Clearing

There is a period of time, during and after travel, where I find my habits and mental patterns change. There’s a lot of research that shows habits are strongly tied to place, so it’s unsurprising that after returning home I can already feel my thoughts slipping back to how they were beforehand. This will be accentuated when I return to work, and otherwise resume all the usual maintenance of life.

This blog has always been primarily a series of lessons from me to myself, and so I want to write down a few of the changes in my mind that I’d like to carry over or preserve going forward.

Perhaps it’s the nature of being on a cruise ship that makes spurious concerns vanish, as cooking and cleaning are completely taken care of for you, and you can focus purely on experience. In everyday life, I’m context switching constantly, jumping from one thing to another. I found during my holiday that I was able to loosen my mind, not be so tightly wound, and able to focus on one thing for a long period of time. I didn’t feel the urge to flick from concern to concern. This removal from distractions also really helped me think about life from high above, a feature of travel that I’ve talked about before on this blog. I would really like to maintain this feeling, if possible, or achieve it more easily, and I want to write down some of the factors that contributed.

No social media

Even though I had internet access and could potentially be on social media, I found my use went down to almost zero. A couple of things influenced this: 

1. My subscription to the app I use for Reddit expired, and I didn’t bother to renew it.
2. I started reading a humongously long web serial, and that completely replaced any desire to scroll.

Social media greatly accentuates the feeling of constantly switching that I described above, the jumbled mind. By removing it, I both helped clear my head and gave myself time to read something longform, extending my attention span and letting me do something I actively enjoy, as opposed to the passive timewasting that social media generally is.

The key to preserving this one is twofold:

1. Uninstall social media apps, or limit their use.
2. Always be reading, or playing a game.

The combination of these two steps will replace the easiest outlet for the urge of “scroll through my phone” with something more enjoyable. If, when I undoubtedly turn to my phone for some distraction, the next chapter of whatever I’m reading is right there, or a proper game is available, then I’ll go for that instead of opening up Instagram.

No news

I don’t make a habit of following the news in general, but during my workday I check up on tech news sites in case something relevant pops up, and I read video game news because it interests me. This falls into the same bucket as social media if left unlimited by shortening attention span and increasing context switching, and it also serves as a form of procrastination for me. This one is harder to dispense with, because it’s not a matter of uninstalling a couple of apps on my phone – all I have to do is browse the internet, which is always available.

Being honest with myself, I don’t think I’m going to be able to maintain this one – it’s just too easy and too available and it serves as a great outlet for a 5 minute break during the workday. I’d sure love it if it was possible, and perhaps I’ll experiment with some site blockers. We’ll see what happens.

Far fewer possessions

Nothing makes me realise just how stuffed with unnecessary things my home is than leaving it and living out of a bag for a while. Of course, some of that is the nature of travel: eg on a cruise ship like I was, you don’t need a kitchen or anything for food preparation, or any cleaning supplies, because it’s all done for you. Nevertheless, with a suitcase full of clothes, a bag of toiletries, and a phone charger, you can go and do an enormous amount without needing much else. 

This isn’t necessarily something that needs to be “solved” per se, especially because I live with a partner who wouldn’t appreciate me declaring us a minimalist state and throwing all her things out. One day, I’d like to explore this further.

No work 

It seems obvious to say, but not having to work for a couple weeks really helps the brain decompress. Every time I travel I get the feeling that this is one of life’s great purposes, one of the worthiest reasons for being and living. Without needing to toil for survival every day, I can think about deeper things.

Counterintuitively, towards the end of 2-3 week holidays, I often find myself beginning to want the comfort of a familiar place and to stay in one spot for a while. 

I also find that I start to get ideas. 

Ideas and motivation for personal projects, things that I’d like to explore and accomplish, things that well up from deep inside me when given time and space to do so.

I would love to find out what I could do if given time and space to actually explore and accomplish those things. I would love to find out what boredom brings out from within me – when the frantic cycle of working for survival day to day is removed, what would I learn about myself? What would I do? Would I do the things I expect – read, write, play and make games? Or would I find that when not pressed by human societal constructs to work, other interests would wake up?

I graduated from university in 2014, and I started working as a software engineer in 2015. I saved and bought a house a few years later. I never had a gap year, never took an extended holiday, never took more than a few weeks at a time away from the default, expected life path. 2024 is the beginning of my tenth year of working as a professional. For years I’ve wanted to devote myself to telling stories, in both written form and others. The time is approaching when I feel I will benefit extremely from taking extended time away from software development, to spend time with and to discover myself and the world.