Despite my artsy and adventurous nature, there is one thing that a large percentage of people my age have done that I have not.
I have not left the continuous United States.
Well, when I was about 3, I think my family visited friends in San Diego and we all drove down to Tijuana for the day.
But I haven’t, as a self-aware, globally curious person, traveled to another country. Or even any parts of this country that are separated from the rest by considerable amounts of land or water.
Early this year, my BFF and I had an excited conversation in which we discussed the fact that, for her 30th birthday, the two of us need to go…somewhere in Western Europe. We hadn’t reached the official part of planning, but we knew we wanted to go to somewhere like Great Britain or Italy or Germany or France. There would be no boyfriends, just two friends exploring cities — not going clubbing every night as we might have desired when younger, but going to museums and wandering old city streets.
She turns 29 this month, and based upon our current situations, I don’t see our plans as likely to bear fruit. She is between jobs at the moment, stressed out by trying to find a new one in our bad economy. I just started my first design job a few months ago, and plan to stay at least a year, and just signed a year lease on my apartment — and actually the timing on those two things works out pretty well for a late September trip. But my first design job pays first design job wages — enough to (hopefully) cover my rent and bills with a little left over for (theoretically) fun stuff (but probably to cover emergency car repair, finally getting to the dentist, getting new glasses, taking kitties to the vet, buying furniture for my apartment and other similar fun things.)
I have occasionally expressed my jealousy to people who have been or are traveling, and the response I get is, 9 time out of 10 “If you want to travel, you just have to go do it. Just go.”
And I wonder if it’s really that easy. I could just pack a bag and turn my feet towards the setting sun. I mean, I have certainly had dreams of doing so before. Just…striking out. Going somewhere new. Seeing new things, perhaps living in an apartment with a window seat over a cobbled street, with baskets of flowers hanging off lamp posts…Or just, wandering the world like Julia Roberts’ annoying, self-centered character in Eat Pray Love. I could do that, right?
Then I wonder…
What world do these people live in?
First of all, even buying a TICKET to some other country costs more spare money than I have, and once you get there, there’s the issue of hotels, food…and I know that there are guides on how to travel ____ country on $0.25 per day, but I think I’m past the point in my life when staying in a youth hostel, awake all night with my arms wrapped around my bag for fear that someone will steal my laptop in the middle of the night, is appealing. Ditto for hiking through the streets of Hamburg crusted in two weeks of my own sweat. And I kind of like the idea of seeing the occasional museum.
And of course, I couldn’t just….GO, even if I were financially able. Someone would have to be requisitioned to take charge of the detritus of my life in my absence. Mail. PETS.
Then there is the job issue. I’m a bottom level designer in a position that isn’t strictly necessary for my company’s continued welfare, AND in a field flooded with hungry young designers that would love to take my position. Even if, say, 12 months from now, I decided to take my year of experience and find a different design job, that certainly doesn’t seem like it would be a responsible time to jet off to another country. That is a time in which to save money and hope to find a new job before ending up kicked out on the street with three kitties.
The thing is….people DO it. People I KNOW do it. One of my friends spent a spring working in Italy. The ex is planning a work abroad thingy in New Zealand this coming year. One of my other friends regularly travels to either England or Germany in the summer or fall, and often coerces other friends in our group to go too.
I just don’t understand HOW.
Money, I guess, can be saved (though at my pay rate and level of expenses, unless I lived on ramen for a year and never left the house but for work in between, I certainly couldn’t do an annual vacation). House sitter is not to difficult….but how do you convince your place of employment to let you just…NOT GO TO WORK for a week or more? I mean, I can only imagine that, were I to make such a request, I’d be told that I might as well just take my stuff with me now so I didn’t have to worry about packing it up on my return. Which would leave me, once again, spending my vacation looking for a new job and spending vacation funds on keeping my power on — not looking at monuments.
How do you just…GO?
muggy warmth. The unpleasant external climate does result in increasing springtime loveliness, however, as the ground is covered more each day in velvety green, embroidered with violets and dandelions and tangles of brambles and vines in the more wooded areas. The trees themselves are not fully leafy yet in general, but the forests now look as though they are hung with a fine green mist. Soon, flowers will be blooming and…whatever else happens in spring.
understand why kids today want to post their passing thoughts, locations and drunken photos for the world to see. All in all, it was an hour-and-a-half drive each way to watch about half an hour of lecture, but it was still fun. It was an adventure and I got to go somewhere new.
