You’re doing what?

We’d been dating long distance for over three years. We got engaged in Australia in January of 2009 when I was still in New York and he in Melbourne. We’d traveled overseas together on every holiday break we could and loved it. We knew we wanted to share the same space for more than a few weeks together and thought long and hard about how to do it in perhaps a non-traditional way. We decided to take a ten-month honeymoon after we got married and travel around the world. A couple of years later, we did it again for a few months. We looked forward to the job hiatus, an apartment on hold, the joy of not knowing where we’d be or what we’d do on any given day, nothing pulling us in a specific direction and constant adventure ahead. The scariest part was that at some point, we had to tell people what we were doing. Of course, some responses were positive, ‘that’s awesome, take the opportunity and enjoy’ from those who were happy for us. But, let’s just say that the traditional path was not the one on which we traveled.

There were many interesting questions that came from the thoughts of others, but mostly we got…’you’re doing what?’

Here are some of the questions we got when we ditched the traditional path for a while.

Why would you do that?
What about health insurance?
What about your jobs?
What about your career?
What about your apartment?
What will you do for money?
Do you have a trust fund I don’t know about?
How can you do that?
Where will you live?
Did you get an apartment already?
Do you know where you’re staying?
You’re planning on traveling WHERE?
Don’t you know there are diseases and crazy dangers there?
Why would you want to go THERE?
What will you do with all of your STUFF?
Are you insane?
Are you ever coming back?
What about your family?
Can I come too?
You’re doing what?

How did people react when you shared your travel plans?
What’s the most memorable question you heard when you headed off on your journey?

To read more of Stacey’s travels check out her blog at thegiftoftravel.wordpress.com

 

Posted by | Comments Off on You’re doing what?  | June 28, 2014
Category: Notes from the collective travel mind, On The Road

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