Getting smacked by a big dose of post-travel blues

It was always going to happen.

Returning to my small, cold home-town at the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand after an exciting year of travel was inevitably going to be challenging.

The blues were slightly compounded by the fact that most of my friends have left town.


Fortunately I'm not going to be in Dunedin for long.

Reasons for post holiday blues:

Gone are the three-day stop overs in European cities.
No more fleeting conversations with interesting itinerants.
No more annoying street sellers chasing me everywhere, sigh...
Less exotic food but on the plus side, less diarrhea.

Of course, travelling wasn't all great:

I did get sick.
I was tired from many nights of little sleep.
I did sometimes wish I could just stay in one place, especially when I just started to like it and meet cool people.
I got sick of being on trains or busses for 16 hours or being in airports all the time.

However.... 

I feel that somehow when you're travelling, status means a bit less. In everyday society, it's what you do, how much money you earn. In hostels at least, it seems that people come together in a way that they might not in their normal lives. You can be having an amazing conversation with a mexican guy who owns a bar, an irish woman who works as a G.P back in Ireland and a Brazilian student all at the same time.

Travel snobs:

Travel status comes in the form of exchanging exotic stories. There are those dreadful people who always try to one-up you: the travel snobs. People who think everything they've done is better than anyone else.

 Person 1:  "I went to this great beach the other day in Thailand."

Person 2: "Well, two weeks ago my girlfriend and I went to a remote island with some local chiefs. We were the first Westerners to go there in 50 years and the locals had a festival in our honour."

You get the idea.

Knowing what someone does didn't hold the same weight that it does in everyday life. In travel, I was more interested in someone's thoughts and whether they were fun to hang out than the job they do.

I do not miss sleeper buses

Post holiday blues not helped by looking for work in time of recession:

Coming back to NZ when the youth unemployment rate for 18-25 years is 17.4 per cent is not ideal.

There are still jobs around, but you are competing for scraps. I'm not in the position where I have to provide for a family. I'm predominantly responsible for myself and doing menial labour for minimum wage is not attractive (I did those sort of jobs from 15-21 y.o so I'm holding out til I leave New Zealand again so I can chase a career job). I have been trying to find work and applying for temping positions but employers have got more workers to choose from at the moment so they tend to go with the person with the relevant experience every time (even when it comes to something like retail).

I realise many, many people around the world are in this position right now and at very least New Zealand's minimum wage is okay (10.1 USD an hour).

I do miss this

One thing I really miss about travel is the excitement of constantly going to a new environment.
Back in my home city, it really is just the same old thing. Most people are not particularly interested to hear about your travel adventures.

I'm not quite sure if returning to no job and lots of leisure time is better than if I had returned to a job that I didn't enjoy?

Seeing my family for a while has been good. Experiencing a bit of the world-cup atmosphere has been good too.  Fresh air and a clean environment are a nice contrast to over-crowding and pollution that I experienced in many of the places I visited.

And this

So the world keeps spinning and I'm interested in finding some work that actually helps the world rather than just trading my time for a measly wage and feel miserable.

Would be interested to hear other people's experiences coming home after a big trip.....