6 Ways To Keep Your Travel Spirit Alive After Returning From a Trip Around The World
Unless you’re a full-time traveler constantly on-the-go there is always the moment you return home or settle in one location for a while after a whirlwind of adventures.
Usually there’s the refreshing sense of home – your favorite restaurants, the grocery store, catching up with friends, and the familiarity of your own shower and bed.
Trips to Trader Joe’s, Starbucks for iced coffee, and brunch with friends or family is always in store when I come home after a longer trip!
Once you’ve had a moment to catch up on sleep at odd hours of the day #gottalovejetlag you look through photos from your trip and that pang in your stomach has you dreaming of being back out there again. Out in the world.
Whether you’re in between trips or came home without plans for your next venture abroad, here are six ways to keep your travel spirit alive.
1. Let your creativity and wanderlust flow
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While you process your memories and adjust to being back home, let your creativity flow.
Start a travel blog, Instagram feed, put together any video clips you took and make a YouTube video, or write an article for Medium recounting the lessons you learned.
You could also take your digital travel memories and make them into something physical, like an old school scrapbook or another DIY project to showcase travel photos, postcards, ticket stubs, and the like.
2. Plan your next trip
Because we all know that once the travel bug bites, you’re bitten for life.
Which region of the world would you like to see for the first time? Are there any places you’d like to return to?
3. Make that next trip more doable through travel hacking
Find some of my travel hacks here!
If you’re from the US, start getting into travel hacking if you haven’t already. Seriously.
Travel hacking is the strategic usage of credit card sign up bonuses to earn points for free or super cheap flights.
Many US-based credit cards partner with airlines/airline alliances, hotel chains, or have other travel perks and they come with major bonus points just for signing up and meeting the minimum spend requirement in a certain time frame.
With two credit cards and only regular spending, I’ve earned close to 120,000 points that can be used for up to 3-4 international long-haul flights without doing any spending out of the ordinary.
Now my next trip – with all or a majority of flight expenses out of the way – doesn’t seem so out of reach!
This is a huge subject, so I recommend Google searching “travel hacking” for more information. Put these points toward your next trip abroad!
4. Help your friends plan trips to places you’ve been
Now that you’ve been out and about traveling, chances are you’ve learned a thing or two about different places and the art of travel itself.
Answer questions for your friends about the cool places to go in different cities, if certain tourist attractions are overrated or not.
It’s fun helping other people plan an awesome trip and see them get excited about their travels!
5. Connect with other travelers in online communities
You may realize when you get back home that your friends aren’t as excited about or obsessed with traveling as you are.
Reading travel blogs, watching travel YouTube videos, and engaging with people in travel-related Facebook groups can help you find a travel community back home.
It’s refreshing to find people who “get” you and your love for travel.
6. Incorporate travel into your career or side hustle
If you’re looking for a job upon returning, look for one that you can incorporate travel into.
Working full-time at a non-travel job doesn’t mean you have to give up travel completely – there are plenty of short-term travel (or work + travel) opportunities available if you get a non-travel job.
Also, start a side hustle: I recommend doing something online, such as building an online business through social media or blogging, that can potentially turn into a full-time gig for you.
That way, if you’re able to make your online venture profitable, you can be a digital nomad if you want and travel whenever as long as you can keep up with your work. (Keep in mind this typically takes a LONG time and a LOT of work to build up to, which is why I recommend doing it as a side hustle first).
No matter when you return from travel or for how long, our excitement for travel will never fade. Keep your spirit alive between trips – stay awesome and travel on!
About Ally
Ally helps millennials find unique and creative ways to travel – and turn travel into a career – at goseekexplore.com. She has traveled, lived, or worked in 17 countries across Asia, Europe and North America. Check out her free email course on getting paid to travel.
