Coming home and what to do with it

Enormous effort goes into planning departures and almost none into returns, which is why the days after a trip are frequently flat.

The practical arrangements

What makes the return manageable.

A day at home before returning to work, which is the single most useful arrangement and the one most often skipped.

Arriving on a Sunday evening and working on Monday morning guarantees an unpleasant week.

Food in the house, arranged before departure or ordered to arrive.

The admin anticipated: post, bills, anything that accumulated.

Laundry planned, since a suitcase left unpacked for a fortnight is a recognisable pattern.

Sleep managed, using the light timing principles discussed elsewhere on this site, since return jet lag is generally worse than outbound.

The flatness

Widely experienced and rarely discussed.

The return from a substantial trip frequently produces a period of low mood, restlessness and dissatisfaction with ordinary life.

The reported contributing factors: the loss of novelty and stimulation, the return to routine, the difficulty of conveying the experience to people who were not there, and in some cases a genuine shift in perspective that makes previous arrangements feel wrong.

For longer trips this can be substantial, and it is sometimes described as reverse culture shock.

Knowing it is common makes it considerably easier to handle.

What helps

Practical measures reported by people who travel frequently.

Having something arranged in the first week back — a meal with friends, an activity, something to look forward to.

Doing something with the experience rather than simply resuming.

Cooking something learned, continuing a language, reading about the place, meeting people who have been there.

Planning the next thing, however small and however far off, which changes the return from an ending into an interval.

Accepting that the account will not land. People ask how it was and want a sentence, not the experience.

Finding one person who genuinely wants the longer version, and telling them, addresses most of what the polite question does not.

The photographs and the record

The step that determines whether any of it is retained.

Selecting the images worth keeping within a week, while you remember what they were.

Writing a page about the trip — not a diary, a summary of what it was actually like, what was unexpected, what you would do differently.

This takes an hour and is the difference between a trip that remains available and one that becomes a vague impression within two years.

The specific things worth recording: the places you stayed and whether they were good, the things you would recommend, the things that did not work, and what you would take or leave next time.

The purchases

A brief practical note.

Things bought abroad frequently look different at home, and the ones that survive are generally the useful and the edible rather than the decorative.

Which is an argument for buying ingredients, kitchen equipment and books rather than objects.

Import restrictions on food, plant material and animal products are worth checking before buying rather than at the border.

The reflection worth doing

Three questions, answered honestly, that improve every subsequent trip.

What was the best part, and was it planned or not?

What did you spend time and money on that you would not repeat?

What would you do differently — pace, length, planning, destination type?

Most people find that the answers are consistent across trips, and that acting on them produces better trips than any amount of destination research.

The longer view

A closing observation.

A place generally becomes more interesting six months after leaving it, provided something is read about it afterwards.

Which is an argument for buying the book while there, and for treating the trip as the beginning of an interest rather than the completion of one.

The immediate practicalities

A short list for the first day back.

Check the insurance claim deadline if anything went wrong, since these are measured in weeks.

Deal with any currency left over, either by keeping it for a return or converting it before it is forgotten.

Cancel any temporary data package or subscription taken for the trip.

And check bank statements for anything unexpected, since foreign transactions occasionally post incorrectly and are easier to dispute promptly.