Quitting my Comfy Job to Travel the World
I hadn’t originally intended to quit my comfy silicon valley job. The decision happened gradually.
At first I was thinking that I would work remotely while travelling for a couple months if my job let me. Then a couple of months turned into an unknown, but probably longer time period. Then I decided that regardless of whether or not my job would let me, I needed to go see the world.
A while later, I found out that my job would be unable to pay me while I was travelling to my first destination, New Zealand. They gave me the chance to reconsider and stay, but my mind was made up. I said my goodbyes.
Now I am unemployed and apartment-less as I leave San Francisco behind. I have no guaranteed stability. All of the people I know well are going to be on the other side of the world. I am about to leave my familiar plot of land to go explore the unknown. It’s a little scary.
But it’s also exhilarating. I now have few obligations — I don't have work I need to do or rent to pay. I’m free as long as I have a large enough financial buffer in the bank to be able to claim the life I want whenever I come back. I feel so liberated. Never before has the future been this wide open — there are so many possibilities.
I want to clarify that my intention is not to run away from my life. I really enjoy being a software engineer. I love creating things and solving problems. I love learning, designing systems, and writing readable code. I fully intend to keep writing code while I’m abroad and will probably find a job as a software engineer when I return.
But I’m afraid of settling into the comfortable Silicon Valley life. I’m afraid of getting lost in the day in and day out.
There is so much more out there. It’s a large world and I want to see it. I want to experience different ways of life. I want to explore different places and cultures. I’ve always wanted to travel.
If the me from half a year ago were to comment on what I’m about to do, she would probably be baffled and think I was being irresponsible. After all, I have several reasons not to go. I have a lot of really great friends in the bay area and most of my family is in California.
My career has been going well and I’ve been learning what I’ll need to meet my future career goals. Prospects had been looking up at my job in the months leading up to my departure. I had recently joined the awesome Cloud Monitoring team with it’s large domain of interesting problems and even cooler people.
But in a way, these became reasons why I need to go. The further I progress in my career, the harder it’s going to be to go. The same thing applies tenfold if I ever look to start a family.
Right now, I’m young. I’m just over a year out of college. I have a lot of time left (hopefully) to settle when I get back if I decide to.
And travelling the world is totally an adventure that I can have. I’m lucky that I currently have life circumstances that enable this. I may never again have as good of a chance to travel as I do now. Right now, no one depends on me for their livelihood, I have few financial obligations, my old team at work can continue fine without me, I’m single, and I can afford it.
I have this overwhelming sense of wanderlust and I’m not sure if it will ever go away without some sort of world expedition. Many of the people I’ve talked to regret not travelling more when they were younger or else are really glad that they did travel when they could.
That’s why I'm flying out to New Zealand later today.
