Confessions of a Travel Addict
not all who wander are lost, but I may be
My name is Blake, and I have a problem.
I cannot stop traveling.
This was the past six months.
If Europe still had internal border controls, here are the passport stamps I would have racked up:
Switzerland - Spain - Portugal - Netherlands - UK - Ireland - UK - Austria - Greece - Turkey - France - Austria - Germany - Netherlands - Belgium - France - Italy - Switzerland - Austria.
Am I on a whirlwind tour? An adult gap year? A last hurrah?
Nope. This is normal.
Should this scare me?
Some of this time was work: six weeks voyaging across Greece and Turkey (with 13 teenagers in tow), plus a week and a half in Brussels (with 17 young adults).
Four weeks were spent in one place (Valencia), sharing a rental house with friends.
Of the remaining 14 weeks, I was in full-blown travel mode: living out of two carry-on sized bags, staying in one place for no more than a week, and criss-crossing the continent by train and touring bike.
I’ve got just two years to enjoy Europe as a legal resident: a big incentive to keep moving from one amazing dance weekend to the next, visiting friends (from dance / camps / couchsurfing) and the occasional family member along the way (like my mom and sister, who each came out to visit).
Staying with friends helps me afford this lifestyle. Beyond the month in Valencia (€575), I’ve hardly paid for housing in 2025.
The trains and flights and meals do add up; many are legitimate Unschool Adventures business expenses (which doesn’t make them free, just reduces my income tax).
But I can’t throw Europe under the bus. Because it’s not a phase.
Even back in the USA, I lived this way. Outside of a few half-year stints in South Lake Tahoe, California (my favorite mountain town), five months in New Zealand (because New Zealand), and a couple years in Asheville, North Carolina (for a long-term relationship), the map of my life has resembled the one above: bobbing, weaving, and bouncing across and between continents, an orgy of frenetic motion, a spitting image of digital nomadism—and one, big, fluttering, red flag, embroidered with the words: Why can’t this guy stop moving?
I’ve written before about the danger of becoming obsessed with travel, adventure, and wilderness.1 I believe I’m aware of the trade-offs I’m making in terms of maybe not having kids and sacrificing long-term security. Yet here I am, the cup already overflowing, still pouring wine into the goblet.
Why, why, why?
Maybe because short-term relationships are easier than long-term relationships. No time for bad habits to reveal themselves. No boredom or hard conversations. Just warm hellos, catch-ups, and goodbyes.
Maybe because travel represents courage, growth, and boldness. Because it symbolizes freedom, access, and privilege. Because it’s what so many people want more of, and I have so much of. Is this another form of status competition?
Maybe because I don’t like who I am when I’m stationary. A normal person without sexy stories. Someone who must witness the uglier, harder and more banal sides of life, who must confront the profound sameness, illness, and sadness of the world.
Maybe because it gives me purpose. Every animal species has its scouts and explorers. Even unicellular bacteria must migrate to survive. To travel is to have a goal, and I was indoctrinated early into goal-setting.
Maybe because I cannot stand to see the same thing every day. Unless it is a beautiful mountain range. But even then—even in the Lake Tahoes and New Zealands and Alps of the world—I eventually become saturated. To love something, I must long for it. It must feel out of reach. (“You liked me a lot more when I wasn’t available,” an ex-girlfriend once told me.) Immerse, retreat, long, repeat.
Now I’m slowing down a bit. I’m renting a furnished 1-bedroom apartment for the rest of the year. I’ll be cooking in the same kitchen, sleeping in the same bed, swimming in the same pool, hosting some of the same people who hosted me, and deepening my relationship to a single European city and country.
A certain degree of rootedness is necessary for mental health.
I’ll still travel, just not as frequently. There are still mountains to be climbed, dances to be danced, and friends to be visited. But I’ll be “home” more than away, and therefore living a bit more “normally” for the rest of 2025.
And it will not last.
Because I’m not settling down, just catching my breath.
Because I don’t think I want, need, or deserve a house of my own.
Because I may be fated to travel until death, disability, or disaster do me in.
Because my name is Blake, and I have a problem.
Normal is just a setting on the dryer. You are definitely an outlier, you just fall somewhere on the edges of a chart. I used to think you might be running from something (or someone), or maybe to something. But you do lead an honest and public self-examined life. So maybe not. If your lifestyle is suiting your needs—who are we to judge?
One of the things I tell parents who ask my advice about choosing an educational path for their children is to do what’s best for now. Stop thinking long term. Kids change. Life changes. It’s too daunting and unnecessary to choose THE one path. You may find the same. Someday you might fall in love with someone or someplace, and decide to stay, and it’ll be ok. Maybe even a welcome change. Give yourself permission to change your mind.
Good problems Blake, good ones! I admire you. We’ve had to stay put in Belgium longer than we planned - was aiming for 5 years but this year we hit 8 - next summer we move stateside for my husband’s job. This forced longevity has me in a sweet spot with local friendships and social life. Going through things with them side by side over the years: fallouts, making up, burnout, cancer, divorce, marriage, births, quitting jobs, quitting veganism, house hunting, homeschooling versus schooling…. Good and bad times, exciting and dull times. We’ll leave with mixed feelings but it’s interesting that this year has felt the fullest, almost makes me want to stay, which I thought I’d never reconsider.