hey techlate here and welcome back to
another episode
today i thought i would talk about a
topic near and dear to my heart and it
is about why i stopped traveling
we are drinking instant coffee today
oh that's fun
now one of the great things about being
a software engineer is that you can work
remotely
and that gives you the ability to travel
a lot like you can be traveling all the
time and working on your own little
projects
for years which is something that i had
done
and if you've seen some of my older
videos you know that i've talked about
this before
and i've even mentioned about how to do
it but i haven't really talked about why
you want to do it and about my
reflections about that time
and
you know the reality is that it may not
be as fantastic as you might imagine it
to be don't get me wrong it is great but
i want to talk a little bit about
some of the things the subtle things
that you may not think about and the
first point to know is that i'm not sure
if i was ever really a traveler at heart
even though i've
done quite a number of trips in the past
and you know i've spent months living in
other countries but one of the first
things to note here is that the
destination that you choose is going to
matter it took me
months for example to decide to go into
the middle of utah to just look at rocks
right and there are national parks at
utah the arches national park grand
circle canyons lots of rocks and cool
rock formations i had to essentially
disappear off of the face of the earth
for three weeks to do that trip
and
the thing is for any young person
ambition stands in your way you know
whenever you take a trip you kind of
disappear and you put one of two things
on hold and maybe both you may put your
career on hold as you do your trip
and you may also put your dating life on
hold and for a young person both of
these are really top of mind you know
these are two things that are going to
craft and decide your future so
the first thing is a lot of people who
may just quit their jobs and decide to
go travel i think that's one of the
worst things to really do because as
you're traveling you're going to be
really stressed out
and just anxious about
feeling guilty like
shouldn't i be working now all my peers
i see they're progressing their careers
they're all getting forward and yet i'm
just
messing around here traveling around
watching other people live out their
lives and yet my own life is not
progressing i'm just watching you
succeed watching you fail watching you
try watching you move i'm just spending
a ton of money and my own time just
watching that i'm not progressing my
life at all
well
as a software engineer and if you can
find your own project to work on then
you can at least solve this career
aspect
you know you may not be advancing your
corporate career so much but if you have
a pretty neat project idea that you want
to pursue for a few months then sure
yeah i can justify that to myself and i
feel i don't feel guilty at least about
working one way to get around the guilt
about career is if you're switching jobs
you know you may be able to give
yourself a month or two in between jobs
and that's actually a really great time
to travel because
you can be doing that guilt-free so that
when you're doing your trip you can just
relax and just focus on the trip you
don't have to be trying to send out your
resumes
however
there's also that dating aspect and if i
were to just say disappear to south
america
for
a few months and work remotely from
there
you know
that would also limit the group of
people that i would be dating and
it might be neat actually to have met
some really sexy brazilian women for
example but i don't speak the language
and i don't understand the culture and
i'm not sure we would have
necessarily all that much in common i
don't know
maybe we would
but
just to satisfy my own sense of guilt i
might pick travel locations that would
be also good for dating and that really
limited the number of choices i could go
to like i may not choose third world
countries exotic locations even places
like say hawaii or touristy destinations
because you know that everybody you meet
there they're just gonna be random
tourists
um not really locals not really normal
people
and
essentially that meant that i had to
just pick locations like say
new york
parts of canada maybe tokyo you know
these sorts of places would be areas
that i would mostly hang around at
as my home base and then from there i
might take occasional day trips here and
there out and about
but from that sense of perspective i
think you could say that maybe i never
really did
travel in that sense you know i would
only pick areas that i felt could still
progress my sense of either career or
dating life and that helped me back i
think like it would have been so much
fun to just say i don't care about
dating
and just go get lost on like a three
month trek through south america you
know that would have been maybe
interesting
but generally if you can get to this
level of say success you're going to be
pretty ambitious and you're not going to
be want to be falling behind in terms of
your personal life or your professional
life the other thing i'll note here is
for a long time i had
embraced the idea of a world citizen
somebody who could just be traveling
around all the time
and i would just try to live out of a
suitcase and my suitcase would be all
set up
everything i owned would fit inside this
one suitcase and
i would learn to live an extremely
mobile life but over time you soon
realize
humans were not meant to live out of a
suitcase
it really limits you i think you know
like a lot of hobbies need a lot of
equipment right life is just so much
more comfortable and richer when you're
able to have a lot of stuff
and once you have like a baby for
example you'll see that kids need so
much random stuff and equipment and
like
bathtubs and baby seats and clothing and
blankets and crib and all sorts of
equipment and just doesn't really work
out anymore like the whole
image of being able to live with just a
backpack and being a world citizen and
traveling around with full mobility that
illusion just ceases as soon as you find
like maybe you need to have a family it
works fine if you're just like a single
person but even then your options are
going to be limited and the funny thing
is
you go around maybe you're trying to
date somebody once you actually meet
somebody
then
