Do seamonkeys get itchy feet?

Seamonkey on a trip.

or fins, or paws, or mandibles, or appendage of choice.

I have always been an eager traveller. I started young, surviving two-day long road trips from Botswana to Durban from the age of 1.

And some of my best memories are of the bus trips I took from home in Durban to university in Cape Town. The trips lasted anything from 23 to 32 hours, depending on how many times the bus broke down.

I loved driving through the Karoo and feeling overwhelmed by the space and emptiness. The huge skies, the scrubby plants and lonely koppies, the tiny towns along the way. I always found myself wondering, what is it like to live in a tiny town in the middle of somplaceobscurewhere? What is it like to say you are from Bethlehem, or Zastron? It was another world for me.

Not so fun were getting cankles the size of Nigeria, and endless Leon Schuster movies on repeat. "I told you to go down but you deed not leesen". Lawdy. Digression.

I have always intended to travel. To backpack throughout the world, living in tents or hostels, staying as long as I liked, and then moving on to the next place as the whim took me.

The reality is that it is not that straight forward. Money is an issue. One that I underestimated when I came to the UK. I figured picking fruit on farms would provide the dough for me to see the world. How naive. The money barely covered my chocolate digestives in the UK. Although, I required quite a few of those, it must be said.

So I got a real job with real money. And now the issue is time. Leave is miniscule. I have had to become a tourist rather than a traveller, making short trips and skimming cultures rather than immersing myself in their mysterious ways.

Life never quite turns out how you planned it. Sometimes I feel I have sold out by living this boring grown up life. I could just set off right now and travel until my money runs out. But there is something holding me back, some fear of something that probably needs to be kicked in the balls. Some sense of insecurity. Because yeah, it is so much better to spend my money on a vacuum cleaner, a pot plant, a washing rack, fancy hair masques, super strong Toilet Duck, and double glazing. Oh yeah. Oh baby.

But I do it, I plod on, never exactly sure why. Because I think other people expect me to? Because I am scared I will end up jobless on the streets otherwise? Because I don't know what else I can do? Yes, yes, and yes again.

I have travelled far more than I ever thought possible when I was an 18 year old who had never really left Durban. Back then a trip to the beach was a once-yearly road trip. A road trip that took 15 minutes. We never went places much.

But I dream of so much more. I do my mundane responsible thing, always with a giant question mark floating over my head. ? Always with one eye on my backpack and my walking shoes.

Maybe one day.

P.S. And don't worry, I am not considering giving up my day job to become a Photoshop graphic designer or wotsit. Not juuuuuust yet.