Travel is no cure for the mind (2018)
I personally <i>despise</i> travel, almost every aspect of it.  Planning, making reservations, trying to figure out airline tickets, packing, parking, waiting, being groped by the pre-flight fondlers, cramming myself into a seat, sitting there for hours, the mystifyingly slow process of disembarking, getting <i>to</i> the hotel, registration, lugging luggage, the cautious exploration of the room, the scan for bedbugs, arraying the hopefully adequate creature comforts imported to the destination on some tatty drawer, all of it is terrible.  But then people say, &quot;Oh, but the thing you came for!&quot;  And whatever it is leaves me unmoved.  I could have been shown a photo of it for all that it matters.  Or conferences were nothing was conveyed.  Then you get to do all of it in reverse, perhaps with a careful notebook of receipts tucked away.<p>Even hearing about it.  And what is beyond the pale is that if word gets out you don&#x27;t like travel, the Travel People simply won&#x27;t have it.  They&#x27;re like a cult.<p>In my black little heart, I wonder if people would on the whole travel less if they weren&#x27;t permitted to speak about it, because lord knows some bore bringing up their time in Nepal <i>yet again</i> at the merest whiff of conversational relevance makes my cortical folds smooth out.