Study, Work, Career And Gap Years. The Middle Way.

Quitting your job to travel the world is a popular dream, but travelling the world doesn’t mean you have to give up on everything else in your life! You don’t have to quit your job to travel the world, and you don’t have to give up on your dreams of travel to have a career or a family either. You can have it all. Here’s how.

Quit your job and travel the world. Leave everything behind and travel! How many times have you heard this? Read any of the more popular travel blogs or websites and you will come across a common theme of quitting, dropping everything and following your dreams of travel.

This is of course an exhilerating and intoxicating dream. Who wouldn’t want to kick the bosses door down and beat them round the head a few times with your resignation letter? Who wouldn’t want to set off on exciting adventures around the world instead of trudging off to work on a wet, miserable Monday morning?

Quitting Your Job To Travel.

There are many examples of amazing people who have shunned their normal, boring 9 to 5 and spend their days bouncing around from country to country, or who have quit their mundane jobs to devote their lives to some awesome adventure to climb Everest or push the boundaries of exploration.

It sounds like a dream come true, and for many people it is.

For those who simply quit their jobs to take a year out and rely on savings, or those who quit the 9 to 5 and find a way to work remotely from far flung destinations and never return to their previous lives, the world is their oyster.

Who wouldn’t want to emulate the lives of some travel writers who have been travelling since 2000 and something and counting? Who wouldn’t want to work as a digital nomad and be your own boss from a tropical beach? For those people who find that this way is right for them, it is so easy to do, so easy to throw off the shackles and live the life you want exploring the world. If that is for you, then there should be no stopping you! Stop reading this, get off your backside and go book that ticket now! For some people that is the perfect answer.

But This Dream Isn’t Perfect For Everyone.

Of course the extreme of quitting everything to travel works out really well for some, and some do forge a really happy life for themselves constantly moving from place to place picking up jobs here and there to support themselves or running an online business or working remotely. It really is a dream life and that is fantastic for them, but it isn’t the only way!

What about all of those people who would love to travel the world consistently but have a dream career they would like to keep? Or a family they want to get back to?

What about those who want to go to university and gain a degree or professional qualification, and then a career after that?

What about all of those people who would love to take a gap year or travel long term but aren’t quite willing to drop their entire lives forever for it?

What about those who want to travel long term but still need to pay the bills and keep a roof over their heads for when they return?

Quitting Life To Travel The World Is Not As Easy As It Sounds.

The answer – according to those very same examples above – is seemingly looking everyone straight in the face. Many websites practically scream the potential answer at you through the screen. Become a digital nomad! Work from your laptop wherever you are in the world, right?

Regardless of circumstance, regardless of individual dreams, you can and should drop everything and support yourself by building a blog and hoping that will support you as you search out the cheap hostels and try to cover your bill at that really chilled Bob Marley themed island bar you just can’t stay away from.

Quit your life and travel the world!

Let’s forget the fact that there is a little thing called reality and it really isn’t that easy to start an online business from scratch and make it a success as you travel, because that is what you will be doing. Some people do. I did, I have built this site into a successful online business, but for every one of me, there are countless failed blogs that didn’t make it.

So again, we are back to square one and this answer isn’t for everyone.

So what do these people do? How do they manage to drop everything and travel the world but still maintain a career? How do they fulfill other ambitions or family or monetary commitments? Well the answer may not be exactly the same as the extreme of dropping everything and going, but the truth is it is just as simple.

There Is A Middle Way. A Better Way.

Many people have a picture painted for them that taking a gap year or backpacking the world is an either/or scenario.

You want to travel the world? Great! You can either:

• Drop everything, quit and take a gap year and don’t think about the future.
• Drop everything, quit and be a digital nomad, working around the world as you travel.

If you want to do that then it is certainly possible, nothing wrong with it and if that is your dream all the power to you! But there is no in between with this narrative.

This is the huge, fundamental problem with the ‘quit your life and travel the world’ paradigm. It suggests you either drop everything and quit the rat race to travel, or you stay at home and keep on dreaming of life on those lazy tropical islands. The fact that some people actually want to travel but still like their lives or have other dreams like family or career as well is the huge elephant in the room that no one seems to want to talk about.

The thing is those extremes don’t always quite fit in with everyone’s individual lives. We are all individual, and world travel is at the end of the day a very personal journey. It really isn’t all about dropping everything and hopping from party island to party island, or forgetting your work and love life problems to ‘find yourself’ in a yoga ashram like in Eat, Pray, Love.

