Of course: a magical combination of feeling disgruntled about work and reading a book about long-distance adventure has once more kindled the ever-flickering stasia wanderlust. (As if it’s not enough to have just gotten back from Puerto Rico…)
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Hm. I’ve now tried a whole bunch of ways to explain myself up there, but it ultimately comes down to a few things that I don’t yet know how to form into coherent words. There’s the feeling that if I’m already making so little money at work, why not just admit that I basically might as well not be working, super minimize my expenses, and get the hell out of dodge? There’s the conflicting but related theory that maybe I should just get some super high-paying shit job for a year, save up, and then get the hell out of dodge. There’s the whole complicated mess of loving my established life (and slave-wage job:) in Portland and always wanting to come back here, yet when I’m here always in the back of my mind champing to get out. (Although that may not actually be true, it may just be a facet of my current disgruntledness that I think I always want to get out.) And then there’s the sense that even with all the bike travel I was able to do this last year, I’m just beginning to scratch at an itch that is so much more all-encompassing than even a month-long trip south and a smattering of other travels will sate. The fear that I’m the only one holding myself back from what I really want to or can do.
Like I told James, it’s dangerous for me to read books or blogs or articles about long-distance, long-term travel, especially when I’m even remotely dissatisfied with anything else about life. It gives me a glimpse of other possibilities, of a life that could be. The grass is always greener.
Tomorrow, when I’m feeling back to my normal spunky indomitable self and have stopped letting work piss me off, perhaps a simple long ride will suffice.
Oh, and that title is a quote from Walt Whitman. Bonus points if you knew that already:)
I dunno if I should encourage you, but GTFOODing when you’re young and want to go somewhere (instead of wanting to get away from where you are) seems like a wonderful idea. Taking a couple of months to wander around North America to sample travelling seems like it would be a nice way to spend a summer, and if the sample isn’t tasty there’s always Portland in the fall.
a couple of months around North America sounds so lovey. Though of course it’s hard to draw a line. When that’s over, why not a couple more months? Or around the world? Perhaps I have a limit somewhere… who knows:)
I always found it easy to leave shit jobs when I wanted to do some travelling. Leaving jobs you like is much harder, shit pay or not. Despite being burnt out from working at the hostel for five years, it wasn’t the easiest decision to quit. But then I got hired back, so no biggie?
It is a tough call. As I get older I get to like my established Portland life more and more, and it’s not easy for me to just “get up and go” and scrap what I’ve made. Even though I go away, I do want to come back. It was so much easier to travel when I lived in places I didn’t want to be in, but coming back home was always brutal.
Yeah. I think it might be the same kind of thing as when I left teaching. That was hard to leave even though there were actually a lot of parts of the job that were not ideal. But when something isn’t overtly horrible, it’s often hard to leave it. Especially when you don’t necessarily know what you’re getting yourself into.
But that being said, I try really hard not to make decisions that are based on fear–fear of the unknown, fear of failing, fear of not finding anything better. So I don’t know. Am I staying where I am because fundamentally I want to, or because I’m afraid of the fact that I don’t clearly know how to define anything different right now? That’s what I have to figure out, I think.