Fears of Long-Term Travel
What do we fear about Long-Term travel?
We all have fears - some more valid than others... but I'm sure often many of you wonder - what do we fear about long-term travel? I'm going to tell you what scares me and what excites me about long-term travel:
Image by frankieboy photography // edwards, colorado
When winter season closed up for Vail Mountain on April 19th I made the (difficult) decision to leave my consistent job. I was the assistant manager of a busy recreational and medical cannabis dispensary (the name of the company I'll leave out) - I worked 11.5 hour days and had three days off each week. I was making decent money, nothing extraordinary but I had a pay check coming in and they even offered me health insurance in the last few months of working there. Life was a piece of pie, wake up, manage the dispensary, make dinner with my lovely girlfriend, go to bed, repeat - repeat and repeat. The monotony of my work life absolutely killed me and my creative spirit - not to mention we didn't have any windows in the office at work, so I found myself starring endlessly at my photography from my travel adventures that hung on the plain white walls under bright, obnoxious fluorescent bulbs. I was so tied into my work routine that I had no extra time for photography, blogging, hiking/adventure and arts of mine that really let my mind be free. So I decided to resign from this job - with so much planning and preparation to do I knew I would have plenty to occupy my time.
It's been about one month since I left my full-time job and while it hasn't been easy - I have been able to focus on my personal life more, organizing myself for the upcoming adventures abroad, selling and donating my belongings and planning/researching as much as I can. I'm discovering other avenues of income and also have a part-time job as a professional photographer's assistant - something to hold me over until I leave Colorado for good. I am also doing everything I can to prepare myself for work opportunities on the road - building easily adaptable resumes, connecting with tourism companies and any connections I can come across in addition to building a strong photography portfolio which can be seen here: Frankieboy Photography
Image by frankieboy photography // the great sand dunes national park
Right, now back to my top five fears of long-term travel:
- Finances and finding work opportunities abroad
- Returning to work after travelling
- Getting sick on the road
- Missing family & friends back in the States
- Learning to settle down after LTT
Here's five simple solutions I've come up with to keep my fears at bay - five solutions I will work on the entire time I travel:
- Building a successful blog like this one (Meet You There) to drive work opportunities from, in addition to networking with my photography to seek work expeditions. We also plan to launch a variety of fund raising causes (some attched to charity) and some driven to keep our travels moving forward such as Kickstarter and Tilt.
- While we don't plan to return necessarily anytime soon - we do plan to stop in certain regions of our liking to teach English, house sitting jobs, hospitality jobs, photography jobs - to keep my resume moving forward and so that if we do ever return to the states one day we will still be employable
- Getting sick is inevitable while it's bound to happen - Lil_E and I are preparing ourselves with all the necessary vaccinations and precautions we have available. We believe it may be smart to bring along a Z-Pack or a few common anti-biotics to treat simple, common road borne illnesses. It's important to stop when you get sick, rest up and push on when your feeling better - travelers make a common mistake of convincing themselves that they can push thru it... this can lead to further illness. When your body becomes vulnerable take time to rest and recoup before heading back out onto your adventures - the last place you want to end up is in the E.R. of a third world country.
- Technology is a wonderful thing - Facetime, Skype and iMessage keep us all so connected its powerful and distracting at the same time. It's so important to stay connected with family, friends while traveling abroad - I plan to use Facetime to keep my homesickness from getting to me, bringing people along this journey with me is the only way I will feel better about missing loved ones.
- We may never fully settle down after this trip and I am perfectly alright with that. Adventure is what keeps me going - keeps me peeking around the next corner, river bend and mountain peak. I strongly believe it's important to throw yourself into the unknown every once in awhile and see how equipped you really are to adventure amongst the world.
As I sit here and ask myself questions like ...will this work out? will that work out? why would I leave this behind? will I get a job when I come back? Starts to make your mind flip...
I stopped questioning it when Lil_E and I booked our tickets - you must believe in yourself and your journey before starting something like this. We don't questions what we're doing because we know we're doing the right thing - now you can sit in your cubicle and live vicariously thru our blog posting - or I urge you to take a big risk quit your boring ass day job and go experience some culture you have always wanted to see. We hope you can use this blog as a resource to help get you there - so maybe we can meet you there... stop being so afraid and start living a little.
For now, that's all I got ~
“We travel not to escape life - but for life not to escape us. ”
-F