Build a Life You Don’t Want to Escape From

I’m sitting in a café in Hoi An, facing a rice paddy. I just bought a 40-cent Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk. It’s a scorching 40 degrees outside with the humidity, but I’m tucked inside an air-conditioned room.

I love traveling. I love trying new foods, meeting people from different cultures, seeing how they dress and live.

But I also love my life in New York. I miss the creature comforts, the routine. I miss my friends. I miss pulling off fits in Williamsburg.

In Western culture, we romanticize travel. We plan elaborate vacations around our two weeks of PTO and look forward to them all year. It becomes a form of escapism.

And while this trip has been amazing, travel can get tiring. The novelty wears off. And sometimes, the existential dread creeps in too. Travel is fun but it isn’t fulfilling.

I meet a lot of people while traveling who feel stuck in limbo. They’re “finding themselves.” And while that’s fair, travel is a great time for self-reflection, many seem to use it as a form of escapism. They distract themselves by constantly meeting new people, partying, chasing pleasure, anything to avoid facing the bigger questions in life.

Instead of traveling to escape, build a life you don’t want to escape from.