I just flew to Boston last week for a wedding, and your comment about checking bags makes me feel kike this is a good time and place to discuss this: I don’t like travel, and it baffled me how many people claim to like to travel. I cannot help but be reminded of the articles and discussions I’ve seen around autisstic people being less influenced by advertising and wonder whether there is a connection.

For years, my wife (who is VERY not- autistic) has expressed her desire to travel, and as our finances have developed we started to do day trips to nearby downs, then extended weekend road trips to nearby cities, then this recent flight to Boston for her brother’s wedding. And each time I’ve been… Whelmed, at best.

This time, as we got off the plane and we’re going through the airport on our way home, I noticed an ad for hotel that said something along the lines of “the best part about staying here is getting away”. And I constantly hear people say things like “it’s good to get out of the house” or “I really need to get out of the house”. And I have to wonder… What’s so bad about your house that you feel the need to escape from it?

I’ll acknowledge my privilege here. I can certainly understand how some people with worse situations at home would want to get away. Those who are forced to live with roommates, family members, ex’s. I’ve lived in dorms and shitty, dark, moldy apartments before. I’m in my mid-30’s, no kids, great relationship with my wife. We prioritized buying a house early on, and I’ve spent the last decade slowly improving it. It’s full of little conveniences and luxuries- the extra outlets I’ve added, the networking I’ve done to get good Internet speeds throughout, the lovely plants my wife cares for. I have an exercise area in the basement with my weights and exercise bike, my guitars and other musical equipment are set up to be easy to reach, I have just about every videogame more than 5 years old ready to play on almost any screen with almost any controller on a moment’s notice. Cabinets, fridge, and freezer full of food and drinks that we like, usually some combination of affordable, delicious, nutritious, or convenient. We have a water cooler with 5 gallon jugs to get that delicious, crisp, cold H20 available at all times. A nice private back yard and garden we take care of, and when the sun hits the porch just right in the early autumn… Of course our two wonderful cats.

So to me the idea of needing to “get out of the house” is just baffling. My wife says this sometimes and I just have a really hard time relating to the sentiment. She wants to “go out” to bars and I just can’t understand the appeal of purposefully going somewhere to pay 10x the price for drinks just to have someone else pour it for you and not have to put the dishes in the dishwasher yourself, to be surrounded by half-drunk and loud strangers, to have little control over the environment around you, and to have to worry about getting home safely. When we could just… Stay in and drink together much more cheaply and comfortably.

The best parts of the Boston trip, for me, were the times spent chilling in our hotel room. My wife likes mid-day naps, but I can’t nap, so I got some lovely time in just laying next to her and playing Disco Elysium on my Steam Deck. One night we took a bunch of edibles and watched art restoration videos on YouTube. And while I had a great time, I couldn’t help but wonder… Why did we have to take a trip to Boston to do this?

The hotel was $1,500 for 4 nights, not including the food and drinks and dry cleaning. The airfare was $850. I have not yet added up all the bar and restaurant and convenience store bills but it’s definitely over $500. $100 in souvenirs to bring home to people. That’s getting close to $3k, and that’s not even counting other things like tickets to Boston’s mediocre aquarium, the $700 I spent to get a suit to match the wedding’s dress code (I don’t even want to know what my wife spent on her dress), the wedding present, the sweater and jacket we bought there because it was colder than we expected, etc.

Then there is the time. I had to take 5 of my precious vacation days from work for this. I’ve been with my company over a decade and get 20 days a year, which is pretty good for the US and pretty dismal for a developed country. So 1/4 of that goes to this trip. On the way there we had to wake up at 3AM, and on the way back we didn’t get back to the house until 1:30 AM. We spent so many hours waiting for things, including 11 hours in the Boston airport because our flights were cancelled and delayed repeatedly on the way back.

Then there’s the inconvenience and the stress of it all. I hate sleeping in a place where I’m sharing walls, floors, and ceiling with other rooms of strangers. It feels like I’m still in public and still need to mask. The walls in the hotel were thin and I didn’t even feel comfortable talking loudly. I could hear other people moving around and talking in the night. My wardrobe was limited. My videogames were mostly limited to what I had downloaded to the Deck in advance because the Internet wasn’t great for streaming.

I still enjoyed myself. It was nice to spend some time with my wife. I did like the novelty of walking around a very walkable city… For the first day. But when I weigh the costs of this trip and my enjoyment of it… I would have much rather spent those 5 vacation days at home. I would have much rather spent that $3k on something my wife and I can enjoy for years instead of stuff that’s gone after a week. For example- both of our PC’s are old and struggle to play modern games, or to play pretty much anything at 4K. For $3k I could have upgraded both of our GPU’s, or perhaps built a home server with virtual machines we could share. That $3k might be close to enough to re-pave our driveway, which has been badly needed for years now. Would have been a nice contribution towards finishing our basement. Could have been new flooring for our living room and dining room. Maybe that could have gone towards a bit of solar on our house (we lost a freezer full of food when a storm knocked the power out for a few days back in April, for example). Could have been part of the down payment for our next car, whenever that is. $3k is about 60 hours of work for me, gross. I don’t feel like I got good value from this trip.