There are a lot of benefits of traveling. Here are some examples:
- Reduces stress
- Boosts creativity and confidence
- Increases happiness
- Teaches how to adapt to a new environment
- Experience new cultures (new language, food, and people)
- Create new friends
Overall, traveling is good for your health and the mental health benefits of traveling is key to personal development. I like traveling because it’s fun, reduces stress, and teaches you about new cultures.
I’d like to toss in a somewhat unique benefit and perspective to travel – you get to time travel. It’s not like how they show in the movies where space and time warps and you have laser beams of light flash by you. It’s the idea that you can live out a past event or future scenario of your life.
I time traveled into the past and future when I traveled to Bellevue this past weekend.
Almost perfect Bellevue
I traveled to Bellevue this past weekend to go visit from college friends. It was my first time in Bellevue and to be quite honest, if it weren’t for the rainy and grey weather, the small city has everything I would want for my future place of living – a modern feel to the environment, nature-y things to do right in your backyard (aka hiking in Mt Rainer and playing beach volleyball next to the ocean or lake), close to other cities (like Seattle), small enough to make things like food and visiting friends convenient, and great food and coffee options.
If you’ve never heard of been to Bellevue, it’s a city that’s just east of Seattle. It’s the fifth largest city in Washington, having a population of over 150,000 people. It’s known as the “city in a park” because it’s got over 100 parks scattered across the city.
You can get a great view of the Seattle skyline.
They got some great food options. My friends and I got Dough zone. Forgot to take pictures of the food…so I’ll leave the Yelp here for you to check out. Instead, here are some bomb donuts in one of the 100 parks in Bellevue.
They also have this fancy tea place called CHICHA San Chen. Great tea.
I can go on but these are just some of the examples of what Bellevue has to offer and why I loved the city.
Time traveling into the future
Two things made it feel like I was traveling into the future when I was in Bellevue: experiencing a completely different living environment and working environment at the Pokémon offices.
The distinction in living environment
It just hit me that in just a 2 hour flight, I could be transported to someplace that was completely different in feel and look.
The downtown and suburb environment of Bellevue is so different from where I live in Tucson. Aside from the rain, it’s greener, smaller, and more modern. The downtown vibe is also very different from downtown Tucson – the high skyrise apartments, the cleanliness of the streets, and hustle and bustle of downtown really made me feel like I was in a “newer” city. I was also thinking “ah – this is where I wanted to live after I graduated from college”. It felt a little surreal.
The distinction in work office environments
As an engineer in college, the high tech companies like Google had the offices you’d want to work at. I’d hear about these offices having gaming lounges and napping rooms. The companies would also offer food catering services. Who wouldn’t want to work at a place like that right??
Pokémon is one of the companies. It’s got a cool, fun, and modern work environment. They have very modern looking offices with big glass windows that oversee downtown Bellevue.
They also have Pokémon statues and hall of fames scattered around the offices. I mean…there is this big ass Charizard sitting on the stairwell. Everything made my company’s office look aged and lackluster.
I also grew up with Pokémon so seeing the office environment felt a little bit nostalgic. At the end of the office tour, I started thinking – this is the type of work environment I would want to work at in the future.
Time traveling into the past
Playing video games and poker again with my friends was like time traveling in to the past. It also made me realize how much fun I’ve lacked in my life the last couple of months and how important it is to have fun in life in whatever you do.
In college, my friends and I use to play poker and Super Smash Melee (had to specify Melee because I’m a fan of the game…over Ultimate… :D) until like 3AM in the morning…very typical college student decisions. Those decisions produced some of my favorite memories of college.
We never learned from our choices because we did it again as 30 year olds this past weekend. Our bodies did ache more waking up the next day, but no regrets because I’ve never laughed and saw my friends laugh so hard playing games.
Learning from traveling
I really like what Bryan Cranston says about why travel is good for you:
People gain a tremendous amount of wisdom when they travel, when they wander, when they allow themselves, as I did, to get lost”
bryan cranston
That wisdom and learning you gain is one of the benefits of traveling. You learn about what you need to change presently in order to achieve that future vision of who you want to be.
My time in Bellevue taught me several things:
- Do not get comfortable in my current situation career and living wise. To get to live somewhere like Bellevue and work in a environment like Pokémon will take a lot of hard work and financial changes.
- Don’t forget to have fun in anything you do. Having fun makes the journey to your personal goals so much more enjoyable.
- Continue to invest in your friendships. If I hadn’t kept in touch with the friends I met over this trip, this trip would’ve never happened.
Thanks for reading 🙂
