Before 2020, my years were spent traveling. In 3 years alone I went to Iceland, Thailand, Egypt, the Netherlands, and more. And now?
I’ve always had travel anxiety. I get to the airport early and basically think something is guaranteed to go wrong. I don’t sleep the night before, I get sick to my stomach. I worry about potentially losing the cost of the trip or something going wrong while we’re away.
As you can imagine, COVID has made that 10000 times worse. We’ve only traveled domestically since the beginning of the pandemic, besides road-trips we’ve been to Key West and New Orleans. Both of which weren’t super easy trips, airports and flights have kind of been a nightmare. And to someone with travel anxiety, that’s not a great thing.
Travel used to be the one thing I could look forward to, and now I’ve been kind of put off it. It’s been so long since I’ve been to a new country and felt so happy and free to be there learning about a new culture.
Maybe I’ve grown out of my traveling phase, a few years always on the go was great, but now I have a newfound joy of being home with my pups. Or maybe I just need to bite the bullet and get over my fear and jump into a new trip. It makes me sad that a piece of me is gone because of the pandemic, and I struggle to completely wrap my mind around it.
Rosie Culture 
I have similar feelings. Now that I’m in a better place financially, one thing I wanted to do was travel more, but I just haven’t wanted to deal with the stress. In the last two years, I’ve been on a couple of day trips alone, I’ve been back to my parents’ house a few times (more than usual because of Grandma’s funeral and stuff related to that), and I’ve taken four day trips to [the city called “Bay City” in my writing, I won’t identify it publicly but you can probably figure it out], two for concerts and two for baseball games. All of this was driving, and I don’t really consider my parents’ house or “Bay City” traveling because I usually go both places multiple times per year anyway. I should probably plan a longer trip this summer… I’m just too exhausted and drained all the time these days… but yeah, I need to bite the proverbial bullet too.
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Yes the stress is just too much! I refuse to plan any travel outside of the country right now I just don’t think it’s worth it. I’m glad I bit the bullet and did some domestic flights, but not ready for international yet
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Yeah… I’ve actually never been on an international flight… hopefully someday, but the stress now isn’t helping…
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Well, you are not alone if your lack of travel plans has left you feeling lower than you’d expect.
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Rosie, don’t let the pandemic scare you into not living. We are all free.
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Yes it’s quite a challenge after COVID.Hope things look up soon
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COVID just made me want to travel more and really solidify I just want to be a digital nomad!
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