Do I travel correctly?

Travelling is something a lot of people have started getting into these days. It could be for a vacation, visiting family, a business trip or who knows what not.

I spent an entire year in Paris, and one thing I realised was that you’ll never learn anything about any place if you just visit the tourist spots. I’m a weird breed. I do not enjoy museums, I don’t enjoy very touristy monuments and I definitely do not enjoy sitting in a touristy area in the midst of other tourists carrying huge DSLRs and trying to take pictures of almost everything.

Every time I travel with my parents, we always end up doing touristy things. This way we do see things around the city we are in but we never get to experience the culture of the city. We don’t get to experience the current interests or popular things going on in the city.

Earlier this year, I traveled to Amsterdam with a friend, and as soon as I stepped out of my bus, I knew I wasn’t going to see even one museum. Instead, I wanted to walk down the streets of Amsterdam and see what it was like being one of the locals. I wanted to walk into a place and buy a 2 euro slice of pizza for dinner after being exhausted. I wanted to ride a bicycle and see how it felt to be part of the crowd. That’s exactly what I did.

Four days in Amsterdam, instead of visiting museums and eating at fancy places, I walked around the city as if I was one of the locals. I rode a bicycle, walked or took the metro almost everywhere I went. Amsterdam is pretty small so I ended up walking a lot. I ate at small joints where food was the cheapest of all. I didn’t see what most people go to Amsterdam to see, instead I lived. I experienced their true culture. The smoking, the eating, the commuting.

It was good. It was different. I found out so much about the city in just four days that no one would have figured in a week if they just focused on doing all the touristy stuff.

 

So tell me, am I travelling correctly? Is there even a way to travel correctly?

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Is it okay to take a break?

Life is weird isn’t it? We are born, made to go to school, college and then work until a point where we just can’t do it anymore. Is that really how we should be living?

These days life moves so fast that we don’t even get time to breathe. It’s sad. It’s sad because sometime we just need a break and because of how messed up society is, we think that taking a break is wrong. Is it though? Is it really?

Is it wrong to take a year off school to just gather yourself and decide what you actually want to do? Is it wrong to take a couple of weeks or months off your job to decide if that’s what you really want to do? I don’t think so.

These days as soon as you’re done with high school you’re told to go to college. But hey, what if I don’t want to go to college now? What if I don’t even know what I want to do in the future? What if I just want to take a break to think everything through. Is this really wrong?

Why is it that whenever someone decided to take a break, so much judgement is thrown at their faces. Don’t individuals have the right to decide what they want to do? Like what if I don’t want to go to college immediately? What if I want to think about what I want from the future before I go for it? What if I don’t want to take up this job just because it pays well? What if I actually want to do something I like?

Am I allowed to do that without being judged? Am I allowed to just sit at home for a couple of months and think over what I want to do? Am I allowed to start my own youtube channel or write a blog because that’s what I want to do? Or do I have to confine to society’s rules and do everything they say?

The answer is I can do whatever I want. If I don’t want to go to college for a while, I won’t. If I don’t want to work immediately, I won’t. If I want to start up as a creator, I will.

This isn’t just me. This can be you too. So this is me telling you that it’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to skip a day of school if you’re not up to it. It’s okay to take a year off college and decide what you want to do. It’s completely okay to quit your job and take up something that you love.

If you’re reading this, take a deep breath. Take a minute for yourself and think, ‘do I really love what I’m doing?’ . Do you? Do you love what you’re doing? Take a break darling, it’s completely okay.