Why I packed a backpack and went solo travelling for 3 months

There will never be a perfect time to change careers, buy a house, start saving or ditch everything and go travel the world. Sadly life doesn’t seem to work quite like that. I had just changed jobs within the company I had been working for for the past 3.5 years and I was eagerly waiting for that feeling of excitement to kick in when I realize I’ve made a BIG change. I changed jobs completely, had to learn new things, work with new people, sit at a different desk, yeey …! Yet, somehow I really didn’t feel like much had changed. Same office building, same routine! Every morning I would leave the flat at 8:05am, take the train at 8:23am, then queue up to get into the tube and arrive in the same office building I had been entering most days for the past 3.5 years, then spend the next 8 hours looking at spreadsheets, tax returns, legislation … basically, exciting stuff 😀 ! So yeah, I was doing people’s taxes now and not auditing companies’ financials but the daily routine really didn’t change much!

I had spent the vast majority of my life being so focused on the next big thing to work hard for. First high school, then uni, then the “dream” graduate job, the fancy laminated certificate giving me the right to call myself a certified accountant, and it goes on … I had put in so many hours into getting good grades, working God knows how many part time jobs, meeting deadlines, being on calls with clients and meaningless team meetings .. just to realise a few short years after that all those things I worked so damn hard for had brought me to a place I don’t wanna stick around for much longer.

Compared to most of my friends I seemed to have such a sweet deal going on. The money was great, the studying was over. I could even work from home every once in a while and best of all, I finally had time to think! Sounds weird right? It’s kinda sad but in my previous job the hours were so long, I rarely had the energy or time to simply think. I didn’t have time to reflect on anything or ask myself if I was even happy. Life was pretty much work, eat, sleep, work, work, sleep … Sadly that’s what life is in most corporate jobs these days which I guess is why sooo many of us get stuck! Luckily, at this new job as a tax consultant, life was slightly different. It took ages to pick up enough work to keep me busy the whole day so I had all these hours to myself to just think and figure my shhhht out.

That’s when I realised that instead of becoming one with my chair, looking through my office window, squeezing myself like a sardine in a can, aka the London tube, I wanted to actually do stuff. I wanted to be out there travelling the world, seeing places, meeting people, experiencing things. I wanted my mornings to start with a hike to an active volcano and not a client call or a team meeting. I wanted to swim with turtles and jump off boats and not just day dream about it. After all, what’s the point of all the money, all the hard work, all the diplomas and credentials if I wasn’t living the lifestyle I sooo badly wanted to.

I remember looking at my screen and really getting so pissed off because at times when work was low, I was literally sat there doing nothing, literally wasting my time. I wasn’t that passionate about my work either so I couldn’t really sit there for hours reading up on things (I mean, seriously who would), I couldn’t really go out and do anything else because… Helloooo, you gotta do your hours, you know what I mean .. gotta put in all the “face time” 😀 . At the end of the day it’s all about looking busy right! Anyway, I was just so frustrated because I wasn’t learning a whole lot but at the same time I wasn’t doing all the things I wanted to do either. So it’s fair to say, I was furious!

That’s when I realised that I just had to ditch the office and go travel the world. Do all the crazy things I’ve always wanted to do, get out of the big city and go back to basics. Stop mixing up Tuesdays with Thursdays because they’re all the same and look forward to the weekends as if there’s something huge coming up. I wanted my days to be different from each other. Not the same old – wake up, go to work, get back, make dinner, go to bed! There had to be a better way to spend my time and I was committed to go figure it out. But I couldn’t just quit. Me and my (now) ex had just bought a flat so the expenses were rocking up. We had a lot of work to do on the flat to fix it up so I had to be realistic and accept that for the next few months we’ll spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds until it’s all ready! So the plan was to take a 3 month sabbatical, escape the corporate trap, see if I like being on my own for that long and ultimately jump at every adventure that comes my way.

Next thing I know, I’m sitting in a room with my director trying to explain to her why I need to do this. You have to take this time off and go travel the world?! Why? Even that in itself didn’t feel right. Why do I have to give a business reason to prove the timing was right to go live my life. That’s when I realised how messed up this whole lifestyle is. I had to show that I had given this a proper thought. That I realise how this can impact my career and how it could potentially slow down my promotion. Honestly, I couldn’t give less fckkk about any of that! I could already see myself rubbing my soles off trekking up in Indonesia and feeding elephants in Thailand and literally nothing else mattered. I didn’t care that I wouldn’t get paid for 3 months or that I’ll have to dig into my savings (a lot) or that I’ll put my career on hold 😀 .

But I swear, it’s when I started really giving it all I had in that meeting to get this approved, that I realised how badly I actually wanted it. I could feel my heart pounding so hard as if it was begging me to get out, my palms were sweating, my voice was shaking, I couldn’t stand still. And I wasn’t intimidated or unsure, I just couldn’t possibly accept “NO” for an answer. I don’t think I had ever heard myself talk so passionately about anything before. And even though I had obviously made the decision to do this way before the actual meeting, it’s in these 30 min of that meeting that I realised that whatever happens, I was gonna do this. Even the thought of packing my bag and going off on this adventure was making me so excited, so scared and so unbelievably happy, all at the same time. And that’s exactly what I was missing all along!

So I squeezed a good business reason through my fingers and got the “approval” to go live my dream! The rest was just booking the flights and getting more and more excited about my trip, if that was even possible!

But “Why the hell solo? I mean, do you not have a friend to go with you? Why?” – so many people asked me, especially my parents! I swear there must have been at least a few people who genuinely thought I must have gone crazy. Everything was going so well according to “the plan” and all of a sudden I ditch my job to go to the other side of the world with not a single clue about any of the countries I was gonna visit, and on top of it all … completely on my own! WHY? The short answer to this question is “Because I wanted and needed to“. To be completely honest, the thought of going with anyone else didn’t even cross my mind. I wanted to completely throw myself into it without knowing how I’m gonna get from A to B, where I’m gonna stay, what I’m gonna see, who I’m gonna meet. All this time up until then I knew everything, or at least the main things, it was all planned out. So I wanted and I desperately needed an adventure that will get me out of my comfortable bubble and throw me into all sorts of funny, scary, ridiculous, intimidating, embarrassing situations … basically anything.

But I guess most importantly, I wanted to be on my own to really figure out what’s truly important to me. What do I wanna spend my time doing? Where do I wanna be? Who with? All these big questions I was kinda scared to even think about when I was in London. I wanted to have the freedom slow down or speed up, to make my own decisions without compromising with anyone … for a change, to talk to everyone I wanted to talk to, to be as crazy as I wanted to be, to say YES to everything I wanted to say YES to. And let’s be honest, none of that could have been possible if I was doing this with someone else. Doesn’t matter if it was my best friend, or any friend, not even my (now) ex. So the decision to do this solo was an easy one to make and weirdly, I knew I was gonna be just fine.

Reflecting back, the decision to do this trip and to do it completely by myself is the single best decision I have ever made in my life. One thing I realised is that there is never a perfect time for anything and if you sit back waiting for it come, I’m afraid you’re just gonna miss out on a whole life of adventures you could have and should have been on. So before you tuck yourself into bed or rush out of the house to crack on with the same old routine, ask yourself “Are you loving the lifestyle you’ve worked so damn hard for?“.

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