Tag Archives: travel

This is Your Brain on Boredom

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For 24 hours now, my brain has felt fried. Sizzled. Frayed. Dried out and ragged.

I have nothing to do at work except read the Internet. It’s overstimulating and exhausting to be bored, to stare at a screen and try to fill (or kill?) time. It’s such a waste, and I have half a mind to go home early so I can let myself cry, but I need the money and can’t waste the vacation hours.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me; it started when trying to book my Lonely Planet Alaska trip yesterday, which was like trying to put together a Chinese puzzle as I lined up flight times and ferry schedules, and crammed eight towns (with ten flights and two ferry rides) into a two-week trip. It was exhausting, but I figured it out and assumed that my brain would feel back to normal after a good night’s sleep. And I’ve been sleeping really well. But I woke up still feeling like I was wearing a too-tight swim cap on my head; all my muscles — my jaw, my forehead, the back of my head, my neck — feel taut. My eyes are dry. I thought maybe my glasses had been pinching me, that maybe this tension was external rather than internal. But as my day goes on, I feel myself deteriorating.

I visited the Genius Bar for my very slow, less-than-a-year-old Mac, and they couldn’t help me except to try “one more thing” that required me to leave my computer for four days, which I can’t do until Lonely Planet is due, four months from now. This situation threw me — the problem is that when I start to spiral, my resilience is low and situations that are fairly benign become giant, threatening to ruin my entire day and cause me to miss work.

And as soon as I feel weak and emotional, my head goes straight to “single for four years.” That repeats like a mantra, over and over and over, and I think about all the times I was dumped, the people who don’t love me back, the tragic flaw I must have, the beauty I lack, and my dwindling fertility and I erupt in a hot mess of failure and shame and start to cry, but have to pull myself together because I’m at work. The act of keeping myself together usually exhausts me to the point where all I can do after work is go home and sleep.

Three hours and twenty minutes of work left.

How to Win at Travel Conversations

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I’ve spent enough time traveling to see people, often expats but certainly travelers (especially long-term ones), get territorial about a place or the experience of travel. It’s like there is intense competition for who has been the most places, who is a “traveler” and not a “tourist,” and who has the most experience in a given location. Many expatriates believe they know more than any other foreigners and have earned the right to condescend to anyone who hasn’t lived at least 15 years in a place, so they tend to win travel conversations. Other winners are long-term travelers, and people who have spent more than the average amount of time in a location. But anyone can win a travel conversation! Here are sure-fire tips for winning, no matter who you’re talking to.

Note: if you begin the conversation with the assumption that the other person has any travel experience or location knowledge, you’ve already lost.
• Start talking about a place before you’ve been asked, or even engaged in conversation.

• Be sure to mention either how long you’ve been in xx place, or how long ago you traveled there. Bonus points if you were there “before it changed” or “back before there were any tourists.”

• Talk about how much you hate Lonely Planet and other guidebooks.
• Pronounce cities with a local accent: if you’re American, you’ll say “Pa-ree” instead of Paris. Doing so shows that you can speak the language like a local or that you have a real insider’s view.
• List all the illnesses and diseases you’ve contracted – malaria, Dengue fever, eight days of barfing in Kathmandu: going through the shit makes you a winner at traveling.
• Complain about other tourists.
• Say you “did” a country.
• Allude to authenticity: you know the “real” wherever. The best local restaurants and bars, local people, etc. Be territorial about them; it’s almost as if you own them, after all.
Any other tips for winning a travel conversation?