There is this notion perpetuated by many otherwise inspirational travel blogs and websites that you have to drop everything and travel endlessly where coming home is somehow seen as a failure, or you stick to the dreary nine to five and forget your dreams of travel. Why?

Where Is The Middle Ground?

The general consensus seems to be that you have to follow one of these two extremes and that there is no middle ground; but that is as far from the truth as you could possibly get. There is a middle way.

Do you want to know a secret?

You Can Travel The World And Have A Career, Study Or A Family At The Same Time.

Many people have a wide variety of other dreams and ambitions alongside world travel, and there is absolutely nothing wrong at all with following them too.

What about the rest of your aspirations and passions? What about the other things you want to do with your life? You don’t have to suddenly give them all up just because you want to travel the world.

Many people want to study for a degree, either just for the experience of furthering an academic passion and going to university, or more commonly as a gateway to a certain career path. Does the fact that you dream of taking a gap year or setting off on a backpacking adventure stop you from doing that? Of course not!

If you are travelling already and want to pursue a career path, then simply settle in one place for the three years it takes to gain your degree. You can easily resume your travels after you have graduated with the added bonus of being able to use your newly earned qualification as a marketing tool for gaining work.

If you want to do both, travel and study, then you can do that too. Go to university, get your degree, simply take a few snap years in the summer holidays or shorter breaks to quench your wanderlust and leave the longer gap years or indefinite long term travel until after you graduate. I have done that twice now! I have been backpacking around the world for over twenty years now and have two great degrees to show for it. I am living proof that you can have your cake and eat it too! Hell, you can even break your degree up, study a 3 year course over 4 or 5 years if you want, study at different universities! Many people do this who want to study but have families to raise, their focus is of course their young children instead of travel but who says you can’t do the same thing with a different priority? There is always a way to fit your studies around what you want.

Careers do not have to end just because you decide to take a little career break.

For those of you who already have careers to think of, no matter what they are, you could very easily incorporate short snap years into your working life, just save up your annual leave for a long snap year every year and you can even extend that by taking some unpaid leave too if you wish.

A few months or so every year will allow you to incorporate travel into your working life quite easily. You will still hold the same role and position at work when you get back and still be able to pay your bills while you are doing it!.

If you want more travel than that in your life, then there is absolutely nothing stopping you taking a long sabbatical, unpaid leave or even quitting work completely to set off around the world, but unlike the stereotype painted by some that says once you do that it’s the nomadic life or bust, that doesn’t mean you can’t return to your life any time you choose!

Quit a job, travel for as long as you want, then get your old job back or even a better role in your career when you return. It really isn’t rocket science!

I mean really, what are you? An indentured servant literally chained to the one job, the one desk for your entire life with no hope of escape? Your boss is not your jailer, you are not a prisoner. Your choices are in your hands! Go, take your trip, travel around the world; your job will still be there when you get back, and if it isn’t you can easily find another one. There is no such thing as a job for life. Careers do not have to end just because you decide to take a little career break!

In fact, travelling the world could even enhance your career prospects and help you get a promotion or an even better job on your return! You could easily incorporate a little volunteering or job experience into your trip, something with skills that you could utilise in your chosen career. Communication skills while teaching English as a foreign language or practical skills gained when volunteering with an aid organisation for example are all highly desirable traits if you spin them well on a CV.

Then of course there are those out there whose chosen careers will allow them to pursue their career goals at the same time as travel. Professionals in particular such as nurses, teachers, physicians, engineers, and many more are all highly regarded for their skill sets in many countries, so what is stopping you from travelling for a little while to explore a country or region you really want to see, then getting a job in your chosen field abroad for a while?

I personally did this all the time in my former career as a qualified nurse, my professional qualification allowed me to travel the world any time I chose, work anywhere in the world any time I chose, get a job back home any time I chose and still build a successful career with a wide range of experiences and skill sets that most employers value very highly!

This is not luck! It is a combination of knowing what I want, smart choices and hard work!

If I wanted to simply travel without working for any length of time, I would either arrange extended paid and unpaid leave or a sabbatical, or I would quit and simply return to work when I had finished travelling, knowing that my role and experience was in high demand. It really is that easy!

More often than not I tended to work for a bit, then travel for a bit. It was that simple.

There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing the exact same thing!

Now of course I am my own boss after building my own online business, so I simply allow myself paid leave any time I wish!

If you don’t have a specific qualified profession, there are still a wide range of jobs and roles you can do and travel at the same time, everything from a barman or a farm worker to a dive instructor or an au pair or even a location independent freelance writer.

