Observations While Traveling
- There is a side to my personality that is extremely grating, I am just very rarely informed of it and can forget it exists.[1]
- Another thing that I often forget: How much my perspective on life has been shaped (warped?) by philosophy, sociology and systems thinking. It makes me alien in some ways. Basic assumptions and explanations (and what I find interesting) for why things are the way they are, are quite often different from common sense. Or are only "joining common sense" by mobilizing a whole shadow army of extra explanations and assumptions in my head. This mostly works at certain speeds in controlled environments, but can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts when I have to act quickly, as the facade disintegrates.[2]
- My most toxic trait is that on a deep level I find humans and their passions, emotions and hang-ups deeply suspect. I find their longing for entanglement not really endearing. And at the same time, I long for deep connectedness and belonging. In the end, I want to be loved without the leg work and negotiations on my part. I find this very ugly about me in some ways, and just profanely "modern" in another.
- Traveling, understood as an activity of going somewhere without responsibilities, can be fun.[3]
- Traveling is a form of betting. And you can get addicted to it.
- Non-solo traveling is best done as a form of service: A good traveling companion seems to be part sin-eater and part morale officer.[4]
- Most traveling has been enjoyable in part because it was challenging: It makes me more aware of who I am and what I value. It also makes me aware of how little I know about me and others and the world at large. And how all of that is good and bad, depending on the context.[5]
- I need to really "get out" at least once every year.
- In a relationship: Traveling is a powerful form of myth making: And myth making is a powerful form of constructing a positive future.[6]
- My identity is in extreme flux while traveling, as are the relationships through which I construct my identity. Just as facts have to be stabilized by mobilizing the right actors and this stabilization being a somewhat precarious process that involves more than just the actor (taken as the subject) constructing a given fact (taken as the object). While traveling, I have to deal with the fact that fewer actors are being mobilized by me.[7] Instead, I'm the one being mobilized. And that means that I can't guarantee the same identity to my loved ones or myself: I tend to be more volatile and less predictable, even to myself.[8]
- NEW (2025-09-14): The idea of being free to do (or not do) things and the idea of meeting family and/or friends are at odds with each other.
- NEW (2025-09-14): Revisiting places you know necessarily reminds you of the limited time you have. This makes me grateful and makes me realize that I am an expression of the actor-network that makes me me.
- NEW (2025-09-14): There is a moment where the vacation's meaning "flips" and it becomes about anticipating coming back into my own life and change it or fix it in some way, instead of leaving.
My assumption is: I am rarely informed, because I am also extremely self-observant and self-critical ...and wordy if this part of my personality gets triggered. Ain't nobody got time for that. ↩︎
I like to think that I offer a "compatibility layer" around all this more complicated aspect to my worldview. ↩︎
I have yet to actually experience a whole vacation or at least a substantial portion of it that fits this description, if I'm honest. ↩︎
Another way to put this: Traveling is easier if you have the right kind of bad memory. ↩︎
The important part, in other words, is how it makes me aware of the context. What the hell is water and all that. ↩︎
See An Updated Manifest Destiny - Or How Myth Making Might Intentionally Change The World After All (Comment on Andrew Dana Hudson's "Space is Dead. Why Do We Keep Writing About It?"). ↩︎
I have a hard time gauging if this means more or less actors need to pass through me while I'm on vacation, I suspect it's more. ↩︎
In some ways the opposite is true: I am reduced to my "traveler identity", as opposed to my "auto-anthropological identity", which is much less about me constructing the me that I'm most interested in and more about me constructing a simplified version of me that conforms to a whole bunch of expectations - and also failing frequently to do so as the pressure rises and getting increasingly fed up attempting it as the days go on. ↩︎
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