Feed Your Mind as a Hobby

I don't really understand why people go on expensive vacations to elsewhere. I never have understood that.

Some comedian did a bit about "You want a travel experience? Go sit in your closet and run the vacuum cleaner to simulate the misery of air travel." That's about right. 

Actually traveling tends to be a miserable experience for the most part. You spend all your time looking for bathrooms, desperately trying to keep yourself fed and with your hair on fire about finding where you need to be so you don't miss your boarding time. 

I've done a fair amount of traveling. I was a military wife and we moved a lot and I've moved a lot post divorce, but I've maybe been on two stereotypical vacations, one when I was like five or six and my mom insisted our dad take us to the beach. 

They nearly divorced over that and my big memories related to that are:

1. Me and my sister and brother walking to the very top of the big hill of our street -- which was way far for me -- to get away from the scary loud argument our parents were having before we went.

2. My dad quietly began pulling aside the waitress and telling her "Ignore whatever our youngest daughter orders and bring us two of what her sister orders." Because I was feeling extremely insecure and I would eat my sister's meal and not touch mine.

3. On the drive back, one of our comic books got sucked out the car window and lost forever. I helplessly WATCHED it happen like a horror movie moment. (I was like five. I was HORRIFIED.)

People go on vacations and they are frequently traveling to go see zoos, museums, historic sites and nature. And while traveling they seem more inclined to give themselves permission to spend big bucks on fancy restaurant meals.

You don't need a pile of money and a plane ticket to do any of that. You can probably do all that in your town for little to no money or inexpensively by going a much shorter distance to something nearby. 

And you can give yourself permission to splurge once in a while on a nice restaurant meal without first buying a plane ticket. 

Heck, if you just like the food and don't care about the dining experience and atmosphere, my mom picked up takeout once a week from a local upscale restaurant every summer and then we provided our own drinks. I was like eighteen before I learned that was a fancy expensive restaurant and not a takeout window ONLY.

I was in my twenties when my husband who didn't grow up in my hometown mentioned that my hometown had a museum.

That was news to me. I'm 61 years old and I think I have still never been to the museum in my home town.

I was a child. My parents never took me. I just didn't know that was a thing where I lived.

If you come from a completely NORMAL American family and have never been to any of the local attractions, FYI: 

You probably have local museums, zoos, historic sites and libraries -- which may periodically have exhibits or events similar to a museum -- plus some kind of nature where you live in your town or very nearby.

Like the main character in Good Will Hunting, you can have a rich intellectual life for little to no money by going to see all the local stuff that's free or cheap. Museums and zoos typically do charge an entrance fee, but they often have free days periodically and getting a local library card may entitle you to free or reduced fee entry to local intellectual stuff like museums and zoos, though it may have limited dates or other restrictions.

Go to all the places, look at all the things, read all the plaques, look stuff up on your phone related to it, check out history books about local history that your local library has that may not be readily available elsewhere because most people don't really care that much about (obscure history of Podunk nowhere) and become an expert in local history and culture.

I read the history of water development in Fresno, California while homeless in Fresno. If you are bottom of the barrel homeless with no money and no identification and can't qualify for a library card, you can still sit in a library and read books so long as you behave yourself.

Why?

Why not? You got something better to do? If you are bored and broke, most of this stuff costs little or nothing.

Are you on the side of the jerk in Good Will Hunting who says essentially "Yes, but I'll have a degree and be making more money than you."? You think education only has value if it leads to a big paycheck?

Yeah, that's how they convinced a bunch of people to make bankers rich while they became slaves to servicing their mountain of student loans, often while still working in fast food and living in Mom's basement.

If your parents aren't paying for it and you don't have clear career goals requiring a degree, a degree isn't necessarily a better education than reading and going to all the museums and historic sites in person which is the equivalent of highly valuable field trips in academia.

A degree is a credential. If for some reason you need credentials to get a better job, having the knowledge in your head can potentially be turned into credentials inexpensively via testing or creating a portfolio, which some colleges will give you academic credit for.

And in the mean time you are probably having good, clean fun without a hangover or wondering if there's a baby waiting to be born and you don't remember the other parent's name or whatever.