You could – if you choose – even go as far as to be a serial expat, settling for longer periods of time in a foreign city or country, working and living as a local for a year or more, then moving back home or moving onto a completely different country and a whole new adventure and doing the same thing again. I know many professionals who do just that and they are extremely happy with their choices. They have the stability of long term work and their careers, but the adventure of travel and the freedom to move whenever and wherever they like.

If you don’t want to work as you travel and you don’t have a specific qualification or career, then there are always other jobs out there and you aren’t tied to any specific one. You can work to save up some money, travel, and then find another job in the same field or a new one entirely when you return.

You can do pretty much anything you choose!

The Best Of Both Worlds.

Working whilst you are travelling makes a lot of sense in many ways, because travelling the world does cost money. A lot of it. And there are many countries you can obtain a working holiday visa and many ways you can find to earn money as you travel. It really isn’t just a case of working an endless nine to five at home or taking an infinite amount of time off to travel.

There is a middle ground, in fact there are an infinite number of middle grounds to choose from.

The point I am trying to make is that there is no one single path that is right. There are infinite paths that you can go down, you can change paths whenever you like and there is no right or wrong way!

Following the middle way does take some sacrifice though, and there is a price to pay. It isn’t easy to negotiate the minefield of working holiday visas and it can be hard to deal with the uncertainty between your periods of travelling and getting a job, especially if you have a partner or a family, but that in no way means that it is impossible, it just means you will have to do the research and the paperwork hoop jumping to achieve your goals.

Pressure To Conform.

It isn’t just the practicalities however, not everyone is cut out for the life of a full nomad. Just as it is for those who choose the complete backpacker life of a constant world traveller, it can be difficult if you want to incorporate travel into your life to deal with the pressure society puts on you to come home and be normal, to conform to the stereotype of normality.

You can come under a great deal of pressure from society, from friends and family who just don’t understand why you don’t conform to the exact same path they did. They don’t understand the lure of the open road in the same way you do, they don’t get why you aren’t choosing to stay working in the career you chose for longer than six months at a time and assume you are simply fickle or lazy, or you are just skiving off on another long holiday.

They don’t get that it is us long term travellers who think they are the weird ones for working 60 hours a week in a job they hate to pay off a mortgage in a house they barely live in because of work! And then have the audacity to say to us they wish they could do what we do in the same breath as criticising our choices in doing so!

You get bombarded with questions of when you are settling down, getting married, getting a mortgage and having kids, and it can be hard when you see all your old friends and family doing just that and you aren’t. It can be difficult to see what they have and think that you are somehow a failure for not having the same, for not having the house and the mortgage by the time you are in your mid thirties, for not using the degree you studied long and hard for to its full career advantage or even – the Gods forbid – for not being married by the time you are thirty! Shock, horror! because that is the norm that society forces onto you.

But for those of you with the courage and the confidence to step outside of those expectations and follow the path that you want to lay out for yourself, the path that makes you happy, then it can also be extremely liberating and empowering.

It doesn’t have to be the life of a constant backpacker or a complete digital nomad, but it doesn’t have to be the rigid school, family, job, taxes, death paradigm that society sets out for you either, hell it doesn’t even have to be any of the examples I have just mentioned! Just as long as – if world travel is your dream – then you incorporate backpacking or taking snap or gap years into your life in any way you see fit for as long as you see fit!

If you still doubt what I am saying is possible, then just look at me for living proof. I have two degrees and have used them to build a good career for myself and after that an online business. I have travelled the world whilst building that former career and studying for those degrees. I travelled for as long as I wanted to or needed to, then worked for a little while and then travelled some more again.

I fit the life I wanted into the things I had to do, not the other way round.

My point is I am free to travel and work as I see fit. I am my own man, confident and comfortable in my own skin and I make society conform to my rules, to my norms and expectations. I am happy!

Life doesn’t have to be lived according to someone else’s expectations of you. You can have any career you want, any life you want, follow any dream or path that you want, and if your dream is to travel and see the world in all its wondrous entirety then that is within your grasp too! This isn’t an either/or situation. You can cherry pick the best parts of life that you want and take it all!

And remember, just because the digital nomad always travelling ideal is popular, and just because many of the long term backpackers and travellers you may get inspiration from have done it one way, that doesn’t mean you have to follow in their exact footsteps to be able to travel the world. Any one of you can travel the world in any way you see fit, and if you are unhappy with your life and have dreams of travel then you should take steps to change it and do just that! Just do it your way.

The world is your oyster, but the path you take through it is yours and yours alone, so choose it well.

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