for life, or you will eventually return to your original life and nourish your soul with the nourishment of travel. Returning contentedly, more people are feeling sorry.

The most difficult thing about returning to life is often that when you yourself accept your uniqueness, you need to accept your ordinariness again. Returning to life with a normal mind will be a not so simple thing.

From the slow pace of travel to the fast pace of work, from simple interpersonal relationships to complex worldly affairs, from minimalist material needs to return to a materialistic environment

It's a new test.

When you look at a corner of the world, only to find that your abilities cannot satisfy your desires, when you suddenly look back and find that you have been left behind by your peers, in the end, what we face is our own heart.

Whether you have a strong heart, whether you know yourself enough, and clearly know what you want determines your state after you return.

One of the most frequently asked questions last year was: "Are you going to continue to be nomadic like this?"

When I looked at the people around me who set out at the same time returning to a stable life one by one, I also had doubts about my own choices. But as I tossed and turned, I truly felt the nomadic genes flowing in me. The distance is always attractive to me. What is on the other side of the mountain and the other side of the sea? What kind of life are people living thousands of miles apart? I have been on the road for five years, and my curiosity about this world has never diminished.

In fact, no matter whether you get married, have children or not, go to work, what clothes you wear, or where you live, people always try to get close to a more ideal and happy state. They should follow their hearts rather than be influenced by rules.

So what does it matter if we continue to nomadic?

Just like what I have always firmly advocated,"There are no standard answers in life." Since everyone can only live it once and no one has experience, then live your own life well.

This may be what I want to tell you about long-distance travel. Finally, I want to share this sentence from Mr. Zhou Guoping in "On Boredom" to everyone:

"Nothing is more exciting than a long trip, and nothing is more boring than a long trip."

Life is a long journey.

[101 possibilities for meeting the world]