RE: Ever Wanted to Just Pack Up Your Life and Move Far Far FAR Away?
Love this post.
I think about my life and how it would be somewhere else all too often. It's not that I dislike the people around me (though sometimes I do) or that I hate the geography. It's that feeling of freshness and unfamiliarity. A start at something so foreign and exciting that has me dreaming of selling my belongings and hitting the road for anywhere else.
I once travelled to Naknek, Alaska all the way from Florida to live at a salmon cannery for a month. I went alone. It was the most liberating and exciting experience of my life. There were people from all over the US, even some from Hawaii.
Even after returning from that venture, I still dream about starting over, alone, in an unfamiliar territory. It might just be a romantic daydream for me though, as my ambitions are contrarily keeping me grounded in my hometown where I grew up. The thoughts of fleeing become extraordinarily strong when my mood is very low, sometimes for weeks. I have learned to cope and stay strong, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a reoccurring thought process in my life.
Thank you for sharing your feelings, dreams, and experiences. These well thought out and terrificly raw posts are my favorite ones.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment @shanequick!
Experience tells me that people have numerous different types of motivations for uprooting and seeking new surroundings. Some are simply adventurous spirits while others-- quite literally-- have "addictions" to newness and challenges. Some are "running away" and some are-- more subtly-- just avoiding parts of their reality and life they'd prefer not to face.
In my own experiences, my desires to leave have always been fueled by a (false) hope that things will somehow be "easier" in some other place... fueled by a pervasive sensation that every time I have "given 100%" to something, it has only been rewarded "at 90%," to the point where even getting up in the morning felt like starting at a deficit.
Of course, the thing that was not working was my expectations of "how MUCH life" I could actually manage. Sometimes, the answer to a shortfall isn't increasing your "income," but reducing your "expenses."
I like that... reducing your expenses. Thanks for the advice :)
If you tasted the liberation of being on the road, (Florida to Alaska ! cool!)and didn't get hooked, I would say you know it's not really for you-the dream maybe?
(I'm only talking from my own experience of spending years on the road, and talking to 1000's travelers. - It's not so much of an option, as a necessity-for a 1000 different reasons, and personal to each individual)
It is one of my biggest dreams/goals to travel all over. The things that hold me back are:
I know one can travel without being loaded, and I have done so, but I want to have a substantial way of generating income before I drop everything I've known my entire life and hit the road. I do have a game plan, I'm just closer to the beginning of it than the end so it'll be awhile before I am able to travel like I wish to.
The very best of luck, mate !
Thanks friend!