Passion for Travel and a Career

Previously on TravelingShorts…

If you have not read the introduction post I highly suggest you start there.

In 2005 I tied the knot with someone who shares the same passion for travel as I do. Paula and I have been on many trips together and always wished they could be longer. Two weeks vacation is “too weak” vacation.

Photo by Johan Rd - http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanroed/3138936020/in/photostream/

About a year ago a good friend of mine read Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Workweek book who I believe coined the mini retirement term. He shared the message with us and that was enough to get us thinking. Paula and I discussed in length our desire to travel the world in search for experiences. After working non-stop for over 10 years, we were both ready for a break. We decided to start working towards organizing a backpacking trip around the world. The idea was to include Great Britain, Europe, Southeast Asia and South America. We weren’t really sure how we were gonna do this, but we knew we were over the “too weak” vacations. We were also in a place in our career where this seemed like the right thing to do.

One thing I am just now realizing is how I never got to choose a career, never got to think about what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. Now it’s the time to do so.

Soon after we made the decision, preparations started. For obvious reasons we were unable to share our new plans with anyone other than close friends and family. We started working on the sale of our condo, save up as much as we could and plan the trip of a lifetime. The first weeks started with extensive research of places we knew we wanted to go, currency, languages, costs, gear and much more. We knew we would have to camp in order to save money and stay under budget as far as accommodations were concerned.

We would sale most of our possessions, put the rest in storage and travel for 9-12 months with nothing more than a backpack. Without a very fixed schedule but only aspirations of where we wanted to visit. We knew there would be many challenges ahead, but that didn’t necessarily scare us, it excited us. Speaking the local language wherever we went would be one of major challenges. Traveling can be daunting and planning ahead for a year long trip is almost impossible. We made the decision early on that we would be happy with about a ‘1 month’ planning strategy.

I can honestly say that the past couple months have been an exciting phase in my life. In the beginning I was a bit fearful. What about my job? My house? My friends? Then it hit me, I have done this before, I have left everything behind once before. When I remembered this very important fact my fear, uncertainty and doubt subsided. I began to visualize the possibilities instead of the uncertainties and realized that anything is possible when you choose to be non-conforming.

The response from our friends and family has been great. They have been extremely supportive of our decisions. Most of our family is spread out in different countries, and we’ll sure be visiting them. We will certainly miss our friends. This trip will be very demanding specially on a somewhat fixed budget. We tested a lot of the gear beforehand to make sure it was all comfortable, durable, light enough to carry and the right tool for the job (I will be talking more about this soon).

I have recently left a full-time position at Hoodiny to spend the next year of my life backpacking around the world with the wife.

I will be dedicating a couple of blog posts here to trip planning, gear testing and travel strategy. If you enjoy traveling at all you will certainly enjoy this blog. Most of the writing here will apply even if you only take causal two week vacations. We chose to go the extreme route and experience life differently but I do realize this is not for everyone, I would never expect you to do something like this, unless you really want to, do you?

Next post I will be sharing our road trip plans, stay tuned…

Godspeed!