Many years ago, when I was about 15 or 16, I was visiting my incredibly hip cousins out in San Francisco. They have always treated me like an adult during my teenage years, and this night was to be no different. We all went to one of their friend’s houses for her goodbye party. Their friend was moving abroad for a year. Having only accumulated about a decade and a half on this Earth, I wondered why this woman, being the ancient age of 30, was giving up her swanky apartment, her job, and willing to risk it all for a move to Italy. Funny how the audacity of youth can change.
Being a rather private person, I did not share any of the trials and tribulations that occurred during the calendar year of 2018. Suffice to say, it was one of the most challenging of my life, professionally and personally.
But it was also a good year. I have adopted the paradoxical worldview of pessimistic optimism in that things could always be worse. As bad as the things that happened in 2018 were, from medical worries, job uncertainties, failed relationships, and accidents, each and everything could have been worse.
However, as my friend Ishmael might say, I found myself growing grim about the mouth. It might have been depression or a millennial ennui. Still, I knew I could stay where I was, in my apartment, on my futon, behind a laptop, continuing to watch the days tick off the calendar, consoling myself for an unexamined life by Netflix and chilling, half in a bottle, watching people live instead of doing it myself.
Or, I could do what I had dreamed of doing, what hundreds if not thousands of other people dreamed of doing, what I had designed my life around: the ability to live anywhere, do anything, and see it all. I had initially read The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris when it was first released, back in the not so halcyon days of when I lived in California. Upon re-reading it, I picked up a book he recommended, Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. Sitting in my bathtub, I inhaled Tribe by Sebastian Junger, and it all became clear. While I do not recall when the exact moment this notion took hold, I do remember the feeling of a new breath of life coming into my soul. I came to realize in the history of my life; the only time I ever felt alive was when I was traveling.
I was young(ish,) had the time; the lack of anchors and my other responsibilities were just an email away. I had the money, and the desire, and the ganas.
The initial plan was to do a tour of a place I always wanted to visit, the Balkins, for two weeks. Then I began thinking, why just two weeks? Why just the Balkins? Weren’t there other parts of the world I wanted to see? What about Asia? Oceania? The Middle East? The Baltics? South America? I then got an email that would change my life.
As a way to supplement my income and fill a bit of a hole in my soul, I used to work as a disaster response truck driver and outreach coordinator. A bad hurricane had just hit the panhandle of Florida, and I deployed. Sitting in my friend’s apartment as there were not nearby hotel rooms, with the travel dreams swirling in my head, I checked my email before I headed out in the morning. And there, in my inbox, was my golden ticket to the world. There was a $400 ticket, one-way to Auckland, New Zealand. I had my credit card in hand typing in the numbers when I paused. Was this what I wanted? Would I be able to do it? What about money? What about my family? What about EVERYTHING? I took a breath, closed my eyes, and just listened. At that moment,t I realized if I did not put in the rest of those digits and press send, I never would. I dropped my finger on the submit button and like crossing the Rubicon, Alea iacta est.
While I knew it would not be without hardships, EVERY time a new obstacle presented itself, I began to see it as an opportunity to let my dormant creativity flourish. I took a meme I read that year to new heights when every time something happened that was unexpected, I would loudly yell out to myself “Plot twist!” then work on finding a solution. The most significant example of this is when I realized that under the Schengen agreement, Americans were only able to travel in those countries that were part of the agreement for three months in a six month period; that I knew. What I did not was that the clock started ticking as soon as you set foot in a Schengen country and did not stop even if you left the region. Because of reading that fine print, I had to cancel a tour of Scandinavia.
I had close to six months of planning done before I told my family. Initially, it met with some skepticism and downright foreboding. My mother thought I was going to be kidnapped and turned to kimchi like Otto Warmbier. Questions were asked and answered, a spreadsheet made of where and when I would be, complete with contact information, and that was that. Their concerns now seemingly abated, now came the question of how I was going to pay for a majority of it all before I left.
