You don't need to travel to grow

I recently had an epiphany.

I hadn't been at home for the last 4 months. And it is only this last month, September have I realized I've been slacking on everything.  It was August and I had not gotten a job and I wasn't volunteering or meeting new people. During my travels in Central America I was constantly meeting new people and practicing Spanish.

So around the end of August, I became bored and started looking for things to do. I settled on learning programming (again). I had begin Udacity's Intro to Computer Science last year but had not finished. I heard about this new one month rails course and learned that Code School had some great classes too. I looked into these options but decided that I need a b beginner course first. So I started with tryruby.com and Codeacademy.

I finished both of those in August. Now I'm on to one month rails. After I finish that I will be moving onto Code School's courses.

While I finished these classes I noticed I could also do some outside activities as well. I began looking and found that every thursday a group of people meet to talk about web development about an hour away from me. Then I found that a startup weekend event read occurring less than 2 hours away from me.  I also discovered that I could couchsurf while I attended these events.

Bam. Right there I had recreated all the experiences of traveling. Without going more than 3 hours from my home.

My friends and I talk about needing to travel to develop yourself, but I've just realized you don't need to go further than a few bucks of gas worth to broaden yourself.

Don't get me wrong. Traveling us a great way to grow. You're thrust into unfamiliar situations and you're forced to meet new people. But if you're persistent, the same can be done here at home.