you got to support this person too when
you go traveling around and then all the
costs shoot up right like costs become
maybe twice as expensive because then
you have to just start getting twice the
number of food for everybody twice the
trading tickets twice the airplane
tickets twice everything and it's all
gonna be supported by yourself and
further this other person who's going
around with you they're going to be
sustaining the same amount of career
risk
that you are
you know it may include two people
quitting their jobs to go traveling
around
it's just pretty risky to be doing that
sort of thing unless you know that
you've really got things down and even
the personal risk right like in case
things don't work out
you're pretty much stuck with that
person both people are heavily invested
already in this trip and their lifestyle
and you know once these two people have
a kid then
traveling is all off so
you know one of the best times to travel
maybe when you've met this other person
at that time for me it was kind of like
a honeymoon phase and i traveled a lot
with my wife now and we went to all
sorts of places and that was a good time
but i would say that things were just
more expensive and
we had to stay at nicer hotels and
things
getting out and about just took longer
because the other person may take time
to prepare themselves
you just have to wait around for other
people more often but at the same time
traveling with a buddy is really useful
for example if you're at the airport
someone can be watching your stuff while
you go to the bathroom someone can wait
in line for train tickets while the
other person is watching the luggage
you know just really helps to have a
second person traveling alone gets you a
lot of freedom and some of the best
times i've had was like when i was
traveling alone in europe
going around hostels backpacking around
riding trains
full freedom so much fun
at the same time it's a little bit more
dangerous too because you could lose
directions you could lose stuff and you
don't have like a second backup or
somebody around there to help you figure
things out
without second person you also don't get
to share memories but it's actually not
too much of a problem because you meet a
lot of people along the way in hostels
and it's actually still pretty fun so i
had spent some time working out of
london and hawaii as well and
those were not really that fun in fact
after
working remotely in london working on
projects i kind of told myself i never
really want to do that again where i'm
just working and trying to vacation
because
most of the time i found that i was just
working
staring at the computer in a remote cafe
in the starbucks cafe pretty much i was
not exploring the city i was not
sightseeing
i had learned nothing really about the
environment i was in i was just in the
starbucks the whole time
it was mostly stressful it wasn't really
fun hard to find internet
and also i might mention that when
you're out working remotely
you don't have a budget you don't give
that to yourself you know in normal
daily life you don't go around spending
hundreds of dollars a day on hotels on
sightseeing on good food you just go
around eating fast food like mcdonald's
or something like that and you try to
keep costs down like normal and so when
you go out working remotely with a
budget like that
you don't really get to enjoy much and
then when you compare that to people who
actually go out on a two-week vacation
and they splurge
and they're going out to all the good
dining restaurants they're using their
time
highly effectively
things are expensive and their costs
explode but you see them going on all
the attractions going to other day trips
just spending tons of money on all this
stuff but they're in and they're out in
two weeks or even one week and they do
everything they've seen everything and
within that short amount of time they've
already done more than i've done in say
three months of living in a certain
location and you know that brings me to
one realization i have which is that
there's two types of travel right
there's the long-term backpacking travel
which most young people are fantasizing
about you know you go backpacking really
cheap on the shoestring budget staying
in hostels
and that's fine that's great and gives
you a sense of the general location
around you but there's some certain
trips that just cannot be done even on a
medium budget you know i'm talking about
like
a ten thousand dollar african safari
you know a trip to antarctica where
you're on a cruise ship
you know maybe spending a week in a
bungalow in tahiti you know some of
these trips are not meant for people who
travel and work remotely some of these
trips are meant for people who work a
stable career and they only travel like
twice a year or something like that and
during that time they splurge
but it's okay because they've been
earning a stable salary the rest of the
year and that makes it all worthwhile
and those types of trips you know you
need like a stable job for something
like that and i might also include
certain other trips that just happen to
require a lot of equipment and planning
and preparation you know something like
say
hiking to mount everest base camp you
know you're not gonna be doing that
while you're happening to be backpacking
around
asia right like you're gonna want
equipment you're gonna want a few months
preparation and even though it might not
necessarily break the bank for you
you're going to want to at least have
access to equipment maybe even a gym
such that you can prepare yourself so
that when you actually do the trip
you're going to have a good time
and so what i'm saying is certain trips
just don't really work out if you're
backpacking around remotely some of them
only work out if you are actually not
traveling around full time when you're
actually
sitting in a job most of the time
you know based on what i have seen of
the world a lot of it does seem
globalized
all the same big brands the same foods
the same stores
you know it's really funny that no
matter which city you go to in the world
the best thing that you can eat there is
a prime rib steak and that's like the
best thing that any city in the world
has to offer you you go anywhere it's
just like steak yeah that's that's the
best
and it's funny like i don't even like
steak and you know the best thing you
can buy
probably go to louis vuitton pick up a
bag they got one in every single major
