Traveling with a purpose beats wandering

I had another post entitled this, but Blogger's Android app, which is hot garbage, ate it. Seriously; it's 2016 and we're making software that loses data? I like how "hot" is now an intensifying adjective for "garbage"; really gives you a visceral sense of how frustrating this is.

Anyway, the post was long, but it's probably good that Blogger ate it because it should be short. All I was really saying is: traveling with a purpose is cool. Traveling without a purpose is less cool. We've got this idea of traveling as vacation, which naturally implies wandering - "I'll go to Hawaii or Thailand or Paris, and then I dunno, good things will happen." But all the coolest travelers I can think of are either working or going there with something in mind - whether it's kitesurfing or visiting an old friend or searching out the best wines.

You want to play the tourist/traveler game? (this is the game where "tourists" are any travelers you don't like, and "travelers" are travelers you do like.) That's the difference: having a purpose or not.

I should mention that touristing, or traveling without a purpose, is about as big a sin as drinking bad coffee - like, I'm not going to get on your case, you're not a Bad Person, you're not even doing a Bad Thing. It's just less cool - you might enjoy traveling more (and you'll get more cred) if you travel with a purpose. But hey, sometimes you need bad coffee, sometimes you like bad coffee, sometimes you want to show up in London and wait for neat things to happen to you. That's ok too.

(I'm just personally tired of purposeless traveling, like I'm tired of bad coffee :)