My pal, Mike Barish, has a post on Gadling today about a recent survey commissioned by Intrepid Travel. In terms of “who’s the most adventurous” when traveling, folks from the United States came in behind Kiwis, Aussies, Brits and Canadians.
I’m sure some of that can be blamed on the fact that the U.S. culture doesn’t tend to encourage taking more than extremely short vacations. It’s one thing to accrue vacation time, yet a completely different thing to try to use it all without a manager bristling at the request.
Yesterday, I added another trip to my 2010 calendar. The year isn’t yet over, and I still have about four trips to take. For some reason, my brain woke me up in the middle of the night, negotiating whether I should have added the most recent voyage.
- What do I think I’m doing? I’ll have just returned from another trip.
- Shouldn’t I take some time to rest and catch up on family and work? Surely the office can be cleaned and I’ve been avoiding that for the past six months.
- I can always go to this destination later, when it fits in my schedule better.
So I understand why fellow U.S. residents may chicken out of trips for the same reason. There’s always something we “should” be doing. This whole work guilt finds its way into everything. Trouble is, I’m going on this trip for work. It’s not like I’m off to a new place to laze on the beach for days. Not like there’s anything wrong with that. I like lazing.
I ignored the judgmental side of my brain and eventually went back to sleep. And anyone putting off joy should ignore that crap too. Life is short. As long as you’re not over-extending yourself (which is easy to do these days), go discover and enjoy. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to be adventurous.