Aloha from Honolulu. I realize it’s been almost 8 months since my last post. Because we’ve been travelling almost entirely in the US with no progress made to return to international travel, I haven’t felt there have been any challenges to detail, knowledge to impart or inspiration to detail our journey.
Since our last post in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, we’ve stayed in Bowling Green, Ohio > Niagara Falls, New York > Woodstock, New York > Burlington, Vermont > Portland, Maine > Philadelphia, Pennsylvania > Greensboro, North Carolina > Cincinnati, Ohio > Milwaukee, Wisconsin > Ottawa, Illinois > St. Louis, Missouri > Grand Coteau, Louisiana > Dallas, Texas > 3 weeks in Peru (more details forthcoming) and are currently staying in Honolulu, Hawaii. It has been enjoyable travelling the US, but again, there isn’t much challenge, growth or knowledge in it, at least not for a US citizen.
However, our trip to Peru has reminded me of the effort and passion I once had to make the most of our lives while we can enjoy it and live life on our own terms. We have missed immersing ourselves in a new culture, exploring what it’s like to travel in unfamiliar environments and exploring the beauty of this world. I even, and maybe especially miss the small annoyances: trying to sustain a regular diet as a picky eater in a foreign market, working a 40-hour US workweek wherever we are, carrying around $100+ in Vietnamese Dong and Croatian Kona a year after we visited, trying to mail souvenirs back to the US.
I’ve watched a good friend, Andy, get laid off and begin a year-long trip around the world with his wife and daughter. I’ve watched my mentor, Norm, precede me once again to the places in this world that we’re dying to visit. And I’ve even witnessed a coworker challenge corporate policies against working abroad, be rebuffed and move to Ecuador anyway, leaving it to HR to decide how to enforce the policy & willing to accept the consequences either way. I envy all of them.
It’s hard to complain about Hawaii, but even here we agitatedly talk about using a couple weeks of vacation to visit Iceland, Holland, Greece & Egypt. We dream of visiting places like Lombok, Indonesia, Mendoza, Argentina, Zugdidi, Georgia or Tomar, Portugal, but it’d never be realistic to visit all of these places in our relative youth using 3 weeks of vacation a year.
The first couple posts of this blog were me exploring what options were available for the lifestyle we wanted. It seems that I am at step 1 again. Maybe it was too easy, too comfortable to stay with my current employer. It seems that it’s no longer an option. It also seems scary to consider that not many employers support the lifestyle we are proposing and not many remote-jobs pay what mine currently does (~$90,000/year – $3,000 I use to buy 10 extra days of vacation a year). But it is fortunate that there’s no impetus for me to leave this job while we explore our options.
For now, we’ll keep on looking down the road, imagining what lays ahead and brainstorming what it will take to get back out there.