city and that's what everybody in the
world is craving after some louis
vuitton bag or something like that
you know it's just pretty boring like i
thought when i went to iceland
there would be something else something
interesting but when i went there
everybody was still interested in the
same stuff listening to the same
american music and interested in the
same big brands eating the same food
that's not to say that there's nothing
more left to explore but does make the
world a little bit more boring and
especially these days with the internet
and like
sites like google earth you can already
explore much of the world and watch
youtube videos of places
it's almost false to say that you want
to travel for the purpose of learning
because if you really wanted to learn
you would just read a wikipedia page
about the place you want to go read a
book or watch a video you're going to be
learning a lot more that way so
if your goal is you want to
learn something
that's not really a great reason to
travel you gotta find another reason for
that
you know i would say one good reason
actually might be that it helps you open
your mind perhaps right when you
experience different cultures meet
different types of people in all walks
of life with different
standards of living different ways of
thinking different like especially the
whole idea of a different culture where
values are different
you know people just value different
things in life and think differently i
think that can help open up your mind a
bit
and just seeing that there could be
language barriers cultures where some
people are more sensitive to certain
things and other cultures where people
aren't so sensitive i think can just
help you appreciate that over time i had
just gotten tired of watching other
people live out their lives and
i would always been observing people and
i soon began calling myself
the observer
um i was the observer and i would always
just be watching people and especially
since i was into photography i had my
camera i would always be watching other
people live out their lives
uh it was never me though in the action
never me in the center it was always
somebody else
doing the fun stuff i also mentioned
that traveling is
surprisingly expensive i used to
buy into the idea that experiences are
worth more than things
and so i just would not hesitate to buy
experiences but
when you really start to think about it
it's pretty expensive you know like
if you wanted like a playstation 4 with
a high-end hd tv you know that might run
you a thousand bucks
you know a thousand bucks might just be
the beginning of your trip it might just
get you a single airplane ticket and
that's it doesn't include the hotels
doesn't include food
transportation like train tickets
attractions doesn't include any of that
that's just the first step and yet if
you were to just sit at home
and spend that money on like your home
entertainment system that home
entertainment system is going to last
you
like
five years or something probably
like even if you were to do like a
staycation
you could probably go out to some of the
best restaurants in your city
and
you know you would still come in
underpriced it's just that the art of
transporting a delicate and fragile
human body
thousands of miles while keeping that
human body well fed and warmed
and
safe
it's extremely expensive you know it's
like that's the cost of shipping a human
body and then keeping it preserved in a
certain place
you know a lot of the
portions of traveling is just in the
logistics of traveling you know it's
like hours of riding airplanes trains
looking at maps going from place to
place then you gotta stay in the hotel
and then the actual time where you're
actually doing something experiencing a
culture or going to an attraction or
something like that
it's not that much actually at times i
couldn't really find a good
justification to travel
but
didn't really want to sit at home you
know i would browse the dating websites
and it would always be the same old
faces and i had already you know
messaged these people you know i had
exhausted that whole dating pool so i
needed to get around to a different city
traveling was just the least bad choice
of a set of bad choices that i had
that's what it was like for me but i
would say that one thing that
was interesting for me to think about
and maybe that kept me going was the
overall story that i was writing for
myself you know even if i didn't
necessarily want to travel
it was the idea that
i would have a hell of a story
you know i would be able to tell other
people
this is what i had done this is the
things i had done and so it wasn't just
the simple trips that i would be doing
like maybe i didn't really want to go to
utah you know maybe i didn't even really
want to go to hawaii
but it was the whole story as a whole
where i might be able to say well this
was the story of my life where i went to
this many number of different countries
and cities and i have been traveling a
lot when you take the whole thing
together as a whole and you commit
yourself to writing a story where you
craft yourself
this amazing life
that
may not have been very fun to live but
when you look back on it as a whole
it's quite interesting and you would say
to yourself well that was pretty cool i
am glad i lived a life like that
then
as a whole then that may become
interesting to do
and it's going to take a lot of
dedication and most people just aren't
going to want to be doing this type of
thing it's crazy the sacrifice is huge
you know you give up a lot of the
standard the life that normal people
live
and you commit yourself to a life where
there is no routine
and you believe in that
overall it may be fair to say that
i've lost my edge
it would have been interesting to see
what would have happened if i had never
gotten married never had a kid
maybe i would have just lived this crazy
life where i would just be traveling all
over the place visiting every country or
something like that
maybe not
you know i wasn't even doing that in the
first place maybe i would have just been
traveling around
major global cities trying to date
people until i eventually got to the
same path that i'm on now
but i'm going to leave
this crazy path for somebody else to
walk on and see if it's truly worthwhile
or not
let me know what you guys think in the
comments below if you liked the video
give it a like and subscribe and i'll
see you next time
bye