Breaking the Roots, Part 1
Source: Jaivee at flickr
The first post on this site talked about trees and roots. Are we like a tree, in that we have certain things keeping us here and making it extremely difficult to go away for an extended trip? How many of those roots you are willing to break impacts the quality and length of your trip.
Your roots are what keeps you here. Your house, your car, your pets, your extended family, your close friends, your job, your community involvement… whatever you would miss, or would miss you, if you went away for more than a couple of weeks. (Now perhaps your house would not miss you, but your bank or landlord certainly would if you stopped making the payments.)
The younger you are, the less stuff there is to anchor you at home. You don’t have a house, your car is junk, you’re anxious for some time away from your family, you want to make new friends or travel with existing ones, no attachment to your job, no career, etc. That’s why “backpacking through Europe” is such a popular after college experience before the real job starts.
When you get older, you are both less likely to want to “backpack”, more likely to have a spouse and/or children, more likely to have a real career, more likely to have been at the same job for 10 years. These are the roots keeping us in place, and stopping us from adventure.
There are two approaches to handling these issues for people in this situation – you can either break some of those roots, or prepare things to make an easier for you to be away and come back to them.
Say you like your job. There are such things as “leave of absenses”. Some companies even offer real sabbaticals and call them that. But for the most part, you can just arrange with your employer for a specified amount of time off. It’s easier than you think – you just have to ask early enough.
If you don’t like your job, you can always leave it, and find a new job when you get back. Obviously, depending on your skills this may be easier or harder. But if you’re in the right industry and know that you can find “something” when you get back, then that is an option worth considering.
For us, we are doing quite a bit of jettisoning. We’re in the process of selling our condo. We’ve already moved most of our possessions into a storage locker, and are living in a sparsely furnished condo waiting for the right offer to come along – any day now in fact.
We’re not selling the condo because we want to get away. We are selling our condo because the time is right to, and once we’ve done that getting away becomes a lot easier. Of course there is the financial aspect – if you want to plan a trip of several months, but need to continue making mortgage payments, property taxes, condo fees, etc. It quickly adds up – with very little income coming in and a huge outflow, it affects how long we can be away before it starts to hurt.
And on the flip side, not having those payments, and in fact having a large amount of money in the bank account (from the sale) reduces the stress level considerably.
We’re not likely to leave our jobs. But we’ve both decided we would if it got in the way of taking the type of trip we would like to take. But with proper planning, that will probably not be an issue.
I’m excited about planning this trip. More on the where’s and when’s in a future post. But does anyone have stories and experiences to share regarding preparing to go – house, jobs, family? Please post them in the comments.
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