Kat Beyond Borders

When I recently googled “challenges of traveling and not being home,” the results included common dangers of traveling such as getting lost, losing your phone, getting sick, not speaking the language, feeling lonely, and running out of money. Every single one of those things has happened to me, but that was not the intention of my internet search. I wanted to know if other people experienced the same guilt, challenges, and fears as I do—being a world traveler who spends less and less time at home with family and friends.

This is a conversation I continually have with my friends who have left home for college, jobs, or to move abroad in search of a better place for them, without looking back. Whether or not you consider yourself the “black sheep” of your family or friend group, there is something very ostracizing about catching the travel bug and pursuing this passion. It manifests as a lot of “missing”: missing baby showers, weddings, engagements, first steps, hospital stays, farmers market Saturdays, bike rides with your dad, shopping trips with your mom, or brewery dates with old friends. Missing these events and these people—and them missing you too—creates a a very real loneliness. Beyond the obvious constraints of time and money, the most cited excuse among my friends for not traveling as much as they want is the fear of “missing out.” In my day job, experienced staff have been traveling for work for years, often at times that upset their families and friends. When I recently declined a work trip, one of my mentors said “good for you,” reflecting on the guilt she feels from missing birthdays and life events in her own past, and how she wishes she had made different decisions when she was younger.

I recently developed a dashboard for myself to visualize data on what I desperately want to be my greatest achievement: my travels. When I see highlighted in fancy charts and graphs that I spent 130 days traveling in 2017, I can’t help but think about the half of my junior year of college that I missed while abroad, including the engagement party for my roommate. I reflect on the calls and messages I missed or could have shared with my sister during those 123 hours on a plane in 2022, or the extra days during the holidays I could have spent at home instead of taking 25 additional flights in December for my next great adventure. I look at the 199 flights I purchased in the last decade and wince, knowing that the money could have been saved for a down payment on a house to be closer to my nephew. So, what do I do with these feelings?

I write this all with the very real, pressing, and acute awareness that I am immensely privileged to 1) travel and 2) feel bad about my traveling. Some people never even get the chance to leave their home state, while others are forced to flee their home country. Here I am, a woman on the internet complaining that I can’t have it all. My career in international development further complicates things by confronting the consequences of unsustainable travel, wealth disparities, gentrification, and inequities in opportunity. An old roommate, also in my field, once told me her family was always exasperated when she said she was traveling again. “Wow, must be nice to be you,” “Are you EVER home?” and “It’s annoying that you flaunt it all over social media” are phrases I’ve also heard repeatedly, along with subtle jabs from distant relatives and acquaintances about “settling down” or “putting down roots like a grown-up.” The overarching narrative suggests that I am running away from adult responsibilities by traveling, a notion I have challenged extensively in my personal growth journey.

So, you may be wondering, “Then what do we even do, Kat? Where do we go from here?”

To that, I say I have no idea. I’ll distract myself by thinking maybe I will figure it out by the time I am thirty, but by then, I know I will be deeper into my bucket list, and my friends will be deeper into their marriages, pregnancies, and careers. The rise of social media travel influencers has skewed our expectations of travel while simultaneously presenting to the public a false narrative of what our lives are like. This feeds into the distance I feel between myself and those who have not chosen this lifestyle, bouncing from city to city and country to country, making appearances at select holidays and big events. For now, I keep my Google Flights tab open, thoughtfully considering how I want to spend my life, and dealing with the emotions of guilt, shame, fear, and sadness that come with it. Sometimes I focus on what I would say to myself on my deathbed (dramatic, I know). As of right now, I want to say that I did it—that I pursued the adventures, the heartbreaks, the scary moments that required courage, the constant learning, the mistakes, the personal growth, and that I took the hard path that brought me to the ends of the Earth, eventually finding my own version of home.