A Week To Go Until Take Off. How Are We Feeling?

I discovered a Swedish word this week that perfectly describes how both Shelley and I are feeling with only a week to go until we jet off for our next adventure. Resfeber: the restless race of the traveler’s heart before the journey begins when anxiety and anticipation are entangled together.

The Anticipation is Strong

We, of course, have built expectations over the past few weeks and months about many aspects of what we are about to do. Expectations of visiting Sri Lanka; the places we’ve read about, the amazing people, wildlife and food. The expectations of living in Northern Thailand, a part of the world we have grown so fond of. Will it be as amazing and rewarding as we hope it to be? And also the expectations of blog writing and where that may take us. We’re excited to find out if these expectations will be met.

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The Anxiety is in Full Force

Mainly due to us both very recently giving up our good jobs. Jobs that paid well, we enjoyed doing, have worked hard at for a number of years and built many fantastic friendships from. Shelley deals with this better than I do. I try to adopt Shelley’s cool as a cucumber attitude to life but I can’t help but struggle with the idea of having no income for god knows how long.

We’ve also just handed over our beloved London home to two strangers who we only briefly met. They seem lovely but it doesn’t help to hear the many landlord horror stories of nightmare tenants. With us being first time overseas landlords we have our fingers well crossed!

A week ago today we were the most stressed we have ever been.

We had just a few days to pack our lives away, belongings to sell, a flat to decorate/clean and a trip to plan for. On top of that, I lost my passport for 24 hours which did not help the situation! With the new tenants now moved in and the passport found we are now far more relaxed.

We Carry Further Anxiety About what the Future Holds

We have only the first few months very roughly planned but after that, we literally have no clue where we will go or what we’ll be doing. We’re keeping our options very open in terms of places to visit or potential ways of making money on the road.

Some yet to visit countries and continents we’re keen to explore include Myanmar, Philippines, Japan, China, Indonesia, Africa, Canada, Eastern Europe and back to South America again. We’d be extremely lucky to tick all these destinations. We’ll have to see how we get on!

A year from now we could be living on a remote island we had no clue even existed.

We could be making an income from this blog. Building a charity in Africa. Running a hostel in the middle of the Amazon. Or we could be returning home to build our UK lives back up again. Yes not knowing fills us with teeth clattering nerves but also with equal amounts of excitement and anticipation.

At the Moment we Feel Quite Isolated by the Whole Thing

What we are doing is far from the norm so we don’t yet have many people we can really share our excitement with. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had a humbling amount of support from friends and family but we get the feeling that many don’t fully understand what we are undertaking.

To sum up what many must be thinking of our trip, the other day someone asked us what we plan to do when we get to Thailand. Before giving us the chance to answer that person answered for us by suggesting that we’ll simply be “lazing around on beaches all day and hitting the bars to drink out of buckets”. To me, it was quite a patronising way of saying we’re basically going on a really long vacation.

To those less travelled I understand that disappearing time and time again for months, even years, may seem like taking the easy option in life. But let us tell you that could not be further from the truth in our case.

As I previously touched on, it’s no easy feat to give up everything you had back home. Saying goodbye to everyone close to you. Packing all your belongings into a bag only big enough to carry on your back and fly off for un unknown venture. We’re not carefree early twenty-somethings like we were on our first shared adventure to Australia. We do think about the future, career paths and how our decisions affect those around us.

We See this Trip as a Career Change

But instead of simply changing jobs we are keen to somehow work for ourselves in a way that involves what we love doing the most, travelling. Creating this blog is a starting point to which we hope will open some doors to a new way of life. A life that doesn’t chain us to office desks in one location like all our previous jobs has done. We are very aware of the challenges ahead. Creating a successful blog is no easy task but we want to try.

We’d rather try and fail than fail to try. 

We may later decide that blogging is not for us or something else may come along that distracts us from writing. We’re fine with either outcome because whatever happens we’ll at least be exploring the world while we do it.

We’re Sad to Say Goodbye

The hardest part of long-term travel is saying goodbye to those closest to us. Especially when we have so many amazing people in our lives. We’ve been overwhelmed by everyone’s well wishes and generosity. We hope you all understand why we have to do this.

We’re not running away from life, we’re running to life.

We’re running to experiences that we wish we could share with you all. At least now on this blog, we can now share virtually with you which we are very excited about. We’re not trying to make anyone jealous, just keen to show you the world.

Now is the time for us to do this maybe one last journey beyond. We’re both so thankful that we’re on exactly the same page regarding how we should be living life. We’re making the most of this time while we have it. Supporting each other when we need to and enjoying the highs of what this amazing planet has to offer. With a week to go we’re feeling excited, nervous, happy, sad, curious, eager, stressed, relaxed and everything else in-between. We’re on a rollercoaster of emotions but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

For a more detailed read of why we love to travel please see our posts Why Everyone Should Have Mini Early Retirements & Why We Don’t Want To Be Cured Of The Travel Bug.

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