My Homebody Paradox

Posted on June 1, 2026

I was recently thinking about how I don’t get out enough. Sometimes, days have passed, and I realize I’ve never left my apartment. Usually, on the days I do leave, I have to be forced out. I’m pulled along by obligations like class or groceries. Other times, I have to make myself take a five-minute walk around the block in the waning daylight to make sure I get a scrap of sunlight and fresh air that day.

It was ever the same back when I was living with my parents. Maybe even worse at times, during those stretches where I had no obligations to force me out into the open. Out of that little domestic bubble. But at least back then, I had the excuse of there being nowhere much to go. I was surrounded by gas stations, convenience stores, fast food chains, and not really much else. Plus, to get to any of it, I had to jump in my car and drive. Something I’ve never liked doing when compared to walking or even just taking public transportation.

Yet now I’m living in the city, and still no more likely to leave home most days. I have museums only a bus ride away, going unvisited. Places marked on my map that remain untouched.

This is in sharp contrast to the wanderlust that frequently plagues me. I love traveling, I love going to new places, and I’m always looking for a new adventure. I even have trouble picturing settling down in one place for the rest of my life. One of the reasons I picked my grad school university (though I promise not the only one) is because it’s in a city I hadn’t lived in yet.

I dream of one day being able to work overseas. My dream job, if I could do anything, is probably being a travel writer. In the midst of lockdowns during 2020, I was going stir crazy being stuck at home for months, obsessed with the thought of just going somewhere – anywhere – else. A few years back, I started setting a goal to travel somewhere new each year, and so far, I haven’t missed it once. In March, I went on a road trip to South Carolina. Even more recently than that, I made a trip to the state next door to visit Columbus, Ohio.

So, where does this contradiction come from? How can I be both a homebody and a globetrotter with a voracious appetite for more? It’s a difficult question for me to answer, but there’s value in asking yourself the hard questions.

A lot of it can be chalked up to the simple answer of my executive dysfunction. Part of executive dysfunction is struggling with making transitions. If something as simple as switching from one task to another can become an insurmountable hurdle, it may be obvious why leaving the house can seem no easier than getting to the moon. I’ll make plans for the day and then become stuck, unable to get myself ready to leave. Enough time can be wasted this way that eventually it seems better to give up on going out entirely. Especially if the place I wanted to go might be closed in just an hour by that point.

Yet, while this does a lot to explain why I frequently find myself an unwilling homebody, it doesn’t shed any light on the other side of this coin. Because it’s not as simple as saying I always have trouble getting out and doing things. Travel is difficult, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love it. I’ve taken all these big trips, some of which have involved tons of planning.

Sure, I had to work my way up to that. My first forays into solo traveling were via group tours with everything planned and booked for me. Still, at this point, I’m an accomplished solo traveler and loving it. So why the struggle? Why can I plan a trip to Japan in only two months yet struggle to leave my apartment? Why does it feel so easy to take these big trips, yet being out and about in Pittsburgh remains beyond my mental energy? Why does a bus ride become such a hurdle when I’ll get on a plane without hesitation?

I wonder if grad school has something to do with it. I was still in the process of opening up to the joys of travel when I was in undergrad (I was even hesitant to study abroad, if you can believe it), but once I did, I made my way all over the city of Philadelphia. I visited cafes, restaurants, theaters, and museums every week. Compared to that, I feel like even after almost a year, I barely know the city of Pittsburgh. But undergrad and grad school are entirely different beasts.

Has grad school taken up so much of my energy that I hardly want to travel? It’s possible. I may have more free time than most of my classmates, but all the classwork and readings still take an absolute ton of mental energy. Trying to save money, as I handle more of my own expenses now than I did in undergrad, also causes visiting things like shops, restaurants, and cafes around the city to lose a lot of its appeal. That’s all part of it, but it doesn’t ring as the whole story, and that’s what vexes me.

When it comes down to it, I think multiple factors are converging to keep me a homebody. First, there’s a threshold a trip has to cross for me to really put my energy into it. That threshold only grows higher the more work it is to go anywhere worthwhile. A trip to Japan, teaming with sights I want to see, is compelling enough that I have almost boundless energy for it. But when it comes to something a little smaller…

Back when I was living with my parents, Philadelphia was only an hour away by train from a train station just a short drive from home. However, the bother of having to make that car and train trip meant I needed a good reason to go, beyond just a casual trip to the city. Here in Pittsburgh, navigating by bus isn’t too much of a hassle, but some of the places I’m more interested in going require a bus ride of an hour or more. That can kill my motivation, especially when I can just go another time. Meanwhile, a lot of the bigger trips I’ve taken

this year were group trips, meaning less individual effort needed on my part and external motivation to get me out of my rut.

Second, I’m constantly worried about what I should be doing rather than actually doing it. By that I mean I often find myself thinking about all the grad school work I should be doing, and why I can’t do other things like travel around the city until it’s done. Yet the work often doesn’t get done any sooner than if I’d wasted some time on a trip in the first place. I spend so much time worrying and procrastinating that I could have just taken the trip and been no worse off. I know this pattern well, yet I fall into it every time.

Finally, I think I just have trouble prioritizing multiple things in my life at once. With grad school becoming such a big presence in my life, I’ve noticed it’s become too easy for me to let other things fall to the wayside. Not just traveling either. Even continuing to write blog posts regularly has become more and more of a challenge. I only have so much energy to focus, to break through my executive dysfunction. There’s only so much I can keep on my mind at once. Budgeting my time and energy for other things is quick to fall by the wayside when I have one priority demanding so much of it. Especially when travel itself can be so draining, no matter how much I enjoy it.

Still, I need to find time for other things in my life. Whether that’s travel or something else. I can’t let grad school become a black hole that sucks everything up. Spending all my time shuffling between my apartment and school isn’t how I want to live. Even if sometimes doing what I actually want feels harder than doing what’s simply easy.