I hate working and love doing nothing. I’ve also done stints of 12+ months overseas. I learnt that I need to work, otherwise I’ll drink myself to death or overdose in an opium den somewhere.

Still love traveling long term, but you need to stay busy otherwise there’s a chance you’ll destroy yourself.

>>2643739
I got married a few years back and don't travel as much as I did before--which is something I thought I'd mind, but have actually come to appreciate.

In years past, though, I spent a lot of time overseas. I work remotely, and was abroad for much of the period between 2016 and 2023 (and had been traveling internationally for a long time prior).

I don't think I ever had any travel-related epiphanies, and most changes to my perspective have been more gradual than not. I used to be a typical autist without any hobbies beyond reading books and playing video games, and would like to think that stepping outside my comfort zone improved my self-esteem and helped me become a better rounded person. Off the top of my head, living abroad and traveling longer-term helped me:
>learn new languages (fluent in Hindi, conversationally proficient in Turkish, etc)
>find new hobbies (e.g., learned to ride a motorcycle in India--and now own several)
>accelerate my professional growth (f.e., I translated some of my international interests into academic projects, paid fellowships, and career opportunities)

There's certainly more than that, but I don't really want to think too hard about it.

>Do you feel like you belong more to the world than a given country
I'd actually say that travel made me feel much more strongly, passionately, and positively about the United States.

>>2643877
>I'd actually say that travel made me feel much more strongly, passionately, and positively about the United States.
based

>>2643739
>what has it done to change your perspective?

It's made me a doomer. People are the same retarded niggercattle everywhere. There is no hope for our species.

It's also really horrible how much third world shitholes pollute their surroundings and the ocean. I used to have compassion for these people because of their poverty, but now I see them for what they are: an out of control disease.

>>2643879
He's Indian. He went back to India and learned hindu for his arranged marriage. He appreciates the USA because it's not as much of a shithole yet.

How close am I?
>>2643877

>>2643739
>what has it done to change your perspective
I hate planes
People are people. You have the same shit in every country and "culture"
I got more out of rural road trips and trains/busses than planes.
Also, no country has "easy" women. Some have women who are desperate for money/getting out but hot women almost never 'throw themselves' at you and men who claim otherwise are at best, banging mid bitches.
I think going to anime conventions showed me how easy it is to make friends with fellow autists.

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>>2643883
>How close am I?
Picrel, so not at all.

>>2643887
>has his "DNA" available to post
That's not evidence here. You need to post your hand or you will be assumed to be brown.

>>2643887
BASED WHITE USA ENJOYER

Once you get used to travelling youre fucked.

>>2643897
so much this, wholly fucking christ.

>>2643784
I spent 15 months fucking hookers and rotting in Thailand and I came out unscathed sans a few cases of chlamydia. You just need to know when it’s time to go and you’ll be fine.

Before my forays I used to want to be a bar manager sooooo badly I would’ve done anything to be one and now I realize they’re all alcoholic losers with no future who will die of liver disease (one literally did at 43 from liver failure).

My gut has gotten used to dealing with whatever I choose to feed it. Rarely in the past six months have I felt healthy and full of vitality. I'll see if that changes when I return to vanlife and cooking my own meals.
My purpose while travelling is quite simply existence in various places. Next meal, next bed, next city...those are the only goals I have.
Frustration or annoyance is far less common than when I was working. Patience and adaptability instead, which usually manifests as passive indifference to anything sub-par.
I don't care about the people around me or the choices they make. I'll be moving on tomorrow; they're the ones who have to live in the shitty environment they created. No use obsessing over creeks flowing black with waste, or festering trash piles strewn about.
At times I feel subject to the curse of Cain...doomed to be a wanderer and a vagabond for the rest of my days. So be it. I'll make the best of my empty freedom.

I don't feel like I belong anywhere but that everywhere I go can feel like home if you are comfortable. It's hard to maintain any relationships or friendships. You need to be working or doing something to have purpose. It is very freeing knowing you can leave or return at any time but most people you meet will stay in the same place their entire lives and unable to relate to you or they move around as much so your connection with them will be shortlived.

It's best if you have a permanent home somewhere. If you always move you end up with few possessions and no attachments to material things. You don't feel grounded.

I feel like I am floating through life.

>>2643739
>What has it done to change your perspective?
People are the same everywhere you go. I guess it shows you how things could be though. In that respect it's like the other poster said, it makes me feel fortunate to be American and renewed a sense of patriotism in me. You see people who go on babies first couple of trips and they return with the zomg grass is sooo much greener elsewhere attitude, but the more you travel the more you realize two weeks in a tame country doesn't really give you a perspective into a places problems.
>Do you feel like you belong more to the world?
No. If anything it showed me I am more insignificant because there's billions more people like me just eating, drinking, cummin, and existing.
>Do you think higher/lesser of people you meet?
It showed me how much I hate Israelis and American women who travel.
>Has it helped you find meaning?
To an extent. It showed me that being the perpetual traveling guy isn't a healthy path to go on and it becomes pathetic in your 30's to be a neet who just solo travels. Now I'm actively getting better and using my GI Bill to work towards getting a big boy career. I know a guy my age who is the only other person from my small town who also spent his late 20's just traveling when not fighting forest fires. He lies to women he meets overseas saying he is a 'remote fire consultant' or a 'firefighter in LA' when in reality forest fire fighting is peak neetdom He constantly runs out of money and has to beg his mom in his 30's to send him some so he can get home. I didn't want to be associated with that level anymore (despite never needing to go crawling to my folks for cash). Imo perpetual trvlers and remote workers are insufferable. I remember meeting an American remote worker who when I asked where he was from he said "I'm from nowhere." That was the moment where I realized how fucking cringe the #vagabond lifestyle is.

