This is a guest post by Andrew MacPherson, author of the blog Rules Optional as well as Sail to Trail.  When he says that rules are optional, he means it; the guy lives on a sailboat and is known to wear a kilt!  Follow him on Twitter at @rulesoptional and @sailtotrail.

Just admit it… you’ve checked out online dating profiles. I’m not sure how many, but don’t try to play all “I did some modeling in college and everyone tells me I’m hot so I meet people simply by existing” with me. I know your kind, I’ve met them online… then dated them. Even if you’re going to adopt your I’m being totally serious voice and sternly tell me… “no Andrew… Honestly! I have never even once looked at an online dating profile”, it doesn’t matter. We live in a world of self-promotional profile construction. Personal branding to brazenly enhance your career or Create Trust and Authority in 10 Seconds or Less™ is the advice du jour on the holy-grail trail to social media diva-guru-maven-hood and internet riches. If you’ve mixed in the right levels of authoritative-passionized-trustism and transparency, you’ll surely be tempted to take the kid-tested, mother-approved online dating profile silver bullet shortcut to looking universally cool.

“I love travel!”

There are apparently only two kinds of people on this planet… Those who love to travel, and those who haven’t yet figured out how to update their Facebook info tab. To that, I channel Chris Farley and say, “Well whoop-de-freakin’ do!” It is totally impossible that so many people love travel to the point of using it as one of the three to ten carefully selected verbs and adjectives defining the fundamental fabric of their entire personality.

Traveling sucks.

Yes, the idea of travel conjures up all sorts of romanticized emotions and images. From the closet portals to Narnia to the escapades of Knights Who Talk Strategy Around Unconventionally Shaped Conference Tables to vampires with accents honed far over the distant horizon, we’re immersed in the idea that the sexy people like to travel. I have news for you princess, Fabio isn’t going to leap from the cover of your novel and ride into town on a horse to make you a… um… princess; He lives in Hollywood and is probably still busy giving shirtless motorcycle rides to Tom Green.

There is nothing romantic about the screaming child kicking the back of your seat on the dusty bus ride to Ancientruinsville. There is nothing sexy about disappearing luggage. There is nothing mysteriously adventurous about an airport shuttle to your hotel. There is nothing magically delicious about McDonald’s global fare.

Now, before someone tries to make this all about me, assumes I loathe travel, and makes a tangential comment encouraging me to quit, I’ll make my simple point: You don’t have to love travel to be cool or sexy or smart or live a fulfilling life. You don’t have to engage in X amount of travel either. Lifestyle design, along with other related communities, places an arbitrary emphasis on travel in much the same way as dating profiles. I haven’t signed my name on an apartment lease since two years before the launch of YouTube and I’ve felt I wasn’t moving far enough fast enough at times. If my lifestyle hasn’t eradicated the silent pressure to keep moving, I guarantee it’s stressing out at least four billion other people.

There’s definitely an allure to travel. However, that allure has approximately zero requisite correlation to lifestyle design. It’s too easy to see other people liberated by laptops and cheap global communications and assume travel is the best use of modern technology. Here’s a secret… I’ve found it just as liberating to sip a beer on a Tuesday afternoon at a cafe five blocks from home as on a Central American beach during a surfing competition (the beer in the PNW is better too). Here’s another secret… The people I talk to when sitting in a cafe during normal working hours in Seattle are two or three times more excited to launch deep inquiries into how I’m able to do it. Maybe that’s because they’re closer to escape than populations of other countries, but that’s a little presumptuous. Maybe they just feel the invisible hand of free-market capitalism pressing more firmly on their souls. Suppositions aside, the key is owning your location in the space-time continuum. Prioritizing independence from geographic location over blatantly selfish mastery of your own time is a monumental mistake. There’s a reason the phrase “precious time” has 2point8 million search results on Google. Don’t swallow the artificially flavored powder mixed with sugar water by getting this backwards.

Travel as a default or temporary endeavor wouldn’t be an issue if travel didn’t completely envelop the lives of its participants. The notion of taking off on a voyage of self-discovery comes with built-in seduction, but discounts the fact that travel is often draining. It can devour resources and time like nothing else. Culture shock is very real and it absolutely stifles personality development before its relent allows personalities to flourish.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have only vague ideas of how they’d behave if they could behave any way they want. This idea is typically shaped by socialization in ways that can’t even be felt until after the opportunity to experiment is available. Culture is so pervasive that it’s not even a reasonable expectation. In these instances, travel can easily serve as substitute distraction, precluding attainment of pure self-discovery. Not everyone wants to be a nature photographer or travel writer or adventurer. Many people would rather restore vintage trains in their workshop in North Dakota than schlep across Europe or swim in tropical waters. Full-time travel can prevent and obscure self-realization in many of the same ways a full-time job would.

Moreover, some of the people dispensing the advice to travel without question are themselves traveling because they hadn’t previously developed their own identity and chose the default route. Beware the conflation of experience and expertise.

For anyone attracted to the core concepts of lifestyle design but somewhat put-off by the apparent travel requirement… You are among friends. There is no travel requirement. What was meant as a shining example of what could be done with free time has typically been co-opted and elevated to what should be done with free time. Like all dogmas, the dogma of travel is a target open to skepticism.

If that’s not clear enough, here you go: I hereby grant you permission, by the authority vested in me by living on a sailboat and having been solicited by prostitutes in multiple countries, to enjoy wherever you are for as long as you damn well please without restrictions of any sort. I absolve you of any responsibility to undertake a quest of mythic proportions to validate yourself as an enlightened individual or successful human. I implore you to revel in the sublime beauty only attained by spending enough time in a place to pulse with its nuance. I do have one small demand request… that we might possibly hang out when I visit. It’s people like you who introduce amazing local knowledge to those of us burdened by the urge to leave only that we may someday return. You make destinations more colorful and home more home-ful(?). Despite the many grandiose tales of epiphanies in far away lands, we’re all secretly a little jealous… of you.

Andrew enjoys long walks on the beach, holding hands at sunset, and has climbed Everest blindfolded with his grandmother while saving a puppy to raise money for the homeless. He is skeptical of this whole online thing but his friends talked him into it so he’s just trying it out. He hates games and appreciates people who love to laugh and live life to the fullest. His hobbies include monopolizing attention at parties with spontaneous guitar playing and solving world hunger. He works hard, plays harder, and feels just as comfortable in jeans as a cocktail dress. If you’re not busy tomorrow night, maybe you could come over to RulesOptional.com so we can hang out.

If you liked that jazz. . .check out some of these:

• You Don’t Need a Job – You Need Guts
• The Surefire Way to Save Yourself from Mediocrity (That You Already Know, But Don’t Do)
• Leaping, Diving & Plunging Head First Into Humanity
• Red High Heels, Slaughtered Pigs & Why Being Unsure Is A Good Thing
• You’re Not Drunk, But Your Vision Is Still Blurred – One Reason Why Religion, Marriage & Even Education Sucks