Ditching the Safe Bet: Embracing the 'What Ifs' of Full-Time Travel
It would have been the safe choice to relocate to London. We have plenty of friends there, it’s English speaking—except for some nuanced words that mean different things in the US—and we can easily find jobs in our chosen professions. In fact, Kevin had been offered a job in London, but there were some hoops we had to jump through first. Waiting for the position to formally open up and the details to get sorted out gave us time to think. London would be a fun destination for family and friends to visit. We could quench some of our love of travel by exploring destinations that are easy train rides from London or quick flights out of Europe more easily than we can from San Francisco.
The safe choice also meant we’d be making some compromises. We’d be living in another fairly expensive city and putting too much of our salaries into our accommodations. We’d be traveling more, but when would we able to travel to destinations on our bucket list? We want to see more of Europe, but we also are eager to dive into Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and more of Oceania. We’d still be at the mercy of long weekends and not enough vacation time.
The more we visualized what this new life would be like, the more flaws we saw. Everyone is saying that 60 is the new 40, and while we agree, how long do we prioritize work over living the life we’ve always dreamed of? Although we are healthy now, there’s no guarantee about what tomorrow would bring and how that would impact what we could experience.
A big move would change our lives a lot, but maybe not as much as we wanted. The more we thought about it, the more we were tantalized by the freedom of having a lot less stuff. A lot less.
We opened our hearts and minds a little wider and then the questions and what ifs really flooded in.
What if we traveled full time instead of rebuilding our same life somewhere else?
What if we traveled only with a carry-on bag and a backpack apiece? That would be a lot less stuff for sure.
What if we don’t have enough money? How much is ever enough?
What if we we saved more but our health failed?
What if one of us got hit by a bus tomorrow and we never got the chance to have these amazing experiences together?
What if we missed our friends and family too much?
What if we get rid of everything only to learn that we made a terrible mistake?
We could do what was safe and expected of us, but what if we reached for the stars and allowed ourselves to dream even bigger than we thought possible?
As someone who has a tendency to overanalyze things (see above if you need more proof!), I realized that “what ifs” could easily paralyze us. Since we had full-time travel on our hearts and the appeal kept getting stronger, it was worth it to experience it and discover through lived experience whether it met the hype we had for it. Our lives could be changed exponentially in ways we never imagined, doors could open that never existed because we stepped out in faith and had an entire world of options that now lay before us. Sure it would be risky, but some of the highest highs of life only happen when you take some risk.
We decided to take the gamble. Quitting our jobs was scary. But our dreams are worth it. We’ve been on the road for the last six months and experienced things that we never imagined. We’ve been to Italy (Naples, Palermo, Lecce, Assisi, Spello, Rome), Greece (Athens, Meteora), Egypt (Cairo, Luxor, Aswan), Cyprus (Paphos, Troodoos Mountains, Farmagusta), Scotland (Edinburgh, Broughty Ferry, Glasgow, St. Andrews), and now we’re in the French Riviera. We’ve got nearly an entire year planned out with destinations that get our skin tingling with excitement, and a joy that is beyond anything we could have imagined. Not every day is glamorous, but we live each day on our terms. And that’s pretty cool.
What if all the what ifs don’t really matter and this turns out to be the best decision of our lives?
