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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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