Our Journey: Wait! You’re Doing What?!?

 Photo by Vladimir Tkalčić on Flickr

When we told our family and friends what we were planning we got a mixture of responses. Most people thought it was an amazing idea and were incredibly supportive, others thought it was an exciting adventure but cautioned us with all of the things that could go wrong and a few thought we were out of our minds!

One thing everyone had in common was curiosity about what we were doing. “Where/when/how/why are you doing this?” We came up with the idea to start this blog to keep everyone updated on our adventure and hope that readers will be inspired to join us/drop in on our trip.

When we began toying with the idea of traveling long term I have to admit that even I thought it was a little insane. Surely we could just take a month off and go on a vacation. How were we going to just leave our jobs and home and venture out there with no purpose?

Anyone who knows me well knows that I can’t just sit idly and let the world pass by, I always have to be accomplishing something. The idea of volunteering during our trip really appealed to us and this got the ball rolling. Soon we were researching blogs and found many couples had taken time off to go backpacking and the picture slowly became more and more clear. We discovered so many great resources out there and first hand accounts of real people who were living out our dream. We found that in other countries a gap year or sabbatical is actually valued and respected. We thought to ourselves, “we can do this too!”

Although we both highly respect the meaning of hard work and love our professions, the hustle and bustle and the monotony of it can sometimes be daunting. Most of the time you find yourself working for the weekend that is always too short. Come Sunday night at 9 pm and you’re panicking and anxious about having to wake up to get back on that hamster wheel.

So another thing we have come to respect highly is peace of mind. Taking the time to care for yourself and listening to that tiny voice inside your head that always steers you in the right direction. Although this doesn’t include all the reasons it basically sums up the “WHY”… As for the “WHERE, WHEN and HOW” we have included a rough outline of all the amazing places we want to visit.

Our time line is flexible as we’re leaving space to explore cities we really love at our leisure. We will be updating the blog as frequently as possible keeping in mind that being disconnected can sometimes also be a luxury.

We don’t know where this will all lead us but we’re eager to learn more about ourselves, learn more about the world, help others and come back with a different and more enlightened perspective.