Daydreams

“It’s not just a daydream if you decide to make it your life.”

This is a lyric from the Train song “She’s on Fire.” I first heard this song when I was in London, and it fit my situation perfectly. I was living and working and buying groceries in a foreign country. I was living my daydream. And I didn’t even know that was my dream before I was there. I remembering sitting on a bench in Trafalgar Square one evening. I had gotten off work, and I was eating dinner and killing time before I went to see a play. I looked around me and realized that everyone was a tourist. But I wasn’t. To me, London was more than a tourist stop. It was a place where I gave directions to a cab driver. It was a place where I didn’t usually need a map to get around. It was my home. I relate to this quote from the last “Frugal Traveler” column in the NYT.

“All I know is this: that I’m physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. But I also don’t want this trip to end — ever. I’m no longer thinking of New York City [or Texas] as home; to me, it's just another layover.”

Those eleven months that I spent in Europe changed my attitude and outlook on life in a lot of ways, and probably in more ways than I’m even aware of. More than anything, it made me fall madly in love with travel. And as much as I complain about the side effects of my job, I am getting paid to travel. And that is something to be thankful for