Sculpture outside Denver Museum of Art
In part one of my series, what to do after college, I addressed my 2 biggest challenges when I graduated back in 2001, Fear and Money. Let’s tackle some other obstacles that have long tormented me in my pursuit of hitting the road and most likely are at odds with you.
When you are the nail that sticks up in life, people want to hammer you back down. For a variety of reasons you are told that your particular idea is flawed, silly or in some cases stupid. Willy Wonka is not going to give you the golden ticket on this one so you need to do anything in your powers to see the big fat world of oompa loompas.
Bad things will not happen to you if do this. I quit a very successful job in 2010 to live out of a bag for a year. Took me 18 months to be ok with this decision. I thought I would file for bankruptcy or some other ominous event would occur. I came away unscathed and with a clearer vision of what I wanted for myself. I also took one of the best trips of my life in the process. I packed up my car, my dachshund (Bella) and drove 6k miles across the US. My favorite part of the trip were the almighty Redwoods in N. California, Yellowstone, where Bella went psychotic for the buffalo, and South Dakota where across the flat terrain I saw my 1st end to end rainbow.
Don’t let your current finances kill your dream. I thought I could never travel cause I owed too much money on a car and credit cards and saving was a foreign concept to me. I sat down and planned out how much I would need to have in my bank to pay off my monthly expenses. Then when I hit that goal, I started to save up for what I thought my trip would cost using various info I found in my research and lots of guesswork (most of us overestimate). While I worked I bought all my big ticket items like plane tickets, backpacks, electronics, etc. and then I gave my job the heave hoe.
In June of 2010 against the advice of almost everyone I knew, I rented out my house, pre-paid my bills for a year and left for Istanbul and didn’t look back for 12 months. In the next year, I would see 8 countries, meet a boy, rent a Turkish apartment, teach at an English school, get scammed in Saigon, dump a boy, blog about the random, and get lost in Riga. I made tons of mistakes and if you are following a rockier path, these mistakes are unavoidable and worth it. My life lesson as a result: I can do this again and again if I want. That clarity at 33 was a game changer as silly as it sounds. I think we go through most of our life not knowing what we want and when we finally figure it out, our world becomes more saturated in meaning. Now at 35, I have laser focus on what I want and have taken back control of my life and the only question I ask myself, where shall I go today?
This post was brought to you by Wimdu: Travel like a Local
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