Sunday’s Inspiration: Why Travelling the World Leaves You Nowhere

“Saw a vagabond king wear a xylophone crown. Wondered if I might end up the same” – Jon Bon Jovi.
* and yes I know it’s styrofoam, but I prefer xylophone.

Sunday's Inspiration: Why Travelling the World Leaves You Nowhere

Sunday’s Inspiration: Why Travelling the World Leaves You Nowhere

Don’t dress it up as a dream life and don’t fake the usual excrement that “travel is the best thing ever like mate yeah mate”. Because it’s not. People who told you that lied. They’re just too cool for us in their opinion. Their travels, my travels and your travels are nothing but chocolate brown excrement that left your asshole for an unflushable toilet in rural Guatemala in moons that even Buzz Aldrin faked lunar landings on. Travelling isn’t cool or super or trendy. Never mind the bollocks, here’s the Sex Pistols.

Sunday's Inspiration: Why Travelling the World Leaves You Nowhere

Sunday’s Inspiration: Why Travelling the World Leaves You Nowhere

Let’s destroy the myths here. Travelling the world does not make you, or anyone, better or superior to anyone else. It doesn’t even keep you equal with everyone else. In most cases, it makes you worse. You will become an asshole wishing you’d stayed in your hometown like everyone else, and got married, had kids and lived happily ever bathed her. 1-0 and you fucked it up. Getting on a wooden boat to nowhere, for what reason?

Crossing Lake Togo from (Unknown southern town) to Togoville

Sunday’s Inspiration: Why Travelling the World Leaves You Nowhere

You had a home town and you left it selfishly behind. You should have stayed there.

Sunday's Inspiration: The Street I Grew Up on, 35 Years Later

The Street I Grew Up on, 35 Years Later

You had a home country and you left it selfishly behind. Again, you should have stayed there. As a consolation, I became a Northern Irish nationalist and took my Northern Ireland flag abroad, faking somehow that I love living there. I don’t even live there.

Flying my Northern Ireland flag in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Sunday’s Inspiration: Why Travelling the World Leaves You Nowhere

Travelling the world leaves you nowhere.

Travelling the world wears you down.

Travelling the world has many more downs than ups.

Travelling the world makes you unstable.

It makes you sad. Lonely. Solitudinal. Lost. Without direction. Travelling the world makes you an asshole. You think you’re so fucking cool because you crossed a border at 11.21 pm with no food, a dirty backpack, no advance visa and no hotel reservation. That wasn’t cool. That was foolish, shameful and assholic. You should’ve stayed at home bruv innit.

“We let love get lost in anger, chasing yesterday” – Noel Gallagher.

Backpacking in Honiara – lost in Solomon Islands

Because you met fellow assholes and you became one too. You made friends with liars. You thought that they were cool so you became a liar too. You shared rooms with people you didn’t know. You pretended to like them. You failed. They weren’t your real friends. They were fakes. Even exposition of liars and Guru Gods on a travel blog won’t help you now.

“You left me alone in the sinking sand” – Noel Gallagher.

As I lie lonely looking at the moon from my current flat in Warszawa, I wonder why the hell I’m here. Why am I living in Warszawa? Why was I living in London? Why was I living in Hong Kong? Why was I living in Parramatta? I was a foreigner, an immigrant and a tourist in all those places. I don’t belong there. Surely I only belong on the streets of Marlo in Bangor, Northern Ireland. I should never have left.

In my back garden in Marlo dreaming of becoming Norman Whiteside in the 1980s.

But no. That was years ago. I left. I still love Northern Ireland, but I don’t belong in Northern Ireland anymore.

In fact, I belong nowhere. I don’t belong anywhere. I’m an outcast. I’m a vagabond. I’m a nomad. I’m a useless immigrant.

“I’m an alien. I’m a legal alien. I’m an Englishman in New York” – Sting.

And you. Yes you. Those other immigrants living outside your home country, you’re also nowhere. You don’t belong anywhere. You’re outcasts. You’re aliens. You’re all uselss immigrants.

At some point, you should just go home.

Here am I, going nowhere on a train. Here am I, growing older in the rain.

Here am I, going nowhere on a train. Here am I, growing older in the rain.

Therein lies the problem…

Where is home??

Oops. Here is home. Everywhere is home. We can be and feel at home everywhere.

“All these places feel like home” – Snow Patrol.

That in essence leaves us nowhere.

My Lonely Life: Chilling out at Coco Ocean Resort and Spa Gambia

Sunday's Inspiration: It's a Lonely World After All

It’s a Lonely World After All

“Leave me nowhere. All the time” – Robbie Williams.

6 thoughts on “Sunday’s Inspiration: Why Travelling the World Leaves You Nowhere

  • U r most certainly lost. Aimless travel is for youngsters. We need a purpose in life. Uv been doing this too long. Don’t become the weirdo in a dorm-room. Build a life for yourself before it’s too late. It is already almost too late. Fix it while you still can.

  • Hi fake name, thanks for the comment but no, I am not a weirdo in a dorm-room. I have my own flat thank you and I gave up long term travel in 2016. Nothing is late, and nothing needs fixed. I am just informing people that travelling ruins your life and you’re best to stay at home. Safe travels. Jonny

  • Hi Jonny, thanks for sharing, I’m no one to say you are wrong because I haven’t walked in your shoes or well travelled even. But do you think you feel this way because of the people you may have encountered? Or it’s just math, being away means no base, no base means nothing to hold on to. Do you think it would have been better if you had spaced out the traveling? If you had gone away less?

  • Hi Shubra, It’s totally connected to people I met. I trusted people far too easily. I mean a nasty GuruGod wannabe in 2013 and they stalked me and my family and friends, even messaging my Mum and 2 Polish friends. I blocked them in 2016 but scars never ever heal. After the GuruGod, I encountered a brace of liars and they also cannot leave my mind no matter how much I have tried. This website and my journey has been a disaster since November 2014 in all honesty and I can’t dress it up to be amazing anymore. Days are tough. Best wishes. Jonny

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

CommentLuv badge