The Reluctant Backpacker

A Wished for Adventure

I started writing at 2am on the plane the night that I flew to Buenos Aires. All it took was me leaving to finally know what I wanted to say.

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Part of becoming an adult, for me, was getting a real, adult job. The first salaried job I had after moving to Toronto was a fluke. A friend of a friend knew of an entry level position in the creative department of a local advertising agency. I was hired via email while I was still in Thailand. I came home, packed my car, drove north and started looking for an apartment. When I began I was a know-it-all idiot. I had no measurable skills. I knew how to write history essays and not much else. My boss was a high energy former stand up comedian who taught me to ask for what I wanted and not to take shit from anyone.

Most of the work was mundane: scheduling, organizing, keeping the department in line. But one night my boss let me help on a new business pitch. We lost the pitch, but I learned what I really wanted to do: I wanted to tell stories that would inspire people, I wanted to solve problems, I wanted people to buy what I was selling them. I started working on public relations projects and soon it was time for me to find a better job.

The first day that I started at my fancy new PR job I made a list of places I needed to visit. No location seemed out of reach or frivolous. I left the list face up, next to my "real" work files, I didn't try to hide it; I felt invincible. I didn't have any plans to leave. I thought I'd work hard, make more money, probably buy a condo and make plans for permanence.

But I couldn't stop from adding to the list.

I didn't realize until much later that so much of my travel was born from a desire to prove that I could do it.

I knew why I loved travel. Because it was a pause. It put everything on pause. The worst trips were those where you didn't go away at all, where too much of yourself was still at home.

If I could leave everything behind without looking back travel would really be my escape.

As soon as I started thinking about it, it consumed me. I hated waiting. My adventure was born from impatience. I was impatient waiting idly for my life to have a purpose. The purpose I couldn't find in my job I projected into my adventure planning.

I dreamed that once I left everything else could stop. I could stop worrying. I could stop wishing time away and hoping for what's next. Everything else could stop and I could pretend to live as it was impossible to do at home, in the every day.

Funds

For four years I worked. I didn't know what I was saving for, but I saved. I played house, renting apartments, moving, buying furniture, decorating, but each time I had to make a big purchase and each time I planted new roots someplace I felt my throat begin to close. I felt suffocated. I couldn't pin point what gave me the desire to flee, but I knew that I never wanted to be tied down or restricted from leaving.

I have a friend who, for as long as I have known her, has lived as though she is going to run away tomorrow. Always. When we met at eighteen I thought she was strange for only bringing one small backpack of things with her to our university dorm. She squatted with me for a couple of months and when she moved out into her own place I didn't notice for a week because she had so few belongings to collect. She moved into a one room apartment near campus with a borrowed bed and a small table that she found on the street- both of which I know she thought of as disposable.

Her homes have always been barren. She has just enough to fit in a single suitcase. Of course, the danger is that she could leave at any moment, without notice. In the back of my mind I always knew that each conversation with her could be my last, and maybe because of that we never minced words or waited for tomorrow. We never made promises to be friends forever because I knew neither of us could guarantee that. Her transient mentality forced our friendship to exist in the present, and she taught me to live in the now.

I never thought I was like that until the day I knew what I had been saving in anticipation of.

I didn't need to check my bank account, I had no debt, I knew I had enough money to last me a year (minimizing extravagances such as hotels, and planning only to stay in hostels.) The day I made the decision to leave I told no one. From that moment every penny that I earned I saved. I stopped buying clothes for the sake of shopping, I seriously budgeted and I secretly stopped dining out or spending unnecessarily. Rarely did any of my friends notice. If someone did, I simply said I was trying to save money. The logical conclusion was that I was saving to buy an apartment or a house, and that I was responsibly moving further into adulthood. The truth was that I was fleeing responsibility quickly and purposefully.

"It's never too late to be what you might have been." - Eliot