Weighing up a career versus travelling
Different travellers decide to up and see the world at different stages in their lives. Poke your head around any hostel lounge in the world and you might see a wide-eyed student, taking a year before university, a middle-aged veteran of South African safaris, London bar hopping and sushi in Tokyo, and maybe a 25 year old investment banking analyst, making use of a sabbatical before launching head on into bucket loads of perks and a six figure salary.
There is no ‘typical traveller’. People do it for different reasons, at different points of their lives, and for different periods of time. One thing is for certain, being a traveller is like no other thing.
Aside from the generally tedious jobs that a traveller must take in order to stay alive (flipping burgers, picking fruit and mowing lawns are all jobs I have undertaken), the financial hit can be a shock. For professionals, going from company cars and mini-bars to queuing for showers and grudgingly handing over your last five bucks for a meal can be a pain to bear.
There are two sides of the story – wanting to better yourself through experience, but not wanting to lose touch with ‘real life’. I think that the answer to this is to really think about the length of time you want to take away from the rat race. How long can you stay away from your career, but still remain employable? In my own case, I jump between yearning to launch my career back home, and not wanting to take any responsibility before I have to.
The beauty of my profession – writing – is that I can do it any time, anywhere. But becoming employed in a competitive publications market can become tough when you are away for too long.
Also, sometimes it can be demoralising as I trudge to work for the umpteenth time, knowing that I will be drafting the same letters as I did yesterday, creating the same labels and making the same pots of coffee for the same executives.
It’s a means to an end – and absolutely balances out when I catch my plane to the next city, or experience the next unique moment that I will never forget.
Personally, I don't think that I could go back to the travelling lifestyle once I am into (hopefully) a successful career. I think that now, in the limbo between university and work, I might never get another chance, so I'm taking it with two hands.
2008-08-10 05:22
Graham: I got on the road for 6 months, 2 years ago. And now I'm exactly there too "yearning to launch my career back home, and not wanting to take any responsibility before I have to."
The Vagabonding lifestyle is hard to give-up; but then do yu ever really have to? I suppose it depends what you want from your life.
I'm hoping I'll wake up one day and take some of sort decision. Great post.
2008-08-10 05:24
Graham: I got on the road for 6 months, 2 years ago. And now I'm exactly there too "yearning to launch my career back home, and not wanting to take any responsibility before I have to."
The Vagabonding lifestyle is hard to give-up; but then do yu ever really have to? I suppose it depends what you want from your life.
I'm hoping I'll wake up one day and take some of sort decision. Great post.
2008-08-10 09:04
You can combine the two. Or at least I did.
I traveled for three years, and I supported myself by writing. The pay might not have been great if I'd been living in Europe or North America, but in Africa and Asia it went a long way.
I set it all up before going - I spent a year querying and networking (we didn't have the web and forums then!) and I was a bit out of money the first year, I was spending what I was making the second, and the third year I made a good deal of money for very little work. In fact, were it not for personal responsibilities, I'd probably be making as much as a freelancer as I am in a job now.
Granted, it took three years of hard work - but even if I'd stayed put building a career takes time...
For me, writing is a portable profession - there's no reason I can't take it wherever I go.
2008-08-10 10:09
Graham,
I struggle with this very issue all the time, your take is very well-written. I'm also in the "limbo" between graduating from college and starting a "real career" back in the States.
Teaching English has been the main menial job I've done in order to keep living in Asia. I've worked as a copy editor for a newspaper before, and I'm trying to get back into it.
I think to stay employable, it's a big asset to get a more professional job overseas. And if you can build up skills like fluency in a foreign language (in my case Mandarin Chinese), you should be in good shape when you apply for jobs back home.
Scribetrotter also had a good point about trying to do more "portable work." I've thought of getting into Chinese-to-English translation for that reason, but that's a serious commitment to language study.
Marcus
2008-08-10 18:38
Hey there Graham,
I won't see 20something again, nor 30something, sadly, as I wouldn't mind another go at that, but I never did get eaten by a "career" that made me choose between a life as a traveler or a life as a desk jockey.
I have been so lucky to find a way to do both - I too work as a writer, not, like I dreamed, as a travel writer, but as a contract technical writer.
I alternate between phases of being more focused on work or more focused on travel, but I always make decisions that make it possible for me to travel for much longer than your standard 2/3 weeks vacation annually. That would kill me.
It's possible to find a way to do both. And I am happy to say that I meet people like myself, long past that critical gap between degree and career, who have found their own ways to keep wandering.
2010-08-15 03:50
The problem I have is that I love traveling for long periods of time and doing no work at all (partying my balls off), but as an entrepreneur I also love going nowhere and working all day to build my business. They are completely opposite mind-sets to me. Even though I could mix the two and just have a business that supported my traveling, I want more out of business than that. Sometimes I feel like I am wasting my youth (20s) by working, sometimes I feel like I am wasting my youth by traveling. It's very confusing and I don't think I'll ever figure it out. Right now I am in business mode glancing back through the window to the other side every so often wondering if that's what I should be doing instead.
2013-05-23 07:51
I am 28 now and have been meaning to do some travelling for a while now - namely move to australia because I have friends there but the problem is my career is finally going somewhere so it is getting harder to make the move! Think I just want to get it out of my system but maybe thats not a good enough reason to jeopardise my career! Probably not the only one with this dilemma!