What’s the immediate cause of your travel?

Although we plan and save and daydream about traveling for months on end, I’m wondering if you could share what are the immediate causes, if any, that precipitate your decision to travel.

You could call it the Travel Eureka Moment — that instant when you decide that it’s time for a trip.

Here are a few that jump out at me. Curious to hear how these and other deciding factors have led to travel…

  • A “What am still I doing here?” realization. Possibly the result of overqualification or lack of job advancement, a stagnant relationship, generalized boredom, a soured routine, or any other variety of fed-upness.
  • Passing a savings milestone. After watching the bank account build for however many months, now you can switch to watching the odometer turn.
  • School acceptance/graduation. The months just before or just after are looking wide open…
  • Out of the military and not having to take orders anymore.
  • Someone close to you commits to travel. Alright, you’re in? Let’s do this.
  • Super Sale. Couldn’t pass up the cheap ticket.
  • Post-breakup. Meeting yourself again and who knows who else.
  • Health: From diagnosis to recovery to prevention. Whether primarily physical or mental, travel will further intertwine the two.
  • Perceived Opportunity. For business or pleasure.
  • Date-based deadline. ‘Cause we’re not getting any younger.
  • Read a book and just had to go.

Do your decisions to travel often have a single, immediate cause? More cliche: What have been your travel tipping points? Or does it come down to a constellation of factors?

Photo by astrocruzan via Flickr.

Posted by | Comments (2)  | August 25, 2010
Category: Notes from the collective travel mind


2 Responses to “What’s the immediate cause of your travel?”

  1. Warren Talbot Says:

    We had our Travel Eureka Moment 2 years ago next week. For us it came in the realization that life is too short to not follow your dreams. After 20 years of pursuing a career and setting out a retirement plan that we would achieve in another 20, we decided why wait. Two close friends/family members had sudden health issues that hit within a couple months and we realized we could not wait to live our dream. So, we committed on September 1st, 2008 that we would begin saving for our RTW adventure. On October 1st we leave for 3+ years on the road to live that dream and have never been happier.