Four weeks ago I decided to quit my job. It was sort of an impetuous decision. I'd been unhappy with work for awhile but my company was going through a massive reorg and I was optimistic about the changes that were coming. I'd been with the company for 16.5 years and was used to all the changes. Over the years my attitude was always to wait it out because I knew everything would change. Several weeks prior to our companiy's sales conference I learned that the changes for my group were not going in the direction I was personally wanting. Right before the sales conference I talked to my mentor about other opportunites within the company. She was going to be in Dallas for the backend of the conference and Dan was an attendee so I decided to hang out at the hotel to do some networking to see if there was another group I might be interested in. I spent the week as an uninvited guest chatting it up with old and new friends talking about all the problems with the company. After 4 days of this I decided it was time to move on. I went back to my hotel room and wrote a resignation email to my boss. Dan was out at dinner that night so I texted him that I resigned and he responded "Wow". I took that as a positive sign. I decided to sleep on the decision before hitting 'send'. The next morning we got up at 3 and heading back to Austin. Dan slept the entire way so we didn't have a chance to chat about my resignation before he went into the office. I re-read my email several times and decided it was the right thing to do and hit send committing to my two week notification. My boss immediately pinged me. He wasn't quite as positive as I was and tried to convince me to stay, at least until I found a job. I told him my mind was made up and there was no turning back. Dan and I went to lunch that day. He mentioned the text I sent the night before and asked if I was serious. I told him about the morning events and he responded "Ballsy". Again I took that as a positive response.
I spent that first weekend oscillating back and forth between being exhilarated and having complete "Oh shit what did I just do?!?" moments. My stomach was a complete mess. I told a few people to help it sink in. They were all excited and told me to just relish the time. On Monday I pulled out my resume and dusted it off. I hadn't searched for a job in years and didn't know where to start. I ended up on monster.com and was poking around the website on my company laptop. Within a few minutes I ended up with some nasty malware that rendered my computer completely unusable. I immediately called the help desk and was told I needed to bring the laptop in to be rebuilt which would take two days. After these I was a bit leary to get on my personal computer to job search. That and I really did want to procrastinate on the search. By this time I had posted that I had quit on Facebook because we all know it's not true until its posted there. Everyone was super supportive and told me to relax at least for the week. I took their advice and decided to google global volunteering instead of real jobs.
Now for those of you that haven't heard of global volunteering it is a huge business. You can go anywhere in the world and do just about anything however it's not free. Each opportunity has a different cost associated with it. The cost basically pays for room and board and again varies based on the opportunity and country. Some of the opportunities require different skills and time commitments. Teaching English is the main job that pays but also comes with some major time commitments.
I first started looking in southeast Asia since I have never been there. As I was looking I decided if I were to actually do something I would want to commit to a month. I set a budget in my head of $1000 for the month. I started finding some really interesting assignments that were priced within my budget. But then realized I needed to be able to use airline miles to get there. Since I quit so quickly without planning I didn't want to spend more than I had to since I was unsure when my next paycheck would come. I quickly came to the realization that I needed to stay closer to home. I found a fantastic opportunity in the South Mediterranean tracking dolphins but it was out of my budget. I found some cool underwater scuba assignments but they were for new divers and I thought that might just annoy me. I found a really cool turtle rescue operations but they wanted a 2.5 month commitment. The opportunities are endless- you just have to find the right one.
My friend told me about a volunteer company called Global Nomadics and this led me to Costa Rica. I've never been there and have heard nothing but great stuff things about the country. Here I found an opportunity to work on a farm. It met all my requirements. It was in my budget, easy to get to with miles, and would let me go for a month. It also had some appeal that i hadn't thought of initally- getting to do physical work without getting to heady. After sitting befind a comouter for too long this sounded awesome. I immediately sent in my application. The wait was now on!
