Working in retail at a local mall near my hometown, you come across some very interesting people. The personality types range from your ultimate cliches of people to your chatter boxes who feel the need to share their life story with you in 10 mins all the way to the extremely disliked nasty customer who thinks you are their butler in a mansion off the coast of California. Needless to say, I'm pretty entertained as an employee when I come across interesting people, I can turn into the voyeur I can be when watching movies. Grab me a box of popcorn and my A.D.D. is satisfied until they leave the store and the next rowdy crew of people stroll on in.
Lately I've been getting the customer who explains to me the mistakes they made in life and tell me to do the complete opposite of them.
"I got married young and didn't get a chance to explore the world, get out their and enjoy life!"
"I waited til I was 33 to get married, I went and enjoyed myself and traveled, you should do the same!"
Now, I'm all for talking to people and understanding why they are the way they are. I love it, I love hearing different people's stories and creating my own opinions about my own decisions in how I live my life. One thing I wish people would understand more is how much more difficult it is to travel today then it was 10, 20, or even 5 years ago.
I'd love to travel the world and see things that I'm not accustomed to living my entire life in North America. I work 2 minimum waged jobs, work less than 15 hours a week, and get paid bi-weekly. Not to mention I have to attempt to afford gas for my car to travel the 4 and a half hour trip it takes to get from home and back to school. On top of paying for the necessities of life like food, bathroom products, and so on. I'm not even paying bills, luckily my parents are saints in helping me pay for that but other than that I simply can't afford to travel anywhere besides my house and back to school.
I understand there are loans you can take out in order to pay for these acts of spontaneous trips to places but there it is again, a loan, something that will take me probably 3 years to pay off even though it was only a $1,000. I started really trying to save my money when I was going into my junior year of college and it took me over a year to save $1,000 of my own hard earned cash. I'm not willing to blow that just yet because I'd like to do other things, like move out of my parents house and try to find a real job.
Can't help but to miss the times I wasn't old enough to be a part of, when it was easier to travel places and really enjoy life for what it is. Now with all the war and violence going on, there becomes another obstacle preventing this ideology that 'traveling' is a way of living life to the fullest.
I must say I've been to different places and have been lucky to go. I feel very blessed to be where I am today and I don't see marriage or being together with someone an obstacle in traveling. If anything I'd rather travel the world with a significant other instead of solo, it'd be way more interesting and fun to share those experiences with someone you care about. Anyway, point blank being life of a college student is hard enough and with times being what they are only adds to the financial troublesome-ness. I'm more excited to graduate and get out of this town then anything and can't wait to experience my life outside of this college town that has grown to be a horrible experience for me personally.
My idea of travel is sharing an experience with someone I truly care about and getting the hell out of the town of Oswego moving on to way bigger and better things.
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