Why am I starting this? Because I want to document my journey to try and prove that I don’t need to quit my job, give up my current life for an extended period of time, in order to travel and see the world.
This past year (2017) has been absolutely crazy, and it set me on a journey that changed the course of my life. I thought I had my life all planned out and I thought I was pretty happy with it. I always considered myself a fairly boring person, not in a bad way, I just enjoy being basic. I wanted nothing more than to live an linear life, get a job, get married, have kids, buy a house, maybe do some vacation traveling with my future family, take care of my parents, retire. If I was able to live that life I knew I’d be satisfied with my time.
My perspective changed drastically after I went through a rough break up with someone I had envisioned a future with. Looking back, I was naive, but at the time I felt the heartbreak very deeply. It felt like the future I had hoped for, just vanished. This was the thing that finally drove me to go and see more of the world. Along the way I mended my heart, rebuilt my self-esteem, found new confidence and goals in life. I also met so many inspirational people, experienced so much beauty, kindness and wonder, all in just one year, that I knew I wouldn’t be fulfilled in life anymore if I didn’t see as much of this crazy beautiful world as I could.
I remember when I was starting out, most of the travel blogs I read or looked to for inspiration, started off their stories with ‘I quit my job to travel the world’ or ‘I sold all my things and bought a van’ or ‘I left my old life behind to take on the world’. And while I did daydream about doing that every once in a while, I knew that I wouldn’t be happy. I am still that basic boring person that wants an ordinary suburban life, just now with an arguably more exciting interest in traveling, exploring and seeing the world.
So being stubborn and wanting to have my cake and eat it too, I set out to prove to myself that I could balance a 9-5 job, live an ordinary life, hanging out with my friends after work, visit my family often, pay my bills, save for my future, stuff like that, while still setting out to explore the world.
This blog will serve as my journal as I figure out how to balance my regular life with my wanderlust. I’ll be posting here regularly with tips that I’ve found so far that have allowed me to travel the world and still keep my day job and my ordinary life. I’ll be sharing the stories and details from the trips I’ve gone on this past year, while learning to balance everything. Tips on how to stretch vacation days to do the travel you want and not feel rushed, tips on budgeting so you can still pay your bills, and of course posts, stories and more lessons learned on all my future trips because I’m still wading through this and I’m not even close to being done.
I hope you’ll join me and follow along as I juggle my deeply passionate wanderlust with my yearnings for the cookie cutter suburban life.