Vacations in Your Hometown
Travel is an experience where you see and try new things, but you can also have travel-like experiences at home. New things can simply be doing something routine in a different way, or finding something new within a familiar area. One reason that we don’t find new experiences in familiar landscapes is because we are too comfortable. Tear down that excess of comfort, and you’ll feel something new! Furthermore, your home area often has things you never even knew about, and I’ll link some resources you can use to find those.
Get Uncomfortable
An iconic quote from one of the Kung Fu Panda movies (that was on the commercial) is roughly:
“If you only do what you know, you’ll never be more than what you are” – That one wise animal guy to Jack Black in that one Dreamworks movie
With that in mind, how can you turn your hometown into something you don’t know? There’s a ton of possibilities, but I’ll go over a few that immediately come to mind.
Challenge Yourself
- Take a new way home from work, and don’t use a GPS to help you find your way! Getting lost is EXACTLY how to make home feel new. If you live in an unsafe area, this may not be the best idea, though. For safety, carry a live bear in your car. Just kidding, don’t do that.
- Give yourself a social challenge. For example, wear a ridiculous costume during a night out, such as a Gorilla, a Banana, or Spiderman during a night out. People will treat you differently, and you’ll act differently because of it. Your hometown will not feel the same.
- You could also tell yourself, “I can’t go home until I ask 5 strangers to marry me.” That’s a little extreme, but you get the idea of challenging yourself. This type of challenge is to get you out of your comfort zone. Here is a great TEDX talk about comfort zone challenges that is both more informative and inspiring than anything I could say about the subject.
- Your hometown is usually a comfortable place, and making it uncomfortable through a challenge can make it like a vacation – at least in terms of experiencing something new.
Explore the Community
“My hometown is boring. there’s nothing to see, nothing to do, and no one interesting.” – Many people who never try new things, then complain that they aren’t experiencing anything new
Whether you live in a small town, a big city, or anything in between, there is always something you haven’t done there or in the surrounding area. Those could be hiking trails, restaurants, museums, historical sites, meeting strangers, or even watching Netflix in a different coffee shop than normal. For example, via Groupon, I found out that my area has at least 100 massage spas, a bunch of escape rooms, and a gourmet chocolate factory – that gives tours and numerous fancy samples – all within 20 miles of home. Given my obsession with sweets, I bought the chocolate Groupon and tried it out. It was wild.
On that same vein of using Groupon, the site is pure gold. You save a lot of money on events, restaurants, and other activities, and VERY often, the site extra discounts added on top of whatever savings you initially have. Groupon is a major reason I can afford food adventures, such as buying 4-dozen Krispy Kreme donuts with a friend and making a really bad choice. However,at times I spend too much on discounted adventures to save for long-term goals. Everything in moderation.
Other tools for exploring your community are networks like Nextdoor and Meetup. These are social networks for your local community. Nextdoor places you in a mini-network for your neighborhood, and it’s a great tool for getting to know your neighbors, communicate about community issues, and generally have a more connected town. Meetup links you to groups who meet near you who do activities you’re interested in. For example, there are hiking, exercise, gaming, and bar-hopping groups among the many. You can also start your own if none that you find seem appealing! So, that underwater basket weaving group you’ve always wanted can become a reality!
If your town doesn’t have much of an online presence, you can always either be the one to start it, or explore the old fashioned way: by going where you haven’t been and seeing what happens! Back in high school, an ex and I went out to a specific restaurant for lunch, and after eating, we decided to just go down the road further into a local are we’ve never explored and see what happens. It was a memorable, fun day, and all it took was going a couple miles outside of our regular local limits.
Or you can ask friends about cool, unexpected things to do. I asked my coworker about cool spots, and he told me about a BEAUTIFUL Japanese Garden I didn’t even know existed about 6 miles from me. The point is, you can find what you’ve never found and do what you’ve never done if you make an effort.
In Summary
There’s a lot you can do to spice up your day-to-day. Forcing discomfort on yourself simulates the exhilarating discomfort of travel, and you can enhance that with an infinite number of personal challenges. To give you new things to do you may have never even heard of, there are plenty of services that can help. Your friends also will have some great insight. If your why for travel is new experiences, you don’t need to go past your city limit – though getting away can help.
I hope this has given you some ideas to make the most of where you are! Travel can be expensive, but local experiences can be as fulfilling as travel with a significantly lower cost. When we crave travel, most of that desire is for new experiences. Travel guarantees that, but never neglect next door.
Best of luck to you all,
Andy
Side note: I am not actually in my hometown as of this posting. I am in Japan, and I find it ironic posting an article about hometowns as I explore somewhere 6000 miles away from mine.
My Social Media:
Twitch
Most photos from Pixabay
Andy Cormier 