What unfamiliar places do to us

We usually visit foreign places to go on holiday. To switch off, to forget the worries at home for a few days. And it works. The first days feel like a different life.

I know that feeling well. Back home I still talk about the trip for the first one, two, maybe three days. The food, the light, the sea, all of it. Then something quiet happens. Everyday life has caught up with me again. The emails, the list that is waiting again. And the recovery effect quietly fades without me being able to say exactly when.

What stays is the longing for the next time. For the next holiday that is supposed to set things right again.

At some point I noticed what the ratio actually looks like.

We live for 30 days of holiday and almost forget the other 335.

Why it will not let me go

For a long time I took this for granted. That is just how it goes. You work through the year, and the holiday is the reward. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether this split really fits. I plan half my year around the few weeks in which I truly switch off. And the rest often just runs alongside.

Travelling itself is not the problem, quite the opposite. What is interesting is what it reveals about the rest. If a place far away makes me feel that alive, then it is worth asking how much of that feeling could fit into the other 335 days too.

What I take from it

I do not have a finished answer. Maybe it is not about more holiday, but about an ordinary day feeling like my life too, and not just like waiting for the next trip. I only know that I no longer want to see the 335 days as nothing more than a pause between two journeys.