Unlike so many of the travel bloggers I keep up with on social media or read about online I am not continuously travelling. I'm not living out of a backpack at the moment, and I'm not spending near enough time in airports. All of that (sadly) being said, I'm trying my best to get in as many 'weekend wanders' as I possible can. Thankfully Vancouver is in close proximity to a lot of weekend worthy getaways so I try to keep that in mind when I'm scrolling through Instagram watching dozens of people talking about the 6 month adventure they're on or the year they've been spending in Thailand. That being said, as much as I wish I were currently back on the road, living out of a backpack & spending my nights meeting countless new friends at the hostel, it's just not in the cards for me at the moment as my current job is one that I actually really enjoy (shocker after so many years of thankless jobs) and I'm not 100% sure where it is I want to take off again long term. So as much as I do have this crazy urge to sell everything I own and head off somewhere foreign again I'll have to settle for these 5 things...
1. Weekend Wanders
Not being constantly on the move is a source of much frustration in my life these days. Like I've said in previous posts I;m my best self when I'm travelling. I thrive off the adventure and the unknown so my current stationary position these days tends to make me feel anxious. That being said I try my best to get out on the weekend, I try to plan getaways out of the city as often as I can, and when I can't or the weather is less than desirable (which is more often than I'd like here in Vancouver) I try to at least find a pretty spot around Vancouver (there are luckily a fair few of those) to pretend that I'm somewhere else for a while. These little "weekend wanders" as I like to call them are what keep me going through the week. These are what keeps my spirits up not knowing when my next big adventure will be.
2. Travel Talk I'm by no means a chatty Cathy...that is until the topic of travel related things is brought up. And then? Well, you're in for it. I could talk about the place I've been for days, and the places that fill my mind that I hope to visit one day for months. So that's what I do. I'm thankful that the few people I have in my life that I keep in constant contact with feel the same about travelling as I do, so that when I'm sitting at home during a rain storm wishing I was anywhere else I can grab my phone and instantly start a conversation with one of those people about this crazy gorgeous spot somewhere in the world that I think we should visit one day. That alone is a source of happiness in my rather hum drum life at the moment.
3. She Who Wanders This one should be a bit obvious by now, but as I said in my first post ever on this site The Big Reveal one of the the biggest draws for me to create this site/social media presence was to be able to share my adventures (past & future) with all of you. And through that I'm also able to discover countless other accounts with the same idea in mind. To share the incredible places you all have been with me. A quick scroll through Instagram or Twitter these days thanks to She Who Wanders has me in awe of just how many insanely incredible places exist in the world that I never even thought about visiting. So whenever that little bit of "dear god I'm never going to get to travel again" feeling strikes I just have to hop online and search through posts of my own & others to remind myself that is in fact NOT the case.
4. WanderWalls & WanderLists No I'm not making a reference to everyone's classic go to "Wonderwall" by Oasis, although I do have a soft spot for that tune. But anyways, in my room I have made myself a "WanderWall" or a travel wall, whatever you'd like to call it. In the center I've got a scratch away map, which basically works like a lotto scratchie, and with a coin I can scratch off the locations I've visited revealing different colours and eventually once the whole map is revealed it should look pretty rad. Surrounding that are my favourite photos I've taken throughout my travels over the last 6 years. Waterfalls in Costa Rica, Beaches in Australia, Mountains in New Zealand, and everywhere else I've fallen in love with. And it's strategically been placed on the wall I see when I'm laying in bed, o before I go to sleep and when I wake up with the first thing that I see. On top of that I have an ever growing WanderList. Which again some would call a bucketlist, but I reserve that term for things I want to accomplish, and the wanderlist is for places I want to explore. So when my mood takes a tumble and I'm wishing I could take off on the next flight, I have a look through that and imagine exactly where I'd like to be instead and it helps.
5. When in doubt..Netflix Okay, so this might be a given to anyone when they're feeling down, or bored, or hungover, or any number of things. And sure I have a few shows I'm binge watching at the mo, I mean come one how could you not want to watch Kevin Spacey and his devious wife in House of Cards for 9 straight hours? However, when the wanderlust feeling is pulling ever so strongly I know that I've got a fair bit to choose from thanks to Netflix - first and foremost Departures 2 Canadian guys taking on the world? What more could a girl ask for right? Plus they're hilarious, and they take themselves off the beaten track a little bit to do their exploring. On top of that there are all kinds of David Attenborough narrated documentaries on there to satisfy any kind of traveler. A 2 hour trip into the Galapagos without the cost of a flight? That's always a good idea on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
So whatever the case might be, maybe you're saving up for a wicked year long adventure so little trips between now & then aren't an option for, or maybe like me you're just trying to figure it all out. Always know that even though you can't physically be travelling as much as you'd like to, there are so many ways to take yourself to another place with just a few clicks on a button or flicks on your camera.
