Just about a year ago, I lost my job with Hells Fargo after three years of playing the "Yes, man" game. I'd just finished my undergraduate degree after several trials and tribulations due to tumors, ex-husbands, and a never-ending indecisive manner. Similarly, Brittany stared down the 12 hour hospital night shifts and a full 12 hour courseload, semester after semester.
I was frantically awaiting my own acceptance letter into a Rhetoric program in hopes of concreting a respectable path under my feet. But all I could do was envision my life falling to shambles in the most dramatic way all around me in true "woe is me" fashion. Brittany started throwing around the idea of backpacking across South America alone and I volunteered to drop whatever might be going on the following summer to go with her. My recent breakup reminded me nothing is for certain and life's greatest guarantees are the ones we grant ourselves: through belief, through hardwork and through that wild hair up your ass that lands you on the other end of the equator.
Miraculously, the day classes started I received my acceptance letter into graduate school. In true karma fashion, I also landed the job I'd applied to the week before having given up on that acceptance letter. So, my life rolled from having nothing in my favor to all at once and I spent the next year throwing around plans for the following summer, working days at a printing company and nights in class constantly pondering 'WHAT THE HELL IS RHETORIC?'
A question of money became apparent and a constant worry but those details really came down to how willing are you to break yourself? Today or tomorrrow? And is this break worth the experience? A break in your bank account. A break in your Amazon frenzies and trips to Target. A break from the people you love and an even bigger break from the surroundings you know. The language, the culture, the terrain.
Hint: The answer is always yes. Travel and experience are worth every single part of your being. Why would the land be so vast if it were not to discovered and rediscovered again?
There was definitely a question of could we leave our jobs? Would we leave our jobs? What would this mean for us when we returned to reality at the end of our voyage? For me, it meant playing my cards well and landing a teaching fellowship through the university that would allow me to finish my MA while teaching and receiving a stipend to do so. What it meant for Brittany? Walking away from five years of working for a company she truly enjoyed and loved and yet feeling an overbearing need to go. We both felt that need to go. And as the days inch nearer and our futures near closer to May 21st and our plans look more bleak, one thing is for certain. We're going and with fifteen years of friendship under our feet and only the world to discover, we're absolutely ready.
Please note: Brittany and I are mid-twenties women and conditioned travellers. I'm 26, have lived in Italy, travelled across Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, Ireland, England, Costa Rica, Mexico, Jamaica. Brittany will turn 27 during our trip and has conquered China, Thailand, Italy, Mexico, Ireland, Costa Rica and I'm sure there are others I've failed to mention here as well. The point, we are not inexperienced, nor are we incapable of what lies ahead...even if we never took Rosetta Stone out of the packaging. :)
