Roaming Thoughts

Being bored at work or just plain tired of my daily routine gets me thinking about alternative options. Without a doubt, I will be spending the next 5+ years working an office job and living a fairly common American lifestyle: I will focus on paying off student debt, making a comfortable home, staying in shape, making strides toward starting a family, maintaining friendships and building on hobbies.

Many people in their twenties and early thirties will spend this time living a more vagabond lifestyle, a lifestyle I would gladly embrace were it not for the gobs of student debt I took on in order to attend law school. If I could have it my way, I'd go the route of Jodi Ettenburg and use my education to build a self-employed, part-time career out of traveling and having interesting life experiences. But Ettenburg is Canadian, so her government caps her student debt somewhere more reasonable AND she worked at a major NYC law firm for several years. Odds are her financial situation is what I can only hope mine will be in 15 years. So I need to adjust my thinking. Instead of being a 27 year old vagabond, I hope to be a 35 year old expat of sorts. Basically I'll live my life in reverse: work my ass off as a young attorney then call it quits and live a very frugal but fulfilling lifestyle until the money runs out. Repeat.

I have a lot of different travel/life experience dreams for Leigh and myself: setting up shop in Southeast Asia to work for a non-profit or write a book, seeing the world by bicycle with intermittent stops in places that speak to us, taking epic journeys like the new cross-continental train from Paris to Moscow. completing a fellowship or two in various locations to do research, and going to business school in Europe all sound amazing. Of course I can't do all of these things, but the fact that I'm excited about so many different options tells me, at the very least, that I have a lot of living to do. The key is making it happen.

Last night I found a page on Matador advertising their new travel writing/photography/film programs. The courses are online and cheap, really cheap. It's no guarantee of a job and it's possible that it's just a way to get people like me to fork over a couple hundred bucks to further a hobby, but it's something to think about. I already have an education and I'm building a career in a lucrative field, so I'd hardly be putting all my eggs in one basket. If I was ready to take a career break now I'd probably start by enrolling in a travel writing course and relocate somewhere interesting with a low cost of living to use as my living classroom. If things took off I'd take on assignments and ride it out for a while. If not, I'd enjoy my leave of absence and go back to my life. No harm, no foul.

Leigh thinks I just have a lot of ideas, and she's right, but when I mention these things and say "and you could volunteer or take cooking classes!" she gets pretty excited about it. It just goes back to my life motto: everyone should live their best, most exciting life. Right now my best life is finding a job that is challenging and uses my education. I want to see where that takes me. My best life is also honoring the family I'm building and the community I'm becoming a part of. Later, when I have the financial and professional freedom to make decisions based on inspiration, my best life will be something very different.