My worst fears have been confirmed. I thought I would get them and I have. The dreaded Post-Travelling Blues.
We were both actually pretty nervous on the plane on the way back - what if it's all changed back home?, what if we've changed? trying to picture our 'former lives' but you soon remember that's the reason we went away, that's the point...it hasn't and it doesn't.
It's weird trying to gauge people's reaction to having gone away and you soon find out who's genuinely interested in what you've done, seen, visited. You also soon begin to recognise the 'eyes glazed over' look that people get when you begin telling one of your travel stories or worse still mention showing them 'The Photo's'...
It's alarming how quickly you do absorb into your 'former' life and how the novelty of being back wears off within days. But like the tan the interest fades as the novelty of me being back for other people wears off too. The photo's, having been passed around with everyone 'oohhhing' and 'aaahhhing' in all the right places, now sit on my shelf gathering dust. In the first couple of weeks it was "bloody hell, we were in San Francisco/Sydney this time last week/two weeks ago", but before you know it I'm faced with the reality of my daily choice being no longer what shorts and t-shirt to wear but which shirt and tie to wear instead.
And now, two months after coming back I'm a fully fledged member of British society again: I talk and moan about the weather, I now recognise any new character in EastEnders, I count down the days to the weekend and most significantly I go to a monotonous mind-numbing job with all the other zombies. That is the single most depressing thing I've found adjusting to. Not actual work itself but going from living spontaneously and doing something different every day to a restrained, routine-driven life where only two out of every seven days give you the chance to do something 'out of the norm'.
Yet trying to get a job in the first place was a humbling, back-down-to-earth experience. I'd stroll into recruitment agencies thinking "you must employ me, I've just been round the world, do you not realise the things I've seen and done? surely this is the ultimate life qualification?". However, due to some life-sapping and tedious register forms which require you to sum up your whole life in the ticking of a few supposedly relevent boxes therefore allowing the agency to neatly pigeon-hole you, this soon evaporated into "I'm getting passed over for THAT job? and with that piss poor pay as well?".
This is especially depressing for me as my job before I travelled was working for a respected pensions consultancy company for two years. Yet despite my insistence to recruitment agencies that “it was just a job to get some money straight out of university and the last year really was just about saving enough to go travelling” I still get the standard: “2 years experience – excellent!, we’re desperate for people with pensions experience, there’s a pensions admin vacancy in the local council, you’ll be working in the bowels of the building in a dimly lit room in amongst 4000 filing cabinets (alongside Doris who’s 7 foot tall, smokes 80 a day and hasn’t had sex for 27 years…) – when can you start?”
Also the joy in receiving e-mails from, for example, the workers we met on a cattle farm in the Australian outback is short-lived as you realise that there's now really not much to say - they really do work on a cattle farm (you mean it was't just for show?) and I really do work in Insurance - thank god for the international common denominator of filthy joke e-mails...
Fortunately it's not all doom and gloom (honest). Seeing all your mates and family again is one of the obvious highlights of coming back (apart from ahem...running out of money) - well we hadn't exactly come back for the English weather! This proved to be extra special as they'd organised a surprise party for us, particularly good timing as it was 2 weeks after we got back so it was a real pick-me-up just as 'The Blues' were beginning to kick in hard.
Perhaps the solution is some sort of support group for returning travellers. We could all sit round in a circle drinking coffee from mugs and stand up in turn saying things like "My name is Simon and I was away for four months" (I know that's not as long as most others but go with me here) there'd be winces, lots of understanding nods, supporting pats on the back and others whispering to each other "poor bastard, he's got 'em bad"...
Probably the real reason Post-Travelling Blues are so harsh is because it's not so much the coming home it's the feeling of wanting to go travelling again. To that end I think I've found the only possible cure. It's not a long-term one and it won't always work but at the moment it'll do for me...I'm booking a flight to Australia in September!
Simon
Grover
