I was chatting with my parents last night, and they said that since we’re stuck in Switzerland and I seem quite bored, and since I’m a legal adult now, why don’t I go on a trip abroad alone? I’m considering it, but I’ve never traveled solo before, so I don’t know.
Personally, I never traveled abroad alone…
The only “travelling” I’ve done without parents was on school trips… (I remember going to Washington, DC once.)
I think its benefits doesn’t outweight the costs for me.
If I was still in China, maybe I would have more of an incentive… I mean its hard to get information from within the country due to censorship, so I’d probably be more willing to take risks and go abroad… I would probabaly have more willpower to just “tough it out”.
But I already won the “lottery” (metaphorically, China isn’t actually eligible for an actual lottery since there are already too many people trying to leave) of being able to get out as a family… so eh…
The thing is… I felt safe(ish) when I was a kid under my parent’s protection. Every burden of documents and planning is on parents, you get to be stress free and be ignorant to everything…
Idk if I could manage everything solo like visas, going to various appointments for documents… getting place tickets… waiting in an airport, making sure my stuff isn’t being stolen… booking hotels…
and the most important thing… making sure yoi have enough funds…
just thinking about it feels stressful.
Internet here is uncensored afiak so I feel like I have even less of an incentive to do traveling right now…
The US is kinda big… I still haven’t even explored my adoptive country yet… only been to NYC and Philly…
there are still so many places I could go domestically and its less stressful (aside from ICE… but if I go abroad re-entry to the US isn’t exactly gonne be fun either)
I’ve always wanted to go to Canada as a family (minus the toxic brother… haven’t gotten along with him for many years now)… Like it just feels less terrifying to be with family. Never gotten around to doing it… always putting it off and procrastinating (parents had the funds but I think they were busy)… then Covid hit and then the thought of travel sort of went out the window for a while…
Then I got depression…
And then we got a “new sheriff in town”
So now I don’t wanna be crossing borders for 3 more years… 👀
TLDR: Emigrated with family, never really travelled solo, lacking the motivivations + anxiety/depression make it hard to do it solo.