Thursday, July 27, 2006

To go or not to go?

I love Australia. I particularly love Melbourne. I wrestle often with myself about being a very “home” person: not necessarily being IN my home… but being near it, or at least HAVING a home! However I also love to travel. I am completely enamoured with the idea of living overseas for a couple of years; Travelling around, living out of a pack, meeting 26 million different types of people. Part of me though, knows that I couldn’t do it for any length of time. At least, not by myself, and not unless I was staying in the one place for at least a large part of the time…

I lived in Canada for nearly 4 months…after the first month (2 weeks of travelling around and 2 weeks of looking for a house!), I was settled and living in the one house. I liked that, really I did. The thing is, by the time I came home, I was really ready to come home, but after I’d been home for a few days, I was ready to go back again. I wonder how long I would have lasted if I’d actually decided to stay for a year as I wanted to after the first month, instead of caving to pressure from my parents and coming home to go back to uni.

So I ponder the future… will I be content with going overseas for a few weeks each year, a month at the most? Or will I get to 40 and wish that I’d done the backpacking around Europe for a year bizzo? Is it better to do a trip every year for 3 weeks or a month, and keep working and earning money and working towards “grown-up” things like a house and my career? Am I missing out on an important rite of passage? Or is it just something that’s fun to do if you can?

NB This was all provoked by the Jetstar sale (this time at least!)…$450 return to Thailand. Do I want to go there for a cheap week? Do I want to go back to Japan and spend my entire savings on another 3 weeks skiing? Do I want to save up all my leave and go overseas for a couple of months at the end of next year? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

2 comments:

mskp said...

i say throw caution to the wind - but it's been said on more than one occasion that i'm terribly irresponsible.

there's nothing that can duplicate the experience of immersing yourself in another culture. i reckon give yourself a year, head off and see where you want to pull up for a while. you might find a place in another part of the world that completely fills your heart and makes every kind of sense.

imagine...a train across russia, a houseboat in mexico, a bicycle in shanghai, a tiny bar in berlin, a hashpipe in morrocco, a karaoke den on the ginza, and snow snow snow in lots of places - you could do anything.

but if you don't, we can all hang out here and that would be rad too.


and p.s. if it's really houses and grown-up stuff you're factoring in - they can wait, baby girl.

Anonymous said...

Tam, if I was you, I'd definitely just head off and do it!
I've recently had this conversation with my brother, who is sort of going through the same thing as you where he wants to have a house etc (he's only 23 also). I can see where he's coming from, but the way I see it you have the rest of your life to be tied down by a mortgage etc, but only a small window of time where you can actually get out there and travel, see the world and just do what you want to do.
I think my mum wants nothing more than to have me home at the moment, but there's just so much more I want to do and see that I know I'd be really really miserable if I actually did decide to come home for good, I'd always be thinking about what I'd missed out on!