Post Travel Depression

It's a fairly common thing for people who travel. They have an amazing trip. The highs are higher. The lows are lower. Life is more intense. Then you get back home. It feels good to connect with people. You might kick back a few days. You take some hot showers and eat some good meals. All is good, right?

Maybe not. Life become pretty bland. At first people may be interested in the things you've done, but interest soon wanes. After a while nobody wants to keep hearing about the amazing things you've seen. They heard about it once or twice, and really, that's enough. Life goes on.

You can feel pretty empty at that point, especially if you've had to step back into a normal life. Some people find the only way to deal is to head out on another adventure. That's how you get people who circumnavigate the planet six times. Some people hike the Appalachian Trail, come back, then soon are planning their next big hike. Many cannot go back to their old lives at all.

Let's assume, however, that you choose to continue with your old life, at least for a while. How do you deal with the depression? How do I keep it at bay? I've got a few things in my favor.

The first is that my lovely wife and I were gone for three and a half months. That's long enough that taking a break doesn't feel too bad. It's those who do something for a week or two, then have to go right back to work that have real difficulty. They had just settled into adventure mode and then find themselves back in the mundane world. Some people, near the end of their adventure, are already getting depressed as they aren't ready to return.

When we got back, we took some time to connect with family and friends. That was a good transition. Electronic communication is nice, but doesn't replace human contact. Hugs don't transmit well over the air waves.

For a while, I was too busy getting the house up and running to get depressed. Then we both dove into a lot of home projects that have been piling up. We are at the point now where all the critical stuff has been dealt with. There's time to think, and maybe time to start feeling a bit down. One can't work full speed all the time.

We've taken a few short trips, and that helps. Time sailing on the lake helps. It's good to get out of the house, even if just for a day or two.

One of the big things that keeps me going is planning the next adventure. With our camping rig heading for the boneyard, we have to figure out a lot of stuff from scratch. We can't just do what we did last year. I'm filling up notebooks with ideas, and doing a lot of research.

That's great, but I have to find a balance. Somehow I have to divide my time between my responsibilities and my adventures. Lately I may have been avoiding certain responsibilities for mental health reasons. I could justify putting some more boring things to the back burner as there was plenty of other projects in need of doing. Now it's time to buckle down and knock off some of those things I've been avoiding. It might be safe to do so, without those things driving me crazy.

-Sixbears

Tiny Houses and the Man

Volunteers built tiny houses for the homeless in LA. Recently the City of LA removed as many of them as they could find.

That freaks me out on a number of levels. Apparently, LA would rather have people sleeping on the street than in their own tiny house. Can't have those bums living in their own place with a door that locks and a secure place to keep their few possessions.

I'm guessing that they can't allow tiny houses to become normal. There are plenty of people who aren't homeless who'd like to live cheaply in a small tiny house. We are all supposed to pretend that everyone can work good paying jobs and buy normal sized houses. Heck, we supposed to pretend that everyone wants to live a “normal” life. Those little houses could drive down property values.

The only solution to homelessness is to put people in homes. Duh. If you don't want people in tiny homes, put them in bigger homes. How about in your home? No? Then let they stay in a tiny house.

There are very few places that will actually let you build and live in tiny house. A common way around that is to build the tiny house on a trailer and register it as a vehicle. Even that has problems. My middle-of-nowhere rural town has an ordinance against living in a trailer long term.

There are a lot of people living in their cars and vans. They usually stay under the radar and are mobile. When an area gets uncomfortable they just move on. While the lifestyle works, you have to have enough income to keep a vehicle on the road. That requires a person to have a license, insurance, registration, and to keep the vehicle fueled and in repair.

A tiny house that stays in one place should be much easier and cheaper to take care of. The only problem is that no one will allow it to happen.

-Sixbears

Just another normal day in Pompeii

Imagine you are living back in the Roman city of Pompeii in the year AD 79. It’s a prosperous place. Civilized. Your day to day life is pretty normal. You do what you normally do. Everyone does their daily routine. One day the volcano erupts and everyone dies.

Minor earthquakes were common. People got used to the occasional rumbling of the volcano. It was probably considered normal behavior. After all, nothing major ever went wrong -until it did and everybody died.

There was some warning. One year there was a earthquake bigger than most that did a lot of damage. Some people rebuilt. Other moved away. About 17 years later, the volcano erupted and killed all those who stayed.

Lessons for us today?

One could easily say that people shouldn’t have lived in such a geologically active area. There were good reasons to live in Pompeii. It’s volcanic soils were fertile and productive. That whole area is geologically active, so why move from one shaky place to another? We could say no one should live in southern California. One day the “big one” will hit and it will suffer a devastating earthquake. Yet, just like in Pompeii, there are good reasons to stay. There are good jobs, cultural attractions, agriculture and manufacturing.

We all have to weigh the risks against the benefits. Of course, many people don’t know the risks of living in an area, and don’t want to know. Others downplay the risks. They assume the danger is far away and the benefits are here now. There is a tendency to assume the future will be like the present. Of course, people in New Orleans have no excuse whatsoever.

What if you were one of the Pompeii residents who left after the moderate earthquake. For 17 years nothing else really bad happened. Your old friends in Pompeii might have ridiculed you for years about moving away. Of course, then one day they all died. There wasn’t even a chance to say, “I told you so.”

We should take a cold hard look at where we live and time we live in. In most places, most of the time, there’s no major problems. However, we should know what the potential troubles might be. Some disasters, like a volcanic eruptions, are rare, but they have the potential for high death tolls. Other calamities can be dealt with. For example, a friend of mine lives in an earthquake area. His house is well stocked with supples and his vehicles have huge bug out bags. He’s weighed the pros and cons of staying in the area. Job and family obligations keep him there, but he’s done what he can to mitigate the risk.

Keep in mind that some things are too big to prepare for. All one can do is to be somewhere else. All I’m suggesting is that people keep they eyes out for warning signs of big trouble and then act accordingly.

Don’t get caught in Pompeii when the volcano blows.

-Sixbears