[sloaken]

I had a similar dilemma when I was your age. Mine was burn out / bored driven.

Someone asked me what would I regret not doing at the end of my life. When ever that would be. As is common wisdom we regret what we do not do, not what we choose to do.

So I quite my job and road a bicycle up the east coast for 6 weeks. Followed a year later w NZ and Australia. Then the UK ....

[yjhoney]

I look back and my traveling days and I think I'd be better off doing something else during that period.

It seems like traveling and adventuring has been glamorized by the media and people around me a bit much and I caught the bug.

Looking back, I would have preferred to spend more time at local gardens, participated more in neighborhood events, helped out local community more and got to know my neighbors better. These activities to build a deeper emotional connection with people around me would have helped my mental health tremendously back then.

I'm not saying I regret traveling, I'm saying that the main reason why I took time to explore the world primarily because of the glamor of it and me trying to chase the next crazy adventure, all the while contributing to global warming in my wake. Traveling is not for everyone and I hope fewer people give out a blanket `travel the world` prescription and more people are willing to admit that maybe traveling didn't do shit for their growth.

[cyberpunk]

Don't you think that if you'd have done all those things instead you'd probably be saying now that you'd wish you'd gone travelling? ;)

Do both!

[yjhoney]

I know that's how the saying goes, but I don't think I would be saying now that I'd wish I had gone traveling if I had not done it. I'm pretty such I would not be wishing for traveling if I'm at the same state of happiness as I am now, and I could have reached the same level of happiness in life if I did not travel (possibly even earlier).

Traveling objectively made me worse off than if I had not done it.