The is an unedited interview I did in 2015 with Ronny from Israeli magazine, Masa Acher (meaning, "A Different Journey").
Viewing entries tagged
life planning
I have an update: I started a new job this week—yay! And there's even more to celebrate: This week marks 6 months that I have been back in the United States! In all of my blogging and reading other people’s travel blogs, I rarely hear people write about the adaptation back into the job market after an extended period of travel. So I've decided to write about it in this post.
I will in no way sugar coat this: Job hunting post-travel is not easy. To give yourself the best possible chance of returning to a job, I will share in this post the tricks I used before, during, and after nearly 2 years of travel without official employment. These tricks include thinking carefully about your reasons for traveling, staying connected to your contacts along the way, and having a "product" to show for your absence.
Fakaalofa lahi atu! This means “hello” in Niuean! As I write this, I am celebrating 1 year of travel from Niue Island in the South Pacific. The last time my feet touched US soil was September 1st 2014. What a crazy thought. I am so happy I have taken a whole year to travel around the world. Long-term travel is something I’ve always wanted to do and an experience I think everyone should have.
As usual, I will list what I did this last month. Additionally, I will mix things up by listing my favorite moments from this past year. Then I’ll talk a little bit about my biggest deviation of all—the location from which I am celebrating my 1-year anniversary of deviating the norm!
It was only my second day in Portland when I realized that I was experiencing a mild case of culture shock. I have internalized so much of New York City after 6 years of living there. My instincts as a pedestrian have been developed to either follow the crosswalks or make a run for it.
Impatient people are both behind the wheel and on foot in New York. Cars zip through red lights at the last second like the mother with 2 kids in the backseat who hit a friend and I at an intersection on my first day scouting for an apartment. Meanwhile, people scamper across the street long after the orange hand has stopped blinking. It’s a game of Frogger, but with real lives and driver's licenses on the brink of ending.
It scares me. It scares me like nothing before in my life. Which makes it all the more important to set out and do it.
Recall Bilbo after the dwarves invited him on a journey to kill a dragon and then left him alone in his hobbit hole to ponder it all. He sighed to himself and surveyed his home thinking how nice it was they had finally departed. All was quiet and back to normal. Except now something was stirring inside of him. Bilbo had felt this stirring before—a spark that had been burning from within since he was a boy was suddenly set ablaze by the dwarves' proposal. It was growing, growing like a wildfire that sent him fleeing out his door, willingly leaving his mother's doilies and his valued 'kerchief behind.