Today is an
anniversary. Predominantly, it marks three years since the day I began dating
the man I will spend the rest of my life with. That’s a pretty big deal, and
there’s a lot more of that journey still to come, including the actual ‘getting
married’ bit. It also marks the day that I began travelling as an independent
adult. Sure, I’d done a little family travel around Australia prior to the 18th
of April 2008, but this was the first adventure I’d had of my own accord. I
flew from Brisbane to Melbourne to meet Andrew, a trend that we maintained for
the next ten months while I finished university in Brisbane and he continued
his job in Melbourne. We would scour the major flight providers in Australia,
always buying flights six to eight weeks in advance as their sales schedules
rotated. We had it down to a fine art and saw each other once a month. Not bad
for a long distance relationship, but still challenging all the same.
We rarely
met in our own cities, instead squashing mad flights and adventures to
Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Sydney into weekends around university papers,
exams, teaching placements and Andrew’s noon-9pm job. For Andrew, it was an
opportunity to finally see more of the country he’d left the shores of New
Zealand for. Personally, I gained a greater appreciation for just how diverse
my own country was. It was eye-opening, tiring, exciting, expensive, manic and
everything I could possibly want from travel, without even having a passport.
They say that travel is a real test of both a person and a relationship, and
somehow, Andrew and I survived the long-distance relationship and the
pressures of travel, all in the early days of our getting to know one another.
Long emails and phone calls filled our days and we continued to share our love
of exploration and discovery.
All the
excitement and delight meant that I officially caught the travel bug. As soon
as I had those two very expensive pieces of paper in my hand, I was waving
goodbye to sunny Queensland for the weather-worn streets of Melbourne, via a
much anticipated family holiday to Japan for Christmas. I packed up my
townhouse worth of boxes onto a crate, loaded up my little white buzz-box with
a myriad of goodies, jammed in my stuffed puppy from Andrew, kept the passenger
seat empty and relished in the fact that I had built up six weeks of annual
leave to keep my bank account afloat. I spent a little over a week travelling
from Brisbane to Sydney, staying with family along the way, before picking up
Andrew from Sydney airport to tackle the last leg of the journey together –
quite fitting really, as we do the same ‘last leg’ thing every Summer break now
too!
We dove
straight into living together in Melbourne, which wasn’t without its hurdles,
while I found a job as a teacher aide (slash bargirl) to notch up some
educational experience. We knew that a move to Dubai was potentially on the
horizon, but the youthful age of our relationship and the way things move
forward in Dubai, meant that it was all a bit of an unknown. So we sat
ourselves down in our happy little apartment, and set forth planning our first
big holiday away together – Thailand. For me, it was utilising a travel account
that had been gifted to me for my 21st birthday. For Andrew, well…
he busted his butt to save all year. By the time December 2009 came around, we
were engaged, our apartment was packed up, our furniture was sold, and we
strapped on our backpacks to begin exploring the world.
Since then,
my love of travel has only grown, as has my love for Andrew. We’ve
problem-solved, argued, explored, happy-snapped, laughed and ricocheted our way
across thirteen countries while I’ve attempted to write about [most of] them
along the way (Andrew writes a pretty mean tale-telling as well). We’ve lightly
settled in Dubai for now, and will be here for at least another two years, but
don’t really know what will happen after that. I am sure that a myriad of
adventures will come our way in the meantime, hopefully ending with a year-long
transit across the wonder that is Asia, where I can write, blog and share
stories to my heart’s content.
Meanwhile
in Dubai, it is easy to forget that I am actually travelling every day. It’s
been quite the adventure, and oh my, how I love the holidays where I get to
immerse myself in a completely different culture from my own. I love writing
about it and sharing my stories, and will admit that I tend to get very jealous
of those ‘full time travel writers’ that have approached the world with
reckless abandon and only a backpack on their back. They write, and they earn
money from it, and I often fantasise about what an experience that would be. Each
time I sigh, “Oh what I wouldn’t give to be a writer.”
At the same
time, I can’t help but feel that it would take away from the pleasure that I
inherently associate with writing. That need to create a niche for yourself, to
promote and market yourself, to come up with new, fascinating and interesting
ideas and stories constantly. Yes,
travel is exciting, and there are adventures galore, but some days you just do
nothing, or at least want to do nothing. Many days, you want to just enjoy
something for the sake of enjoying it, not to have to come up with a novel
approach on how to explore it as a concept. Many talk about how grinding it can
be to feel the pressure of this constant stream of consciousness, a pressure I
imagine would be the same if I chose to pursue my photography as a profession.
Nevertheless, I still get jealous when I read XXXX sold all their belongings
and has been travelling since [insert noughties year here].
Then this
morning, I read this
article, from a traveller who seems to be much like myself (you can follow
her here). Notably she says,
of the writing in her blog, “It’s mine
and I can do whatever I want with it. Teaching pays the bills. That leaves me
with complete freedom and creative control in my writing.”
Then I didn’t
feel so bad. I actually felt damn good.
I love that
teaching pays the bills. Travel bills specifically.
I can write
whatever I want to, whenever I want to and enjoy doing so. I don’t have to
answer to anyone, except maybe my grandmother if I use too much bad language. I
can pick any place in the world I want to go, and find some way into the
teaching community for stable and reliable income. Yes, I have to work, and
damn hard. Yes, some days it’s so draining and stressful that I’d rather
shuffle my way right back to my fancy-pants Bayside school in Melbourne to gawp
at 23 smiling 8-year olds. Then, I think about the time I will get back on that
plane for my annual 9-week break with no commitment or responsibility, AND GET PAID. I take time to ponder the
fact that the people who see what I write are reading my work mostly because
they are friends and family who love me, ‘paying’ with their smiles, hugs and
support. It is then that I finally resolve my concerns knowing that I am the
one with the best travel gig in the world. Awesome.
Happy three
years Andrew.
I love you
and couldn’t have done any of this without you.
