Here’s what I learned about time travel from 365 days of circling the globe.
When you travel around the world for a year, you learn a lot about time travel. That’s right. Not just “travel,” but “time travel.”
You find your mind wandering going backwards in time.
“I could have done this differently.”
“I should have said this instead.”
“What if I didn’t do this?”
“What if i did…?!”
There’s plenty of alone time on the road to think back on the past. Not just over the course of the year, but over the course of your life. Choices you made, people you met, behaviors you developed.
They’re all right there for you to regret OR for you to reminisce about. Hopefully, a bit of both.
There’s also equally as much alone time to look at the future. Again, not just what am I doing next weekend? But where will I be in a month? In a year? In 5 years?
You get excited about choices you might make, people you want to meet, habits you hope to develop.
On the road there’s just as much time to get jacked up about a new idea as there is to be scared shitless about what’s next. Again, hopefully there’s a nice balance of both. You need both. Having both is healthy.
Learning to time travel
I just traveled around the world for a year. 1 full year. 12 months. 365 days. The craziest warping of time I’ll probably ever experience.
When you move every single month the months become incredibly short, but the days somehow become twice as long.
The work week is no longer “the work week,” but just “the week” and where one starts and another one ends is as much of a mystery as how you fit a lifetime’s worth of life into 365 short days.
Time is weird like that.
This will easily go down as both the fastest and slowest year of my life. There were times where I’d blink and feel like an entire month’s worth of time had vanished into thin air. While there were other times where I felt like I had one of those Adam Sandler universal remotes from Click and could fit more into a day or week than anyone else on earth.
What to do with time warping powers?
I’m writing this particular post at about 4:15 in the morning after tossing and turning for hours. Most likely a result of the 25 tacos burning a hole in my stomach from participating in a Mexican Taco Challenge.
Over the last 365 days there have been dozens of stories like this and just as many sleepless nights. Stories that most others won’t give a shit about, but will make for excellent fodder as I try to give off hip grandpa vibes someday.
The sleepless nights no one will care about either. They won’t sympathize with the food poisoning that kept you up all night in Morocco, because, well, you were in Morocco and they weren’t.
What they will care about, however, is what you do with those stories; what you do with those sleepless nights.
Did they make you a better person?
Get you in trouble with the Serbian mob?
Spark a love interest?
Help you build a business?
That’s what people will care about.
Protect your time
On Day 1 of this year I didn’t really set out with any specific goals. I just wanted to do everything and anything.
I didn’t set out to see X number of countries, or make new friends or learn a new language.
Ironically, the only thing I actually wrote down was that I wanted to write more. More specifically, I wanted to make time to write more.
I did.
And what it has taught me is to be extremely precious with your time.
If you want to write more. Write more.
If you want to learn Spanish. Learn Spanish.
If you want to play video games until your eyes bleed. Play video games until your eyes bleed.
This crazy time warp of a year has shown me that life moves as fast or as slow as you want it to move.
There are plenty of things in this world that are completely out of our control. And that’s ok.
Don’t let those things control you. Instead, control what you can control, and that’s spending time with the people and the things you care about most.
My 365 days of travel are up, but I’m excited for Day 1 of whatever’s next.
I’ve got a fresh 24 hours.
Clap, clap, clap, clap your hands
Apparently clapping let’s more people see the crazy stuff I write. You can clap up to 50 times. That’s like enough times to make your hands hurt from clapping.
Make your hands hurt.
