Travel vs career: does it have to be all or nothing?
by prudence on 15-Jan-2011
This is the title of a post on the Lonely Planet blog, which has elicited lots of responses.
And, indeed, for travel aficionados, it is the 64,000-dollar question.
Facts:
1. If you're a travel nut, you won't get all the travelling done that you need to do if you stick to four weeks' annual leave.
2. There's no way I'll ever work anywhere long enough to accrue long-service leave...
3. Leaving it all till you retire is always a massive mistake. Not only might you die first, but there's also the incontrovertible truth that you can only experience Venice when you're 21 when you are actually 21... You don't want to see the world only through the eyes of an old person.
4. Most of us don't have a private income.
5. Many of us don't get to do that much short-term travel with our jobs (I reckon I've had six funded trips abroad over my whole career), and this type of travel, while fascinating, does actually mean you spend most of your time quite intensively working...
6. If there are two of you trying to juggle your work and travel, it's a lot more difficult.
7. I would still love to do an extended back-packing trip, because I've never done that. But being a permanent back-packer is not for all of us. It's not just the earning-money-to-fund-it thing. Long-term, I would struggle with the feeling of not contributing anything to the world. Which is probably very arrogant of me, as I probably don't contribute much anyway, but there we are.
What to do? Well, as the respondents to LP's post demonstrate, there are lots of different ways to compromise. These are my favourite ways to try to do everything:
1. Do the kind of study that involves your spending time in another country. This route got me a year and a half in Germany, and six months in Singapore.
2. Take jobs (or postings) overseas. This strategy took me to Germany for another year, and to the Ivory Coast for ten months. This is harder with two, but the Internet really helps. Nigel tele-worked from Ivory Coast. And a portable tele-job enabled me to go to California for nine weeks while Nigel was working there.
3. Volunteer. This tactic got me to Germany for a month, to Austria for a month (twice), and to Thailand for ten weeks. And, God willing, it will soon get me to Indonesia for three months.
For all the above to make sense, you really have to like what you do, and want to do it. Doing something you hate is miserable, even if you're doing it in a fantastic place. But if you enjoy what you do (or even if you don't technically "enjoy" it, but are at least learning a lot from it), this is the best way to travel. You experience a place so, so, so much more richly if you actually have a little "home" there, with responsibilities and a routine that anchor you to what real people do.
Getting a bit more radical now, but a great way of travelling and working is to...
4. Migrate. You set up your life in a different country. But you're still a traveller. I don't know how long that feeling lasts, but I was still "travelling" in New Zealand after nearly nine years. It's not that I didn't feel at home there. I did. Totally. But it was still different enough from my European homeland to retain a certain exoticism. And it was in a whole other part of the world. Four weeks' holiday could take you to very different places. And when you're ready, you can move to Australia for a while, where you'll never stop travelling, because it's so damn big...
Now, however, we're looking for another opportunity to combine work and travel. We're still in the stressful stage, because nothing has shaped itself yet. The "can-we-crack-it-again" question floats ominously in the air.
But it's worth keeping the goal in mind, in order to deal with the inevitable disappointments of the search.
If you want to travel and work, you have to consciously aim to make that happen.
And, indeed, for travel aficionados, it is the 64,000-dollar question.
Facts:
1. If you're a travel nut, you won't get all the travelling done that you need to do if you stick to four weeks' annual leave.
2. There's no way I'll ever work anywhere long enough to accrue long-service leave...
3. Leaving it all till you retire is always a massive mistake. Not only might you die first, but there's also the incontrovertible truth that you can only experience Venice when you're 21 when you are actually 21... You don't want to see the world only through the eyes of an old person.
4. Most of us don't have a private income.
5. Many of us don't get to do that much short-term travel with our jobs (I reckon I've had six funded trips abroad over my whole career), and this type of travel, while fascinating, does actually mean you spend most of your time quite intensively working...
6. If there are two of you trying to juggle your work and travel, it's a lot more difficult.
7. I would still love to do an extended back-packing trip, because I've never done that. But being a permanent back-packer is not for all of us. It's not just the earning-money-to-fund-it thing. Long-term, I would struggle with the feeling of not contributing anything to the world. Which is probably very arrogant of me, as I probably don't contribute much anyway, but there we are.
What to do? Well, as the respondents to LP's post demonstrate, there are lots of different ways to compromise. These are my favourite ways to try to do everything:
1. Do the kind of study that involves your spending time in another country. This route got me a year and a half in Germany, and six months in Singapore.
2. Take jobs (or postings) overseas. This strategy took me to Germany for another year, and to the Ivory Coast for ten months. This is harder with two, but the Internet really helps. Nigel tele-worked from Ivory Coast. And a portable tele-job enabled me to go to California for nine weeks while Nigel was working there.
3. Volunteer. This tactic got me to Germany for a month, to Austria for a month (twice), and to Thailand for ten weeks. And, God willing, it will soon get me to Indonesia for three months.
For all the above to make sense, you really have to like what you do, and want to do it. Doing something you hate is miserable, even if you're doing it in a fantastic place. But if you enjoy what you do (or even if you don't technically "enjoy" it, but are at least learning a lot from it), this is the best way to travel. You experience a place so, so, so much more richly if you actually have a little "home" there, with responsibilities and a routine that anchor you to what real people do.
Getting a bit more radical now, but a great way of travelling and working is to...
4. Migrate. You set up your life in a different country. But you're still a traveller. I don't know how long that feeling lasts, but I was still "travelling" in New Zealand after nearly nine years. It's not that I didn't feel at home there. I did. Totally. But it was still different enough from my European homeland to retain a certain exoticism. And it was in a whole other part of the world. Four weeks' holiday could take you to very different places. And when you're ready, you can move to Australia for a while, where you'll never stop travelling, because it's so damn big...
Now, however, we're looking for another opportunity to combine work and travel. We're still in the stressful stage, because nothing has shaped itself yet. The "can-we-crack-it-again" question floats ominously in the air.
But it's worth keeping the goal in mind, in order to deal with the inevitable disappointments of the search.
If you want to travel and work, you have to consciously aim to make that happen.