Following the Adventurous Road

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To be prepared for adventure, you essentially have to be prepared for the complete unknown and potential for anything to happen. This is the mindset I ensured I had a year ago, when I packed 17 kilograms of my life into bags and flew to Dublin on a one-way ticket and hopes that my freelance writing work would pay off. I just wanted adventure, somewhere and somehow. And now I've learnt that the adventure is far from over because it won't end when I go home in five weeks time, not now that adventure has simply become part of me.

In the past year, I've travelled across 23 countries by plane, bus, train, or sticking out my thumb on the side of a highway and hitchhiking to my next destination. I've lived and worked through an Irish winter, France in the springtime, and a Croatian summer. The countries I have visited in between are places unforgettable memories were created. I've seen everything from ocean views to waterfalls, from ancient church ruins to magnificent chateaus, and from endless lakes to glorious mountains. I've gained incredible knowledge about countries' histories, I've listened to remarkable stories, and I've learnt bits of new languages along the way. I've travelled in just about every different way, from solo to in a group, from house sitting to volunteering through WorkAway. Every bit of my money I've earned has been invested purely in this adventure. I've certainly found that travel is priceless and totally worth every dollar/euro/pound/kuna/forint/dirham/leke/krona/denar spent. After all, money doesn't buy happiness; money buys experiences and its your attitude that creates the happiness.

Whilst I am very much enjoying this nomadic lifestyle and most likely will be for the next few years, I can totally understand why it doesn't appeal to everyone. Traveling and working and living abroad is exhausting, expensive, and unpredictable. Since finishing work in Croatia in August, I haven't stayed in one location longer than five days. I've constantly been on the move, packing my bag, and throwing myself into another unknown. And so this will continue for the next five weeks as I move around Spain, Portugal, France, and then my final stop in Turkey before I fly back to Australia. To do all this travel, sacrifices of comfort and convenience have to be made. You spend so much time flying budget airlines like RyanAir that you memorise their safety announcement and feel strange when the flight isn't delayed, you wear the same clothes until they have holes in them and feel like a new person when you get a new top, and when you work at a summer camp the amount you paid in 'travel reimbursement' doesn't at all reflect the hours of hard work you put in.

For these reasons, and so many more, this lifestyle can truly suck. This is why the people I meet along the way, embracing and enjoying the challenges of this lifestyle, are just so damn special to me. It is a really rare and beautiful thing to find people who just get you. They get my weird, they get my crazy, and they come along for the journey to see where our combined weird and crazy will take us. They also get that when you are traveling for the long term, there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending a night in at the hostel watching a movie on the computer or being totally antisocial at a cafe because you haven't had wifi to contact home for an unacceptable amount of time. We speak English with different accents, but the communication for a party night out or the necessity of bus snacks for that seven hour ride is universal. We are all on the same page; that page of the book of with an asterisked footnote telling the reader that these are the ones who can't find their place in society yet so they'll fill their life with adventure until they do.

I see so many articles pop up on social media telling the reader why they must travel and how they won't know themselves until they go to new countries. This is true, that you really do discover a new side of yourself while traveling. However, for many people they discover that they don't like this version of themselves, that long transit days make them miserable and that the culture shock is too overwhelming. Travel is possibly the most exhausting thing you can put your mind and body through. Aside from the physical strain of walking for kilometres in new cities, the mind works incredibly hard to process new languages, customs, smells, and sights as you bounce from place to place. For me, I am just lucky that I discovered a version of myself abroad that I much prefer. My happiness isn't with homely comforts and regular routine anymore, but there is nothing wrong with that lifestyle either. It's simply a matter of choosing the path that works best for your personality and circumstances.

Many people will tell me they envy me and my travels and that I'm living the dream. I suppose from the outside it all seems magnificent and glorious, but often I feel envious of the people who can find contentment in staying in one place and establishing a settled life. While I'll take the sore backpacker's shoulders and overnight buses, I'm always aware that I'm the odd one living outside society's expectations of normalcy. I feel entirely disconnected from my home town and to the life I was living before I embarked on these adventures abroad. I feel so detached that I'm not even sure how to go about living life back in Australia, which is why I probably won't be there for long. A job contract longer than three months terrifies me and the prospect of staying in one place for a year doesn't even enter my mind. Travel feeds my commitment phobia and I've accepted that I won't the one for anyone any time soon, I'll just be the one that got away. This lifestyle always gives me an excuse to leave, another flight is just another chance to run away. The ironic part is that I often don't know what I'm running away from, so I convince myself I'm running forward, running along with that endless desire for adventure.

I'll follow this wanderlust fearlessly and enjoy wherever it takes me. I don't know if I'm living the dream per say, but I sure am living my dream. That's good enough for now.

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