TRAVEL

Back To Real Life?

Some have other ideas

Joe Guay - Dispatches From the Guay Life!
The Shortform
Published in
2 min readNov 10, 2023

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A young man with tattooed arms smiles and holds a globe above his head
Photo by Peggy Anke on Unsplash

Wheels touch down; you’re back home, refreshed.

Train glides in; you step to the platform.

Car pulls in ; you unload from the road trip.

Back to real life?

Bite your tongue.

If you’re in the tribe, the next trip is already percolating.

Airline sites perused, Airbnb's evaluated, train and ferry timetables consulted.

Paper maps — yes, paper! — unfurl with crinkly magnificence.

Fodor’s and Frommer’s taunt you. Rick Steves waves from the bookshelf.

Rough Guides and Insight Guides compete with NatGeo Travelers and Eyewitness Travelers for dominance.

Dogeared copies of Travel & Leisure and Lonely Planet mags pulsate with possibilities once catalogued — bucket list journeys calculated.

Google Earth whirls, blog posts unfurl.

Your travel journal will no longer acquiesce to collecting dust.

A collection of travel books are scattered over paper road maps
Photo courtesy of Joe Guay

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Joe Guay - Dispatches From the Guay Life!
The Shortform

Joe Guay, a recovering people-pleaser, is an essayist, actor/voiceover guy with musings on mental health, LGBTQ, humor and travel & nature as church