I’d like to keep this whole thing short and sweet, but I think I need to talk about myself and my goals a little bit. I hope anyone reading can abide my pretty boring stream of consciousness.

As a teenager, on discovering that countries outside of America exist, I fell in love with the idea of travelling around the world. I worked part-time through college to afford a “globetrotting” journey, and after graduating in 2022 I did basically just that. Over the span of ~8 months I visited ~10 different countries across 7 different trips. Then the pressure of not even having a job lined up got to me, I found work in my field immediately, and got to it. I’ve been on the job for almost a year now.

I won’t say that I was dissatisfied with my travels – basically the opposite – while I have a romantic idea of travelling, the reality is that I’m extremely introverted and I was happy to start to get time to myself again after settling back home. I’m not overflowing with happiness every single day, but I’m extremely satisfied with the life I live now. I love my job, I’m secure, I have friends, I’m exceeding my fitness goals daily. That said, I’ve also noticed that every day I’m more worn out than the last. I usually get laughed at when I say this to anyone over 30, at 25 I know I’m not raggedy or anything, but I am absolutely not bustling with energy as I was in college, and I’m not under any illusion that that fact will change. Ever. And while I don’t think that there’s anything wrong, per say, with continuing to live each day as I have, I’ve been haunted by the fact that I know if I make it to an old age, I’m going to look back on what I’ve done and think “so… that was all I could do?” In terms of bodybuilding and programming I have long-term personal goals I intend to achieve, but I see those as quite different than bigger picture life things like a first girlfriend/having fun in college/travelling the world/etc. I love them, but they’re not going to make memories that last forever.

I know there’s a lot of possibility for things to try, but by far the most difficult and energy-consuming thing I’ve done is my postgrad travelling, and to be honest I do in some way feel that there’s still something “left on the table” when it comes to that. Something about my journey didn’t quite match how I thought it would go in my head (which I know is a slippery slope). I didn’t even see the Middle East or Africa, about 50% of my travels were at the same places, and I didn’t like my out of shape look or how tired it made me when moving around (which affected me more than I thought it would). All things considered, I’m thinking about taking one more final, loooong journey out. Essentially – quit working for a few months to do nothing but focus on travelling and seeing the world.

That said, if I’m going to do this, I have a few specific concerns in mind (well… as any reasonable person would, a ton of concerns in mind). The first two pertain to something specific I’ve learned on my journeys before: being abroad is much more fun with other people. I know that sounds contrarian for my introvert speal from before, but all of my high points when travelling, by far, were when every day I woke up and hung out with someone. It was never as fun alone. To this point, I have two big things in mind:

A. I don’t want to travel when it’s freezing out, I want to take this on when it’s warm in the Northern Hemisphere (a lot of the places I’d intend to go would be Europe/N.A). If I’m planning a real “journey of a lifetime” thing here, am I starting too late? In order to leave on good terms, the earliest I’d be out of my job would be mid-May 2024. I’m honestly not too hot on the idea of pushing this whole thing back a year, but if there are more experiences that I need to put more advanced planning, time, and thought into, then I’m willing to do that.

B. Currently, I have in mind about 6 possible trips I can take – and after last time I learned that this is really going to equate to maybe 3 or 4 if people are as flakey as they were last time (which people always are). Not considering breaks at home, this equates to about 1.5 to 2 months of moving around which… isn’t a ton. If I wait a year, probably half of these won’t even be able to happen. This is a weird question, but does anyone know how to get… involved more? How to find more places to go? I’m not opposed to solo travel, but I’m not in love with the idea. I’ve looked into things like ETF, WorkAway and WWOOF – but even though many of these would stick me into a group I still don’t feel great about going at them alone.-All that aside, is it more worthwhile to go after several different experiences in different parts of the globe? Or would it be better to for something like a Europe -> Asia backpacking trip? It would be great if I found a job that would essentially force me to be a digital nomad, but as a programmer – that kind of work doesn’t really exist. Not in the format I’m looking for, at least.

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Planning concerns aside, I also want to ask about what people think in terms of work and how I would recover when I’m done:

C. Quitting my job to travel the world on 0 income is a terrifying idea. I want to hear about anyone who’s done anything even vaguely similar. Is it realistic that I could have a job lined up for AFTER I finish travelling? Do people hire workers 6 or 7 months in advance?

D. Realistically, are there any places that I should avoid for future job security? I’m not likely to travel to any country that isn’t a safety level 1/2 travel advisory anyways, and I know that this sounds like a dumb question. But fact of the matter is, if in the future I wanted to work for a defense contractor, take up residency in Canada or my parents’ home country, etc – there are some places I imagine I’d get grilled for visiting. It’s true that I want to hold back as little as I can on this trip, and at some point I’ve just gotta take the leap, but I’d like to know a fairly secure future awaits once I’m done and not… joblessness and suffering.

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All-in-all, I’d really like to hear what people think about the “Journey of a Lifetime” idea, and if anyone who’s tried it has any advice to give me, I’m all ears. If there are right things to do and wrong things to do. Secrets nobody knows or would expect. Ways to be safe, things to practice beforehand… anything. I’m really on the fence on weather or not I want to do this, and the thing that helps me make decisions best is talking to others.

As a sidebar: I’ve saved up quite a bit over the last year, realistically I could probably travel for 6 months and follow that up with 6 more months of job hunting before I start to dip into emergency funds. That said, finance isn’t much of a concern if that effects answers.