Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Job to Travel

Why Traveling IS for Everyone

Let me first say that traveling is most definitely for anyone who wants adventure and loves to see new places.  Traveling builds confidence and is one of the best teachers for learning about the world. Anyone who can afford to travel, should at least take one trip or two trips a year, it’s wonderful and educational.  Of course if you have a dream of quitting your job to travel, you really should. I say just go for it.  If you want to know why it might not be such a good idea to quit your job and travel full time or move to another country, well then read on.

To Travel You Must Make a Decision to Leave Home and Giving Up Home is Not for Everyone

When you quit your job to commit to travel sometimes you must give up the comforts of a steady income and/or family.   This seems to be the hardest thing for me.  I’ve been looking at a lot of travel blogs lately, and somehow instead of being inspired, I feel overwhelmed.  I feel overwhelmed because I have probably taken reading travel articles to an unhealthy level.  Ha.  So after all that reading I started wondering today, why do I even want to travel?  People have already gone places, I can look at photos, I can stay home and be comfortable.  

Home, that word. It’s a word most people feel lost without.  Home denotes going to a coffee shop and knowing the people, because you’ve been there every day for years.  It signifies relationships and family.  It also alludes to babysitting your nieces and nephews, walking a familiar path around your neighborhood, running into friends at a grocery store. 

Why I Gave Up Home to Travel

My problem with this word is even sometimes with it I feel lost, and maybe that’s simply because I don’t feel at home yet.  I don’t feel settled.  I’ve felt somewhat misplaced since college.  It could have something to do with trying to settle and then having my heart broken.  Having your heart broken does things to you, you either wallow in self pity and become depressed for a time, or you move.  My heart is perfectly fine now, but it is also restless and it longs to travel. 

There were only a few years since college (I graduated 13 years ago) that I felt at home in one place.  I had a tiny house with a huge backyard.  I spent three years in my first house.  I remember when I moved out of that house.  I cried, and even a year later when I went back to visit my former neighbors I cried just driving down the street that I had considered “home”.  But those years are now years ago and for the past couple of years, no place feels like home.  

Why I Quit My Job to Travel

Something else is out there.  I can feel it and I want to chase it.  So you say to me, “you don’t sound happy or content.”  The truth is I am the happiest I have been in a long time and I am perfectly content to sit the rest of my life in my parents’ house typing away at this blog (or finding some other worthy hobby or job),  if I felt that was what I was supposed to do.  What I want to chase is the adventure God has put in my heart.  I want to know it, I want to taste it and I want to run after it till I’ve caught it. 

There is something delicious about stepping out into the unknown and breathing in unfamiliar air.  There is an electricity that you wonder if those around you feel, or if it’s just you.  Everything is wonderfully different than your home.  A new people, a new culture, possibly a new language, and most definitely a new way of thinking is what keeps me coming back to traveling every time.  

Travel is not for everyone and/or moving to another country is not for everyone.  There is a lot you give up when you are constantly moving and never staying in one place.  I wonder though, if people because they get comfortable, settle before it’s time.  Like there was an adventure waiting just around the corner of the street, but they stopped too soon. 

It’s ok to want a home, it’s actually right.  Everyone needs community, and it’s important to be plugged into relationships.  Relationships are what will carry you through life.  But sometimes, you might be called to something else.  I think it’s ok to travel.  I can’t say traveling should last forever and ever, but for some people, they are made to do it.  

Even so, I still don’t think traveling full time is for everyone.  It’s not always fun, it’s not easy, planes are the worst, sometimes getting there takes forever, sometimes your luggage gets lost, being away from family is lonely, and honestly it can be stressful.  But it gets inside of you, going to a land you’ve never been to before and seeing a way of life you aren’t used to.

You can have the best of both worlds. If you still want to travel while having an amazing career (and a home) read “How to be a Teacher and Travel the World“.

What Travel Means to Me

Where was I going with this?  Travel means more to me right now than a lot of things.  It’s hope, it’s bright, it holds the promise of finding that four letter word that’s so dear to many people.  It may even lead me back to where I started.  Until it does, I might not know that where I started is where I needed to end up, if that’s the case.  But if it’s not then home is where I am traveling to, and I am closer to it because I am moving towards it.  

If you’ve already found home and if you are settled, then know this: you are where you are supposed to be and no amount of traveling or looking will make you happier (though it might be fun).  It’s ok not to travel, it’s ok not to see other places, because home is so much more important than any of those things.  On the other hand, if you aren’t settled, then maybe home is not too far off, you just might have to travel to get there.