When you’re single you can do whatever you want whenever you want. If you want to quit your job, sell all of your possessions and move to an island off Honduras it pretty much comes down to logistics. When you’re in a relationship, and a long standing one at that, there may be some salesmanship required. Fortunately Julie and I are of a similar mind when it comes to travel and work. We both love to travel, we both want to travel more and we’re both sick and tired of our jobs. We have kicked the idea around before. Sometimes less jokingly than others. She first brought it up several years ago but I was still paying off college loans and credit card debt so it wasn’t really an option (well, it was if I had committed to it, but that’s another post).
I know better than to pitch an idea unprepared so I started doing research and stocking up on stats. How much is it going to cost, what would our daily budget look like, how nice of places could we stay, what would be the rough itinerary, what do we do for insurance, what do we do with the house, how are we going to tell our parents, etc. I started thinking of questions and arguments she might bring up and trying to find answers. I had a list of travel websites from people who had done this very thing: Couples who had been traveling around the world for months going on years.
I was finally ready. We were eating dinner in our dining room discussing our travel plans for the summer. We had been planning a trip to Croatia when a research scientist friend of hers came to her with an offer to spend two weeks in Hawaii for next to nothing (Julie only has two more states to go and Hawaii is one of them). She really wanted to go to Hawaii but didn’t want to back out of our trip to Croatia.
“I don’t mind if you go to Hawaii….as long as you’re willing to quit your job at the end of the year so we can go backpack around the world for twelve months.”
She paused for two, maybe three seconds.
“Okay,” another brief pause, “As long as we go to Croatia.”
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