When I look back at my existence before I left Canada to pursue this dream of travel & adventure, I see a life full of things that I didn’t really want to do. I had to wake up early in the morning (oftentimes 6:00am, or even 2:00am) to go to work at a job that I didn’t find satisfying. I would work 12 hour days with no reward other than a fat pay cheque, but the long hours and subsequent exhaustion meant that I couldn’t really spend and enjoy the money as much as I would have liked.
A working Goat (circa 2006)
I would work all week and look forward to the weekend, but when the weekend came I was too tired to really plan anything major, plus I had a bunch of chores that needed completing and obligations that needed to be met – both of which I couldn’t finish during the week because I was too busy.
I would have to take the car into the shop and spend money to fix it; the sink needed repair; the house needed to be cleaned; the laundry machine was squeaking and everything was adding up. sometimes I would have to take a holiday, just to catch up on things that I didn’t even want to do.
On top of all of that, I wanted to make time to spend with friends and family, but with so little time for myself, this wasn’t all that easy.
This is not an unfamiliar story to most, in fact… this is considered the normal life.
Vezmite prosím na vedomie
This article is for those who are interested in travelling and living abroad full time. If your life is exactly where you want it to be right now, then you’ve already accomplished what this post is trying to get across. You don’t have to travel to be happy, you just have to live your life doing what you love. As this article is written on a blog designed do inspire others to live a life of freedom, travel and adventure, it is targeting those interested in travelling as a lifestyle.
Once I decided to jump off of the ever-growing cliff of my working life, everything changed. In the first month of travelling, I had done more, seen more and experienced more than I had in the previous decade of my life. instead of having a few hours every weekend to do what I wanted, I had 24 hours / day, 7 days / week – now that’s a lot of free time!
A couple Of Goats (circa 2008)
And what did I do? I snorkelled with sharks, explored ancient temples, chilled on white sand beaches, swam in tropical waterfalls, ate exotic foods and explored a region of the world that seemed so far from my own, that it felt like it was on a different planet. This was all in the first month.
Dariece and I spent over a year travelling through Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka and when we returned home, we were in shock. It was the same shock that all long-term travellers experience.
Our lives had completely shifted and yet we were going to have to return to work and assimilate back into the normal life.
The world had simply stood still in Canada, while we had been going 1,000 miles a minute for 13 months straight.
We did everything we could to return to the travelling life that we loved so much. It wasn’t easy at first. We had to sacrifice another year of our lives doing the very thing that we had worked so hard to escape in the first place.
…But finally, after one final year of working in Canada, we were ready to completely detach from the 9-5 (or in my case, 7-7) lifestyle.
We’ve now spent more than 2015 days on the road and well over $100K living our dreams. That’s nearly 30,000 waking hours doing exactly what we want, when we want. No chores. No broken down vehicle. No angry boss. No alarms (except for the occasional early flight). No drama. Žiadny stres.
If we had we stayed at home, I would have worked around 17,000 hours, gone on a couple of week-long holidays and maybe saved a few bucks for a rainy day.
I would’ve spent over $250,000 on mortgage & bills. A mortgage which was bloated with interest, and came with an equity that would have crashed along with the global market.
I would have spent even more money on useless material things that provided me with a short and unsatisfying level of happiness.
The car That cost Me more Headache Than Enjoyment
In the end, had I continued the way I was going, my life would be in much the same place today as it was on November 19, 2008 (the day we dared to jump).
What did we do to deserve this life? We simply took a risk, looked for a better way of life and followed our dreams. It may sound cheesy, but it’s true.
We often write on this blog about “how you too can live a life of freedom, travel & adventure”, but the truth is… all you need to do is jump.
The minute we realized that life didn’t have to be a chore, everything started going našej cesty. Namiesto prekážok, ktoré sa neustále objavujú v našej ceste, sme mali jasnú cestu priamo k slobode.
