Traveling ain't no simple pleasure anymore

So you need a little r&r to break away from the exhaustion of routine life? Think again, 'coz it might just be as much work as it's fun.

Planning, applying for vacations at work, booking tickets, reading up about the destination, checking with friends on the must-do activities and packing isn't going to be enough.

There's a whole other set of planning that lies ahead of you. The online kinds. If you are a young bee, you're probably wired to a zillion sites where you make daily appearances. Your friends and family know about the trip but not all your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers, your MySpace friends, your Orkut friends, your LinkedIn contacts, your Blog pals and whatever else it is that represents your virtual identity. Even with LinkedIn, you can share travel plans through TripIt! How awesome.

So is there a strategy you should be following? How soon in advance do you start mentioning it in status messages or tweets or blogs? Perhaps a week before with the "looking forward to" and "cant wait" kinds? Do you feel compelled to put your enthusiasm on hold because you don't want to go overboard just yet? I mean, once you arrive at the destination, you'll pick up on the local lingo a bit and see and experience things that you hadn't thought of... they'll make for much more interesting/funny/witty/cool non-stop updates, no? Plus, you get to narrate the story in super duper detail, through the 200 odd pics (cropped, touched-up and with special effects) you will post everywhere along with smart captions.

I've been witnessing this trend for quite some time now... and however sarcastic this blog may sound (I thrive on sarcasm :P ), I have to admit I have been guilty of indulging heavily in it as well. The concept of privacy is so obsolete now. If you're private, you're perhaps just boring. Or that's the notion people get. Plus it's fun to share, so why not! It's not like good old days where you are bombarding people through extra-large emails that clog their mailboxes... you're just putting it out there, whoever wants to see will see. And hey, if anything, you're just cheering them up by giving them a chance to take the trip through your eyes. So what is the big deal?

But I wonder if there are any invisible boundaries that one should follow. Are we putting too much out there?

Too much pointless thinking... go catch that flight. Bon voyage!

p.s. Keep the pics coming :)