I got into a heated online debate today with a good friend and fellow in the industry. We were debating the merits of the perma-traveler, the individual nomad with no true home, content to live out of the suitcase and spend more time in airports than most people spend with their spouses.

I must admit, I get jealous sometimes. Despite my great job involving challenging (and travel related!) projects and innovation, I don’t travel as much as I would like to. Unfortunately for me, reality gets in the way of my globe-trotting fantasties. Student loans. A job that needs me. Rent. Significant others. A nagging desire to nest, even just a wee bit, and have a comfortable bed to come home to, and curl up with a glass of wine.

Travel, and everything associated with it, is a great passion of mine, but it isn’t who I am. I am a friend, a significant other, a marketer, a (bad) joke-teller, a singer, a hugger, a socializer, a crier. I wouldn’t call myself a ‘traveler’, but someone who loves, ADORES even, travel. I don’t hate my job, the opposite in fact, and even though I may be a nine-to-fiver who sometimes wishes she could hop a flight to Santorini and run away, I don’t.

To me, travel can’t define a life, travel must be the thing that holds a mirror back up to yourself, to your life, and forces you to see it in a different light, through different eyes, reversed. Would the blue waters of Capri be as beautiful if I saw a different beach every month? No. Would currywurst in Berlin be as delicious if I had a variant of it everyday? No. Would I long for the scent of Vancouver’s Stanley Park in the early morning as much as I do if I had no home city to compare to? No.

As a result, I remain your Resident. I remain the person with a home base that I love, a well-balanced wanderlust, and a pretty low bullshit-o-meter.