The best thing about solo travel can also become the worst!

I will say from the off that this post is a series of first world problems and I am very well aware that I am privileged to have these as small issues, but they felt bigger at the time and this is my blog about my feelings so with that out of the way here we go. 

I love travelling and have been trying to build my own YouTube channel based around it. www.youtube.com/@justpickoneuk if you weren't aware. Travelling with my family is wonderful, I love sharing the world especially with my son, we have been on a number of holidays and days out now and he loves travelling too. But being able to travel alone is a wonderful privilege.  

My most recent adventure was for 10 days and I was able to go on a 2 night cruise from Southampton to Hamburg, then a sleeper train to Stockholm, then after two flights to the mid west of the USA where I was sight seeing and chasing tornados. It was an incredible adventure and such an amazing experience.

 Travelling solo allows me to stop and start whenever I want to. Go back to somewhere or stay in one place for a while to film for the channel, stare longer at scenery or just move on whenever I want. Having a long mooch around a shop or just grab a take away instead of sitting in a restaurant because you really don't want to. 

The freedom to do as you please is very liberating! However: Freedom = Responsibility. 

I really did enjoy my experience and I felt free for a lot of it. Just taking care of myself, doing my plans, filming for my videos. But I also felt so incredibly alone I can distinctly remember feeling decision fatigue. 

The relentlessness of adulting is a post I wrote a while ago but it really does hit home when you are travelling alone. Even travelling in your own country or if in a foreign land and you speak the language, you have to make all of the decisions. Some of them are routine, "which route shall I take" "what's for lunch?". But some of them hit home a bit harder, "Where am I going to sleep?", "I am in charge of all of my personal belongings", "I am responsible for my safety at all times". Decision Fatigue is a situation where you have made so many decisions in the course of the day to the point where it can cause you to be overly concerned with making the wrong choice or your brain is unable to make any more. 

One occasion where this seemed to hit me hard was when I was in Hamburg, Germany deciding what I wanted to eat. It was beyond lunch time but as I had already had a big breakfast on board the cruise ship which had brought me here I wasn't that hungry - yet. I felt like I needed to get food soon otherwise I would be trying to find food while hungry which isn't a good look on me. So I was walking around looking for a restaurant or cafe or take away place. I wasn't finding anything I could gel with. Nothing seemed appealing. I felt worse and worse about making a decision. I actually had to stop and just have a moment with myself, take a breath and think. After 2 minutes of just not doing anything I remembered a shop I had seen earlier in the day with a bakery inside. It made my spirit lift and I headed over there as it wasn't far away. I got into the cafe and realised it actually had a shop inside as well. It also had a salad buffet inside with all of my favourites in it. I was so relieved. I could just get something simple I knew would be right for me, sit on the dock and watch the boats for a while. Sitting there watching the boats I had a real low moment. Why did it take me that long to make a choice when I was so free? Why did it take me so long to just make a decision about something so simple as to what to eat? Decision Fatigue. 

A few days later I was in the USA and inside a Walmart. By this point I had been on a 2 day cruise, had a day trip to Hamburg, been on an overnight sleeper train to Stockholm, spent 2 hours there and flown to the UK, then flown to Denver and driven a car on the wrong side of the road, I was tired! Now I was inside the biggest supermarket I had ever been in and the wave of indecision hit again. What would I like? Why am I here? I have all the choice in the world, yet I cannot make a choice. I have the financial freedom to buy anything I want in here yet I cannot choose anything. I can literally buy crisps, salad, frozen meals, tins of beans, box meals, cupcake mix, a Lego set, a baby bath and buggy (stroller for my US audience), an entire new wardrobe for my whole family, my own TV, a power drill, a lawnmower, but I cannot make up my mind! Remembering my feelings in Hamburg I had to resettle myself. Take a breath and just be quiet amongst all of the noise.  

Decisions become hard to make when you have to make them all the time. The constancy of making decisions becomes overwhelming. I read that an adult will make somewhere in the region of 35000 decisions per day so it is no wonder that our brains can eventually just stop processing for a while. I am so very grateful that my experience of decision fatigue happened at times when I wasn't in danger or responsible for other people. I had the chance to just sit and be quiet and calm for a while. I have the utmost respect for those who live alone or single parents who have to do this for other dependents on a daily basis. 

Thank you for making the decision to read this and if you struggle with decision fatigue, I hope you know that you are not alone and you just need to take time out and breathe. For me, breathing is the only thing to do in this moment. Quieten my mind from as much stimuli as possible and just breathe. You can make one more decision in the next few moments but for now all you have to do is breathe - nothing else - for a long as you need to in order to reset and think clearly again. 

Good luck and until next time xx