Thursday July 6, 2006
It’s really happening. My heart has been pounding outside my chest for weeks now and it’s starting to hurt. I always grow anxious with anticipation over certain things in life—and this is a BIG one. I’m quitting my cushy job at ABC after 9 years and traveling the world for a year. What? Am I really doing it? It is so much easier said than done. But I think the fact that I ended the 5 year relationship with my sometimes ‘not so friendly’ boyfriend, sold my first condo, am about to rent out the condo I live in, and got some needles stuck in my arms (read: got vaccinated) might convince me I am.
My best friend Mark (actually ex-boyfriend, but that’s another story/chapter/blog) always says that things have to happen in steps. So I think I’m halfway up the ladder! Well, I guess those would be rungs, so I’m halfway up the fire escape?
I always loved traveling. Since I was little I loved ‘exploring’ new towns and places. I would ride my bike down new streets mesmerized by something I’d never seen before. And when I got my license I loved driving all over New Jersey and seeing what other towns looked like.
It wasn’t ’til after college, when my friend Katie, who was living in the UK, invited me to visit. The thought had actually not ever occurred to me to go overseas. Neither one of my parents were much travelers. My dad rarely leaves Randolph, NJ and my mom likes to stick to ground transportation and inside the borders of the US—where she feels “safe”, prior to 9/11 maybe. As far as meeting Katie in Europe, naively my first thought was, ‘Yeah right. There’s no way I could do that or afford it.” But then just for the heck of it, I looked up the cost of the flight to Paris and realized I could do this. And why not??
So I went backpacking for a month across Europe. And that was it. I got the bug. I fell in love with the world…and a world traveler was born.
[…] years ago, I hatched a hair-brained plan to quit my job and travel the world. I guess it worked, because now, it’s still going, and the […]