Caught between two forums

Since this is primarily my travel blog, I don't talk about much else going on in my life unless it somehow directly relates to my trip. To be fair, I don't have a whole lot going on that doesn't somehow relate - when one is leaving in just over a month for a RTW adventure, apparently it gets pretty consuming. Who knew? - but I do do things in life beyond making to do lists and shop for hostels in Cambodia. I just don't really talk about them.

Clearly the sampling is a bit skewed, but the concept of having other things, things that may be important and consuming and interesting that are not travel related, is a fairly foreign one on most hard-core travel forums. Now, of course most of these people are like me and this blog - they have families, jobs, hobbies, lives that keep them busy outside of their posting, but those things are not really relevant to the forum, so they don't get talked about. The result, though, is an environment that almost...frowns upon the idea that there could be anything else important that could be a priority over your travel. If you are only casually interested in a trip, might as well take off for a Sandals Jamaica and not bother any genuine vagabonders.

Not only that, but there is a fairly narrow definition of acceptable travel. If you have a car that you want to own when you come back, a job that you are reluctant to leave, or a set itinerary that you want to follow, then it's somehow not a real RTW. And god forbid you decide to do a package tour - the horror! I don't mean it to sound bad, but there is a rather "Are you now or have you ever been considering a stay at a resort hotel?" judgemental vibe to the whole thing. A trip that is short, planned and NOT the culmination of prolonged planning and sacrifice is often - by word or by attitude - deemed lesser. Don't ask me why.

It's one of the reasons I mostly read, and rarely speak up. I am going for only 7 months; during that time, I am planning to visit 6 continents, and often just a country or two in each (the conventional wisdom in most places would be to spend 6 months in Asia or South America and really travel extensively, rather than hopping from place to place); and I am also bringing jeans with me, fie on their heaviness and their long drying time. I don't fit in, quite, and I know I would get heckled for doing thigs "wrong," so I take the good advice and leave the rest.

And it's too bad that there is such a closed-off attitude to people doing other things; if there weren't, these people could potentially be BFF with the folks on the other forums I frequent. See, before I go, in the midst of planning, I am also applying to graduate school - PhD programs, to be exact. So I idly peruse a couple of communities for wannabe grad schoolers, mostly out of boredom and vague interest (it's not quite as much fun - I've applied and been to grad school before, so it does not hold the same wonder).

Again, a lot of it is a function of the focus of the community - and the rampant stress present - but most have an attitude that if you want to do ANYthing else EVER in LIFE besides grad school, you may as well be in the business of eating babies. If you have not been cooing dissertation proposals from the womb, then this is the wrong place for you, go away, don't waste our time. I don't fit there either - not just for having another interests, but because a PhD was not always my number one choice, I did not study for 8 months for the GRE, and writing a statement of purpose does not send me into apoplectic fits of fear.

I may not belong, precisely, but I personally enjoy the fact that I will not ever prioritize one over the other. If I successfully manage this, heading around the world and coming back just in time to start a program, then I think that it will be better off for it. Despite daring to have something to come back to by a set date, and despite having something else that I want just as badly as a doctorate. I dare so much!

All of this is to say that I dropped my very last applications in the mail today, so I am officially done applying. As glad as I am that I can now, finally, concentrate full time on my planning, I am even more thankful that my stressful time of waiting to hear and handling rejection will be spent in various parts of South America and Oceana. Talk about having something else to concentrate on...