I didn’t travel the world. I traveled around the US. Drove through about 30 something states and visited 17 major cities. I didn’t do this over a long period of time - about 2-3 months. I’d hop from city to city every 2-5 days and try to get a feel of every place. For me, this involved a lot of driving around and visiting neighborhoods. I could get a feel for places pretty well by just driving through - I know people will critique that but it felt true for me. Back then, I was going to a lot of social dances as a way to meet people. I’d visit the local scenes and try to tell people I’m from out of town and I’d like to just kinda explore. It was an easy test to see how friendly various cities were by just seeing how receptive that crowd was. Turns out, most weren’t great. And a lot didn’t have good dancing scenes. Both were dealbreakers as I was visiting all these cities to see if I wanted to live there. (Traveling with intention - I guess. Not relaxation)
Things I took away from my trip: Never do it in the summer. It’s way too fucking hot. My cars AC broke midway and it was grueling going through the south in July/August. Secondly, driving to all these cities to get a feel was a good way to condense some of the experience but it wasn’t great. For my life, I would’ve been better served by being an extended weekend warrior and visiting cities during popular dance events. This wouldn’t give a fair representation of the city but at least I’d see what it could be. Lastly, I found out that almost guaranteed no matter where I was going to live - it was going to be really tough because I had no friends in those cities. And I learned not having friends in cities when you visit them and when you visit them solo is lonely and isolating. You’re constantly putting yourself in a very difficult situation where people who see you as a random person on the street have to suddenly go from 0 to best friend in a matter of minutes for anything meaningful to happen. I found this behavior exceedingly rare from the other side. I’m also not very physically attractive, rich, or some status symbol. So, there was no real reason for established people to interact with me. Only transplants would have an interest and that overall trip just confirmed everything I believed about living in the US.
After it, I still judged people who never left where they grew up or where all their friends were but I understood exactly why they did it. Moving to other places every 2-3 years is absolutely devastating to your social life because after 2-3 years you usually start to feel like you’ve finally made some progress. Just to see it reset to zero again.
Things I took away from my trip: Never do it in the summer. It’s way too fucking hot. My cars AC broke midway and it was grueling going through the south in July/August. Secondly, driving to all these cities to get a feel was a good way to condense some of the experience but it wasn’t great. For my life, I would’ve been better served by being an extended weekend warrior and visiting cities during popular dance events. This wouldn’t give a fair representation of the city but at least I’d see what it could be. Lastly, I found out that almost guaranteed no matter where I was going to live - it was going to be really tough because I had no friends in those cities. And I learned not having friends in cities when you visit them and when you visit them solo is lonely and isolating. You’re constantly putting yourself in a very difficult situation where people who see you as a random person on the street have to suddenly go from 0 to best friend in a matter of minutes for anything meaningful to happen. I found this behavior exceedingly rare from the other side. I’m also not very physically attractive, rich, or some status symbol. So, there was no real reason for established people to interact with me. Only transplants would have an interest and that overall trip just confirmed everything I believed about living in the US.
After it, I still judged people who never left where they grew up or where all their friends were but I understood exactly why they did it. Moving to other places every 2-3 years is absolutely devastating to your social life because after 2-3 years you usually start to feel like you’ve finally made some progress. Just to see it reset to zero again.