>>2644622
Sounds like you and the other USA lover have something awaiting you when you come back to America. Land, family, old friends, etc. Hell, I bet someone even stopped by the airport to pick you up when you land. Count yourself lucky.
America hits different when you are a vagabond who has nobody and owns only what you are carrying on your back. It feels so intimidatingly huge and self-satisfied. Everyone is driving a $50,000 truck or car, are they gonna lift a finger for ten dollars? Hell no. You're on your own, kid.
The disdain Americans have for poor people is very strong. Don't believe me? Let a motel owner see you walk onto his property lugging a duffel bag. You're paying him $70 for 18 hours in a room, but is he going to thank you for your contribution? No. He's gonna be rude and suspicious.
Having a car (or having anything, desu) makes all the difference in how you perceive America. I cashed out $3400 and bought a minivan after four weeks spent traveling from Miami to the California border. The trip destroyed my dream of living in America without a car. I spent most of my time in cartel-dominated Mexican border towns, because even their shitty hospitality was better than what America offered me.
With a van, now I had my own defensible private space. I could go anywhere I wanted, cook my own meals with my supplies, camp out in the desert. I shopped at Walmart and fueled up at the gas station without a single human interaction. Be just as anti-social and self-reliant as every other American fucker.
America...great country, but fuck the people

>>2644640
Nope. I didn't have a lease or home for five+ years. Only half of the time would someone be able to get me from the airport (rural USA). I lived out of a backpack for years. I bought the car I still drive to this day (2010 Kia Optima) 10 years ago for 4,000$ cash just to drive Uber basically.
>great country but fuck the people
Yeah, fuck the people in America. I never said America or Americans are great, but in reality there's no other country where I've been afforded the opportunity to have done what I've done during my youth, and what I plan to do in the future. It is infinitely better to be poor in America than it is in a shithole like Morocco.

Basically losers bash America because of virtue signaling or whatever

Sad

>>2644645
It's peak Reddit energy to go abroad twice and then talk shit on the US

>>2644640
theres nothing exceptional about being a vagabond or van lifer or whatever. you're not unique or special. americans in particular like to think theyve somehow broken the system by doing literally anything besides living in the town they grew up in since a large swathe of them never do.

>>2644646
its also equally retarded to go abroad and not acknowledge how far the US has fallen behind in some realms. and not in some way like we have fallen behind some idealized version of the USA we've created for ourselves, like we are actually falling behind. for instance education, while US higher education is still in a class its own globally it is staggering how bad and clueless our K-12 public school teachers and school administrators are. on a global scale our K-12 public educaiton system is something like... unironically indonesia tier.

and while not as qualitatively apparent or easily noticeable as the education blunder, the USA's particular brand of market-oriented stoogery where somehow despite getting like 1% of the vote in the 00's the moronic libertarians actually won on very nearly every major policy goal 9minus the unrelenting growth of the state) they had will start showing some cracks when you view it from a different light.

>>2643739
I work abroad and between that and my recretational travel I've spent between 5-8 months every year since 2014 outside the USA.

I certainly am just a much a man of the country that raised me as I was before this life. No less, but also no more. As a man gets into his mid-thirties I think he develops a real acuteness that might heighten his sense of the world, but that can happen without living the zip code you grew up in.

One thing I've found is I don't like expats very much. At least the ones from the USA. The one-upsmanship, the nauseating "god I don't even KNOW how long its been since I've been back to America" brags...I just don't want it. Avoid.

>>2644695
>One thing I've found is I don't like expats very much. At least the ones from the USA. The one-upsmanship, the nauseating "god I don't even KNOW how long its been since I've been back to America" brags...I just don't want it. Avoid.
This is basically the same with the long term digital nomads who are the new breed of LBH ESL teachers in Asia.

>>2644649
>vagabonds aren't unique or special
Of course you would say such a thing, because you have an aversion to vagabonds. Their personalities (and sometimes, body odor) repel most normies. But their life stories are very much unique and outside the spectrum of conventional life experiences. Losing your virginity in the car you are living in, for example.

>>2644712
The few digital nomads I've met who do the stereotypical SE + NE Asia route have been insufferable.

>>2644948
The worst one I met was in Poland. He was staying in a dorm and used the "Im from nowhere" line then when I asked where he grew up he said "the US." The worst thing about it was he was using this weird fake accent to play up that he'd been digital nomading for seven years or so and that's how worldly he was.

>>2644934
>Losing your virginity in the car you are living in, for example
>Losing your virginity when you're 30 and trying to do your best Into The Wild worship lifestyle
Checks out

yeah here's what happened: the list of places you can't go is vanishingly small and only getting smaller. gone are the days where going to albania, bolivia, greenland, pakistan, mozambique etc. was such a monumental task and achievement. even places like antarctica, uzbekistan, bhutan, saudi arabia are opening up.

you just ain't fooling anyone anymore, least of all yourself. just getting on a jet and going somewhere to go on holiday or be a digital nomad is pretty fucking easy, particularly if you have a passport from EU, USA, canada, australia, NZ etc and speak english

so now its about WHAT you do. bush pilot in namibia? field researcher in antarctica? nurse or doctor volunteering in the amazon? its impressive stuff, and that's what drives your own personal validation AND the validation you'll get from others. its why >>2644981 is so annoying. there's no actual accomplishment in there.

>>2644518

Tell me more. I want to go to thailand too long term. Stuck in a shit hole at the moment with money. How did you manage visas for so long?