Dear Friends…
Pre-Departure — One shot, One opportunity
My last week in Boston was a whirlwind, marked with hurried farewells and months of packing consolidated into days. I hadn’t given much thought as to what I would be doing over the next year, as I was more concerned about stuffing my entire life into two bags. My long-time pet turtle has a new caretaker. My farewell tour with friends was over. The remainder of my belongings sit in storage. I was leaving the life I’ve built over the past few years behind.
Let me take a step back.
I’m going on an adventure — a trip around the world with 54 other people for a year through a program called ‘Remote Year.’
I applied for Remote Year on a whim in April when I got hit by the quarter-life crisis truck (totally a real thing). I was getting burnt out by my job. I no longer felt the job was challenging and I was slipping into routine. My curiosity and desire to learn was gone. I was stagnating; and this needed to change.
I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but Remote Year started off as an idle fantasy. I encountered the program a year before and discarded it as a frivolous idea. A few years later, the lure of adventure and community hooked me — it was the chance to break my routine. Remote Year’s advertises itself as an exclusive program where 20,000+ people apply for each group of 50–75 world travelers. Mathematically, it implies that Remote Year has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard (0.38% vs. 5.4%), so I had no real expectations when I applied. What are the chances that I am one of the few chosen? Off the application went, where I spiced it up a bit with a few choice quotes from Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself.’ After all, the worst case scenario was not being accepted — why not have a little fun with it?
Perceptions began to shift as I moved further in the interview process. I remember waking up to an email congratulating me for making it further down the interview process. Woah. Maybe Remote Year could become a real thing. The invitation to the final interview round morphed Remote Year from an idle fantasy into a very real possibility, and I began to get just a bit more invested in the process.
Ok, I lied — I became obsessed. I remember waiting for news on my Remote Year admission after my final video interview. For days, my palms were sweaty, knees weak, and arms heavy. One of my friends jokingly sent an email saying “Congratulations — You’re In” as a joke — I almost threw up mom’s spaghetti.
Looking back, it’s pretty clear that I had placed all my bets on Remote Year being the light at the end of the tunnel. My work at the time was stressful, but the work wasn’t groundbreaking or even all that important. It’s frustrating to realize that pouring your life into something wasn’t contributing to the betterment of the world or some other grandiose and altruistic cause — I was pushing myself so a bank could have better workflows. No beuno. I’m still young (and dumb) enough to have dreams and expectations that haven’t been crushed.
Is Remote Year the answer I was looking for?
No clue, but it sure seems like a damn good place to start
