Whether you’ve been travelling for a few weeks, for several months, or have taken a full year or longer epic gap year, coming home to reality can be tough. You may have to live back home with your parents, find a job and you’ll probably be short on cash.
Coming back home can be great at first. You realised how much you’ve missed your bed, a proper shower and a home-cooked meal and you enjoy regaling friends and family with your adventures. However, it’s not surprising that despondency can soon start to appear given all the freedoms you had while you were travelling. Being able to make a spur of the moment trip to another country or hopping on a boat and sailing to an island are all a distant memory as work or financial commitments take centre stage.
Although it can be difficult to adjust, it’s important to remember why you went travelling in the first place. Perhaps it was to enrich your life with new experiences, meet new people or gain independence. Think about whether you achieved those things – the chances are you did.
Coming home as a more open-minded person with new life experiences under your belt can definitely be used in a positive way when you return home. Maybe you will have a job interview and the thing that makes you stand out from other candidates is the voluntary work you did in Cambodia or the fact that you solo-travelled your way around South America.
Maybe you’ll find a way to incorporate travelling into your job. You could become a professional travel blogger or hotel reviewer. There are loads of jobs out there that require travel.
Even if you find a job in your hometown, don’t resign yourself to the fact you’ll never get the chance to travel again. The chances are you made loads of friends while you were travelling. Just think how many countries you’ll have a free bed to sleep in should you decide to go away again!
Plus, lots of companies are quite amenable to the idea of people taking ‘gap-years’ later in life, with the security of being able to return to their job when they get back.
Whatever happens, don’t let the feeling of retuning to reality get you down. People who travel have very few regrets and heaps of happy memories. If all else fails, just start planning your next trip!