Holidays, the idea vs reality

In an attempt to kill time, while avoiding hanging around the bookshop, I decided to go to a couple of travel agents, to pick up brochures. I don ‘t know why I did it. I can’t really see myself going away. I know where would I like to go, but it’s a case of I just can think of a list of reasons why I shouldn’t.

One of them is that I can’t speak the language. This is just one of those things, that I could try and learn I guess. But then I would want to make a proper effort at it.

To be honest, I would never just go away to somewhere just to lie on the beach and party at night. I’m probably too old for that and even if I’d done that when I was the right age, I don’t think I’d have enjoyed myself. If I had gone on something like an 18-30 holiday, then I have done it in the mood that this is the sort of thing that I should enjoy. Then I would have just lain on the beach or got panic attacks in nightclubs, screaming in my head that I should be having fun and that if I couldn’t, there was something wrong with me.

There must be a few people who go on holidays like that. Either out of the feeling that they need have ‘experiences’ or they are wasting their life. Or that this is how everybody has fun, so I must do it. Then they stagger through the period, feeling dragged down by the fact that they are not having fun. Yet, everybody says that being in the place or frantic partying is how you have fun. So not only are they aware that they are spending a lot of money on not having fun, but they are made to feel that there is something wrong with themselves.

This idea that being abroad is more meaningful then what you do when you are there is fairly widespread I think. Students are encouraged to have gap years to travel the world. Nobody mentions the students who stay in this country, to earn money to support their university years. Even though that seems the more realistic option.

Drunk too much coffee, waiting around in town, too fast, today. Now I’m alternating nausea with a downer mood.