Work & Travel Are Not Mutually Exclusive
The Santa Monica Series
A collection of anecdotes, stories, and ramblings on my experiences balancing travel and work, written while I wait for traffic to die down in Santa Monica, CA.
Why People Who Travel Suck
Now, I’m not saying your Aunt Janet who visited Ft. Lauderdale for a “girls weekend” sucks.
I’m referring to those annoying friends who spout off phrases like “Travel is the one thing you buy, that makes you richer,” or “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” The people that make you feel bad or ashamed for not traveling.
Those people SUCK.
I’ll start off by saying, travel is not for everyone. And the days of being shamed for not wanting to jet set to Bali must end.
The fulfillment you find from sharing a good meal with friends, or watching a movie with a significant other can be just as rewarding as booking a weekend trip somewhere.
However, if you are one of those people who has never tried to travel and want to, or those who have, and wish they had more time to travel, you may want to keep reading
…or don’t, I’m writing this as I wait for traffic to die down. Me getting sad about you not reading this, is like you getting upset with me for not liking the picture you put up of your puppy in that adorable little Christmas sweater. Which I would like ten out of ten times, so what I’m really saying is, you should keep reading.
The inspiration for this came a few months ago when I was at a reunion with all my college chums. Every single one of them asked how I was traveling as much as I was and what my next adventure was going to be.
To be perfectly frank, I was honored, and a little embarrassed.
I was also confused though, how was travel such a big part of my life, and not theirs if they wanted to do it?
What was I doing differently with my time? We all have the same number of hours in a day, right?
Unless you’re the Flash, in which case, please reach out to me, as I’ve had some burning questions that have caused me crippling anxiety since I took Quantum Physics in school.
…. Sorry, back to where we were,
we all have the same number of hours in a day.
And I don’t think my friends realized some of the hours I put in at work.
I WANT TO CLARIFY NOW, THIS IS NOT ME COMPLAIN-O-BRAGGING
There have been multiple weeks this past year where I’ve worked 100+ hours.
That is no exaggeration, the number of times I’ve woken up on my keyboard, watching drool slowly ooze over the shift key is too many to count.
The truth is, I love to work.
A minute idle to me is worse than listening to that travel friend from above tell you about their latest story to Mexico, where they felt like they really connected with humanity by meeting the people there, but had stayed in a posh resort and communicated with locals by gesturing and speaking English louder and slower, over and over again… those people suck
The point I’m making is I have a full time job too, but I also visited 6 countries, 17 states, and hopped on 47 different flights.
I believe almost everyone searches for the elusive work-life balance, me included, heck I’m still looking for it. However, I think compared to most I’ve got the work-travel balance down to a tee? T? tea?
I have no idea what the right phrase is
This by no means is a how-to guide, merely a collection of experiences and lessons that’ve helped me see more of the world, all while juggling a full time career.
And so here it is, the first in a series of how I balance traveling, working, and “adulting”.
Setting My Priorities
You know I didn’t visit my third country until I was 22.
Surprising right? It’s only three years later, but given my inability to write a cohesive sentence or my god given lack to not do grammer so good, you thought I was 14, didn’t you?
Traveling isn’t something that my parents made me do, nor is it something that I was “born” to do. In fact, I didn’t really catch the “travel bug” until I was 24, after I took a trip to Colombia.
So what changed? How did I get to where I am now?
As I began my post college life, I quickly became overwhelmed by how much time & opportunity I suddenly had. You could do anything with your time out of work, literally anything!
How is one to decide, do I take up cooking, should I get a second job, what if I tried my luck at street magic, no street magic is for weirdos, could I get into “managing my money”, and what is this “Netflix and chilling” everyone is talking about, why not fishing, maybe reading for leisure, hopefully I haven’t forgotten how to do that after 9 years of nothing but text books. These were all thoughts that ran through my head at one point or another…
And with a limitless world in front of me, what was I to do? I had to prioritize, but how do you determine what goes first and what goes second?
It all starts with why.
I believe actions speak louder than words, and if you take a moment to look at the things you do with your life, you can begin to see the deeper why in them.
For some it’ll be meditation, for others it’ll be speaking with friends, and for some it’ll be journaling. For me that moment of realization came during a camping trip.
So just for a minute, turn off the tv, close your laptop, and put away your cellphone, and let your brain putter around unencumbered for a minute or two.
Don’t do it like right this minute or you won’t be able to read the rest of this, but like in 5 minutes.
As I sat out there on a log in the middle of the woods watching a twig sizzle in the fire, I began to understand why I was an orientation leader that got paid nothing and volunteered crazy hours… I love meeting new people.
I began to understand why I took those business classes that didn’t help with my degree… I love to learn things.
And I began to understand why when all my friends wanted to go to the same bars on Saturday night, I was google searching “weirdest and craziest bars in Atlanta”… I love strange and wild experiences.
When I looked back at my experiences abroad, I began to see all of those elements play out in each of my adventures. It was as if the floor fell out from below me, and this moment of realization hit me like a bag of bricks.
This realization took 24 years, even after I had visited a few countries!
This is why setting priorities is arguably the simplest, yet most difficult thing to do.
Because it forces you to be brutally honest with yourself.
Before you travel anywhere, you have to ask yourself, do you even want to travel?
Otherwise, you fall into this terrible FOMO tension where you see your friends and family traveling on social media and because you’re not, you think something is wrong with you. So you give yourself this anxiety about how you’re not traveling and the tension builds and builds until finally you freak out, quit your job, book a one way ticket to Indonesia to “find yourself”, realize that the lifestyle isn’t for you, can’t pay to get back home, end up joining a local gang of street youths, work your way through the ranks, and ultimately become an Indonesian drug kingpin, ooooorrrrr queenpin, it’s the 21st century people, come on now.
But I digress, you have to ask yourself, is traveling really for you?
For some of us it’s not, and that’s ok, there’s no reason to feel bad about it.
But if you feel like it might be based on your whys, then you have to make it a priority, at least until you figure out it’s not.
My challenge to you would be to ask yourself, why do you want to travel?
No, I’m serious, go do it right now, spend 15 minutes, spend an hour, heck spend a day!
There are a million reasons to travel, and there’s no higher universal answer.
For some people it’ll be taking pictures, for others it’ll be trying new foods, and for some it’ll be to get that selfie with a sea turtle somewhere in Hawaii.
Regardless of your reason, if you have one that you feel passionately about, then traveling might just be a priority for you, congrats!
With that, it’s time to figure out how to keep that priority top of mind, and the sacrifices you’ll often have to make for it.
Something I’ll discuss next week, traffic died down and I’m at a point where if I don’t eat dinner soon I may or may not fight a vending machine for food.
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These are hilarious to me, watching someone write about themselves in the third person. Sy Rashid is a former child who hops on the occasional flight and works on launching a wine brand in CA. Curious to see the shenanigans he’s been getting himself into? Follow him on Instagram (Instagram.com/shy.radish) to track his adventures, juggling work, life, travel, & the occasional Korean Bulgogi taco
