When Travel Stops Being Romantic and Starts Being Real

There is a clear distinction between being on vacation and traveling nomadically. Most people have a hard time differentiating between the two simply because they have never experienced this kind of life. It’s a life I accidentally embarked on two and a half years ago.

Because of that, many people romanticize my life. Assumptions are made. Envy shows up in the form of reactions to short clips and Instagram stories. And honestly—can I blame them? Maybe partially. But what feels more important to name is how easy it is to romanticize anyone else’s life when we’re only seeing fragments of it.

Is it my responsibility to share my life wholeheartedly online—the challenges, the obstacles, and everything in between—while moving through the world in this way? In short, no. It isn’t. And it’s also no one’s business.

But here, in this space, I do want to share something real. Something honest. Something that lives underneath the highlight reels. I want to talk about when travel stops being romantic and starts being real.

There are a lot of variables that bring this “realness” to the surface: finances, constant solitude, culture shock, missing familiarity, and the nonstop decision-making that comes with navigating new places over and over again. Sometimes it’s waking up in a beautiful place and still feeling tired. Sometimes it’s realizing there is no one to lean on in the small moments. Sometimes it’s sitting with uncertainty longer than feels comfortable—without a clear plan, without a safety net, without guarantees.

Most people travel on vacation. They book one place. They stay put. It’s an escape from their everyday lives—lives that often revolve around a 9–5, deeply embedded routines, and moving through the world on autopilot. When they travel, the environment changes and suddenly everything feels exciting: wow places, wow food, wow moments, all carefully packed into a short window before returning home.

That version of travel exists in a “wow” space. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But my experience of travel isn’t rooted in escape. It isn’t romantic. It’s raw. It’s vulnerable. It’s about acclimating rather than escaping—figuring out how to carry my foundational lifestyle into entirely new environments. It’s about stretching the money I have left, trusting that new opportunities will show up, and believing that I won’t always be living in survival mode. It’s about making sense of each day without the structure most people rely on.

There are moments when the romance disappears completely—when travel looks less like freedom and more like responsibility. When the question isn’t “what’s next?” but “how do I stay grounded here?” And yet, this version of travel has shaped me in ways no vacation ever could.

The difference between the two is simple: one creates temporary experiences, while the other becomes a catalyst for lasting growth. One offers relief. The other demands presence.

And to be clear, I’m not saying vacations aren’t valuable. They are. What I am saying is this: what if we spent more time paying attention to what we’re trying to escape from in our everyday lives? What if the goal wasn’t to run from reality, but to build a life we actually want to live—one that doesn’t require constant escape?

Maybe then, we’d stop romanticizing other people’s lives. Maybe we’d become more present with our own.

With love,
Zen