How Long Term Travel Changes You Psychologically

I use AI to help me write my posts. I give it a topic and tell it to ask me questions about my thoughts and views of that topic, and then it uses those answers to write the post.

For today’s blog post, I’m doing something a little different.

Even after giving AI detailed answers to its questions, it just couldn’t write a blog post that said what I really wanted to say. I even had it rewrite twice. Still, AI missed the mark.

Here was the prompt I gave it this morning.

I want to do a blog post that only covers how long-term travel changes you psychologically because it teaches constant letting go. Please do research on this topic and ask me any questions that will help make the blog my own.

So, I’m going to give you the conversation AI and I had today by showing you the questions it asked me, and my honest (no AI involved) answers.

AI: When you leave a place you love, what does it actually feel like emotionally?

Ruby: I make sure to leave a pin on the spot, so I can return if I want to (and a few places, I have returned.) It makes me feel less lost, because I know of this great place. It is excitement, because I have another place I "belong".

AI: Do you linger emotionally after leaving places, or detach quickly now?

Ruby: I detach quickly because I'm too busy thinking about where the next place will be.

AI: Have you ever cried leaving somewhere?

Ruby: In January of 2025, while at a nomad event in California, I got sepsis and landed in the hospital for 8 days. The doctor told me because I have nodules on my lungs due to an autoimmune disease I have, I had no business being in the desert. When I was released from the hospital, I went to my camp in Quartzsite, tore down my tent and loaded it in the car and headed toward my friend's house in Mesa, AZ, where I would stay for two weeks while I recovered. I was so very depressed. I cried every day. It wasn't just the thought of not being able to be in the desert that depressed me, it was that my only other choice (or so I thought) was to go back to Vermont. At the end of my recovery phase at my friend's, I realized the only way to get out of my depression was to go back to the desert. I made sure to wear an N-95 mask every day, but after a while I stopped and I have been fine since. I still get frequent lung infections, but it's worth it. Since that time I've been back and forth to Vermont twice, both times realizing home was the desert and not Vermont. And I came back and have been there since. All those other places, they're just places. I know when I'm done in those places, I get to go back home to the desert.

AI: Are there specific people you still think about years later?

Ruby: Yes, many people. They are now either friends on Facebook or we exchanged phone numbers and text now and then. I treasure the relationships I've made out here.

AI: Have temporary friendships changed the way you connect to people in general?

Ruby: Yes, I had a friend that I even met in person a couple of times. After a while, I found that the friendship just wasn't working, and I just stopped contacting her. Just because you're both nomads doesn't mean you will be compatible, there has to be more to it.

AI: Do you think road life has made you emotionally more open or more guarded?

Ruby: It has made me emotionally more guarded, because I've been hurt terribly by other nomads I thought were my friends, so I am now more careful who I let in now, because it was painful to lose those friends. I felt betrayed.

AI: Do you intentionally avoid getting too attached now because you know you’ll leave?

Ruby: I don't intentionally avoid it because I know people leave. But sometimes they come back. Sometimes only in my memories, but that's the best way, because I get to control how the friendship plays out, even if only in my head.

AI: Do you think movement itself became part of healing?

Ruby: Definitely. I get restless when I sit still too long. Movement brings the beauty of this great Earth, and often that beauty is what I need to feel better.

AI: Did staying mobile help you rediscover yourself?

Ruby: It definitely did, but what helped me even more was finding places I could camp for a few days or weeks and just be left alone. Solitude is what helped me more than any friendship I’ve had.

AI: Did the road strip away parts of your old identity?

Ruby: It most certainly did. I left my old identity behind me last year back in Quartzsite when I changed my name to Ruby Tuesday, and I've been reinventing myself ever since. (Listen to the words to that Rolling Stones song and you'll understand why).

AI: Are there versions of yourself you feel you “left behind” geographically?

Ruby: Yes, I no longer identify with the version of myself that I left in Vermont.

AI: Are there places you revisit mentally even if you’ll never return physically?

Ruby: Yes, too many to count.

AI: Do memories feel stronger now because experiences are temporary?

Ruby: Yes, I hold strong memories because I know there's a possibility I will never experience them again and I want to treasure them.

AI: Have you noticed yourself taking fewer photos and simply remembering more?

Ruby: Yes, but I still take pictures, more for historical data than the actual picture. This way I can look in my Google Photos app and it will tell me the date I visited that place. It makes the good memories better to know when they happened. Also, there’s something about sunsets, especially in the desert, that inspire me to take lots of pictures. I tie more meaning to a picture of a sunset than I do any other pictures I take.

AI: Do you think nomads become archivists of moments because they can’t keep places?

Ruby: I disagree that nomads can't keep places. Many return to the same places they love again and again. I am proof of that. If I love a place enough, I will go out of my way to go back there.

AI: Have you noticed yourself becoming better at goodbye?

Ruby: Nomads never say "goodbye", they say "see you down the road". There are no goodbyes on the road, because there's always the chance you'll see each other again.

AI: Do you think nomads sometimes become detached as self-protection?

Ruby: I don't believe that nomads become detached. On the contrary, they leave a little of themselves wherever they go. And in their minds, and sometimes in reality, they can always go back.

AI: Is there anything you no longer allow yourself to hope for because of the instability of the lifestyle?

Ruby: Absolutely not. I have big plans for my future, and I will need my nomad "instability" for those plans and dreams to come true. This blog is a perfect example of that.

AI: Do you think freedom inherently requires letting go?

Of things, yes, but not of people. You never really let go of the people and places you hold dear, even if they only live in your memories.