Nepíšeme o našom šťastí, našom úspechu a našom vzrušujúcom živote, aby sme sa chválili. Cítime sa, že sme prelomili nejaký obrovský kód a chceme vám o tom povedať všetko.
Bavíme sa zdieľať naše príbehy o prechádzaní Strednou Áziou po zemi a lezenie na pohoria Himaláje, ale konečnou radosťou z nášho cestovného blogovania je, keď nám niekto poslal e -mail a povie nám, že sa rozhodli nechať všetko pozadu, aby sme preskúmali svet – sledovať šťastnejší a slobodnejší život.
Dúfam, že tento príspevok inšpiruje niektorých z vás, aby zvážili zmenu. Alebo ak ste už urobili skok, dúfam, že práve teraz prikývate hlavou a súhlasíte s sentimentom tohto článku.
Tisíce ľudí na celom svete sa prebúdzajú. V súčasnosti existujú desiatky tisíc cestovných blogov a mnohé z nich zarábajú dosť peňazí na podporu života slobody, cestovania a dobrodružstva.
Ľudia vyučujú angličtinu v zahraničí, dobrovoľníctvo v Afrike, basiajúce sa na Novom Zélande, vedú potápačské ponory v Mikronézii a oslobodzujú sa od okov „tvrdej práce a buďte hrdí na to, že neberiete sviatky“.
Dariece a ja sa zobudíme každý deň a pozeráme sa na seba s obrovskými úsmevmi na našich tvári. Či už je náš spánok zlomený slnkom odrážajúcim jazero v Guatemale, alebo oceánsky vánok z nášho dočasného domu v Karibiku … sme šťastní.
Úprimne nechápeme, ako by sa náš život mohol zlepšiť, a keď o tom skutočne premýšľam … Tento život je to, pretože nemusíme robiť nič, čo nechceme.
Táto úroveň slobody je niečo, čo si váži a je to niečo, čo môže dosiahnuť niekto. Vyberám si bezchybný život, pretože jedného dňa, keď som na svojej smrti, sa budem obzrieť späť na svoj život s úsmevom na tvári. Dokážem si spomenúť na svoj život s pohodlím, keď viem, že som z toho skutočne čo najlepšie využil.
Na svete čaká príliš veľa neuveriteľných príležitostí na to, aby strávili svoj život sužovaný práškami a nešťastím. Život je príliš krátky!
Akonáhle sa odoberie skok na slobodu, objavia sa bezpečnostné siete, ktoré tlmia pád za tých odvážnych, aby na prvom mieste skočili.
Moje prvé bezpečnostné siete prišli vo forme podpornej rodiny a neuveriteľného vzťahu s darcem. Potom nasledovalo viac vo forme príležitostí výučby angličtiny, dobrovoľníctva, sedenia v dome a nakoniec nasadených padákov a ja som pristál na tomto cestovnom blogu.
Obrázok: Wikimedia Commons
Vaše bezpečnostné siete môžu mať rôzne formy, ale sú tam, jednoducho ich nevidíte, ak stojíte na vrchole útesu. Nie je ťažké voľne pád, keď ste skočili, a na spodku sú tisíce šťastných a slobodných ľudí, pozerajú sa na vás a kričia: „Choďte na to!“.
Si pripravený?
Ak chcete urobiť tento skok, ale nie ste si istí, kde začať, pozrite si našu trvalú cestovnú sekciu, kde nájdete neuveriteľné nápady, ako môžete zarobiť peniaze online, na cestách a na cestách. Ak stále nie ste presvedčení, kliknite sem pre ďalšiu inšpiráciu.
Páči sa mi to? Pripnúť! „
Zrieknutie sa zodpovednosti: Kozy na cestách je spolupracovníkom Amazonu a tiež pridruženou spoločnosťou pre niektorých ďalších maloobchodníkov. To znamená, že zarobíme provízie, ak kliknete na odkazy na našom blogu a kúpite sa od týchto maloobchodníkov.