Growing up, I used to travel pretty regularly. We would go to Tahoe in the winter for a week or two and then again in the summer. My parents usually planned a big summer trip for us each year as well. Sometimes we did a driving trip where we went to a bunch of states and national parks. Sometimes it was a trip out of the country on a big adventure. And a few times a year, we would go down to San Diego to see my grandparents. I didn’t travel as much once I was in high school, since missing school was harder. So I didn’t always go to Tahoe the entire time my family was there, but I still had big family trips each summer.
Once I moved to LA, I didn’t do as much travel since I was occupied with college. I did go back to the Bay Area or to Tahoe sometimes. And I did little random road trips to Palm Dessert, San Diego, or Las Vegas. And after I was done with college, I cut back on traveling even more. I have done a few random trips here and there, but outside of traveling to be with family, I didn’t always travel every year.
And I’m aware that I’m coming from a place of privilege and most people don’t have opportunities to travel. Either they can’t miss work or they don’t have the extra money to spend, so if they go on a trip, it’s either something they have saved up for a long time or done locally or inexpensively. And for a lot of my adult life, unless my family was helping me with paying for a trip, that was the same situation for me. But even if I was just getting out of LA to see family, I usually went somewhere every year or every other year.
But since Thanksgiving 2019, the furthest I’ve been from LA has been Santa Barbara. That’s about a 90-minute drive each way, so it’s not super close but also not really that far either. I wasn’t going to travel during the pandemic, although I did think about driving to be with my parents in Tahoe (I wasn’t going to fly). But it made more sense for me to stay in LA since during 2020 there was so much uncertainty with work and I didn’t want to have to rush back home for some reason. And I wasn’t going to travel somewhere else since I was basically trying to avoid other people. I know that things are better now, but I just haven’t had the chance to travel.
But I’m feeling more and more of an urge to plan a trip. I don’t have anywhere to go or anyone to travel with, but I just want to have some sort of an adventure that isn’t in my bubble here. I am still worried about Covid and other things, but as I’ve watched more and more of my friends and family go on really great vacations, I’d like to have one too. And I think I’m in such a routine or rut that I could use something that would break me out of it. I know exactly what I’ll be doing every day and it’s pretty much the same pattern every week. I could use some variety, and having a vacation would totally change things up.
I don’t exactly have the money saved for a big trip, but I am doing better financially than I have before. My expenses are similar to what they were before, but I’m making more money than I was even earlier this year. I don’t have vacation days or paid time off right now, but because of some changes with the main job I have, I know that there will be a policy for that soon. Once I know what the PTO policy is like and how many days I might have already (I don’t know if we will all start at 0 or if they will count them back to when we all started working), then maybe I will start seeing if I can find a friend to travel with. I still don’t think I’d like to travel alone, even though I know a lot of my friends have done that for the first time recently and loved it. But I would rather have someone to go on adventures with so I don’t feel isolated while traveling.
I have no idea when I’ll be able to get out of LA for a trip that I plan. I know that as of right now, I will be headed up to Oregon in November to do an early Thanksgiving with family, so at least that will be something. But I want to plan something that is more about exploring the world and hopefully getting to see a place I have never been to before.
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