First you watch too many romantic comedies.  Then you spend too much time on Tumblr reading travel quotes.  It’s as easy as that.  You’re convinced, you’re fooled.  You tie your sweater around your waist and wade into the ocean.  The water’s warm, the sand is temprapedic under your feet.  You’re a little afraid, but you’re confident that you can make the swim.  The sun smashes itself into the horizon and bruises the water turquoise.  Your feet come off the ground.  The oceans got you now.

A few years ago, I got the idea that I wanted to travel.  I didn’t know how to travel.  I didn’t know where to travel.  How much is enough underwear?  How long does a traveler, travel?  What does a novice traveler eat? 

Let’s not get overwhelmed by this word.  It’s got a lot of power to it – “TRAVEL.”  So intriguing, so adventurous, so free… so what?  I’m no Christopher McCandless (the guy from Into the Wild) or Christopher Columbus (the guy who though he discovered India).   I had the desire to go someplace.  A few appreciated people encouraged it.  Then I was in Spain.  There’s more to it than that, but who cares. 

I came with too many suitcases to carry.  I had a job lined up and a program to follow.  I didn’t have any boots.  A real traveler would have had boots.  Maybe he would have only had a backpack – in it; something to make fire, something to kill and cook with, something to protect himself from the cold, and a book to make the big-bad world seem manageable again.

I’m no traveler.  Not yet.  I spent the first three months struggling to punch my way out of a paper bag marked with my mom’s handwriting.  Homesick like a motherfucker.  Wide eyed, perpetually lost, red with frustration.  I thought I’d made a mistake.  On the surface it was challenging, new language, new street names, new foods.  But I never had to struggle with hunger or destitution.

The time goes on.  The homesickness goes away.  I begin recognizing a few new faces.  My feet settle back on the ground.  The daily routine comes.  Then the struggle becomes, not wedging myself in.  Not letting down the anchor.  Not allowing all things comfortable to pile in around me.

For a while, I felt like a puss, because a part of me wanted that struggle.  I wasn’t sleeping under a bridge.  I didn’t have to cut open a can of beans and warm them over a garbage fire.  I didn’t have to jump onto a moving train to make it to the next town over.  I had all these wild ideas of what traveling was or wasn’t. 

This trip will end, and I still won’t be a traveler.  But I can’t say I haven’t learned anything.  The lessons have come big and small, internal and external.  They’ve come from nice people and assholes, from moments of chaos and silence.  They may not be as movie worthy as the man who hitchhiked, pickpocketed, and pinched bread to survive, but they’re lessons none the less.

My time in Spain isn’t over, yet.  I already have stories and regrets.  I’ll make more before I go.  You don’t have to travel to across the world to learn.  The same way you don’t have to sleep in bum shit, on a freight train, to consider yourself a traveler.  What is a traveler anyway?