I don't like traveling anymore

I’ve narrowed down where I like to live and do that, after having seen what other developed nations have to offer. (There are parts of the developing world I could enjoy but I don’t see myself prioritizing them when I get back into the extended travel circuit.)

I can slum it purely for the social aspect, and then pamper myself at a Four Seasons tier place on the weekend - subsidized largely by credit card rewards points. Nice places are inherently not nearly as social as nice hostels. But I can also fly a paramour in, du jour.

As long as my health stays great my 30s have been a god-tier version of my 20s and I can see my 40s going that way as well. My 20s was mired by chasing rites of passages and learning I didn't like or want that. Doing the power couple thing with a fellow corporate climber, moving in, etc. Classically, I’m fine with the most aimless anti-intellectual and visually attractive partners as soon as I had the option. “Wife changing money” is what they colloquially say.

Film festivals, music festivals, retreats, the “socialite circuit”, living other places for a couple of months… the allure of that hasn't gone away, for me. In the mean time, life is just speeding by working and saving again, staying entertained in my chosen city, until I actually do something entrepreneurial again.

Then again I already live in a beautiful place and I’ve always been great at being a tourist in my own city. Ask me again in 10 years and maybe I’ll have your outlook.

I do not care for a single facet of it. Not the planning, or the reservations, of the attaining of paperwork. Packing or parking. Checking maps to see where my terminal might be. Pre-flight fondling by total strangers. Getting on a plane. Being on a plane. Getting off of a plane. Trying to find my way to wherever it is I am supposed to go, which I know in theory but must now execute. I also have a mild handicap which can make navigating some situations more difficult than it would otherwise be for someone normal. Seeing just kind of torture the word "breakfast" has undergone to appear in the hotel at morning.

Then there is the thing itself, whatever it is you are supposed to be seeing. Chances are, you won't even be able to get close to it. Apparently, you get to look at the Mona Lisa from something of a distance, and now less than a minute. Oooh. Then you should get a laminated card that says "Some photons bounced off of the Mona Lisa and were absorbed by my retina" so you can tell everyone.

And you're trapped wherever it is until your ticket home is valid.

Even if someone else is paying for it, I just have zero interest. Unfortunately, some friends have gotten into cruises and traveling, which leads to frequent exhortation that I, too, should travel, no matter how much I demur. Being pushed for travel was also an irritant at a previous job.

They say, "Well, think of all of the strange foods and new restaurants!" I spend more time at the international markets than most and, honestly, this city has plenty of restaurants I have yet to try, so if that were a motivating factor, I hardly need a plane ticket and itinerary to partake.

The furthest I have gone is about three hundred miles to take a close friend (he had a very terrible year of one disaster after another occur to him) to a concert to cheer him up.