Recently Nomadic Matt wrote a great guest post for Christine Gilbert’s fabulous Almost Fearless that really struck home for me. The piece was about traveling by yourself, without the company of friends or family. As I come to the close of my academic life I’m going to be faced with some pretty big choices, potentially bigger than I imagined they would be.

I always assumed that once I graduated I would be travelling, and beyond that, travelling with my boyfriend. I’m sure you can tell from my list that I want some mix of adventure and backpacking with “normal life” with house and pet rabbit sort of thing. I figure it makes more sense to travel before I invest in a house and decide when and where to settle down and build up my life. Of course, nothing works out how you thought it would, and my boyfriend recently told me that he wants to try and buy a house here in Calgary by the end of the year. Granted, he’s four years older than me and is actually establishing himself in an awesome career that could easily translate to working remotely in a few years. I’ve always had such a blast travelling with him despite our different travel styles, and I was looking forward to experiencing the vast wide world with him by my side. I guess this won’t be the case in the near future.

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This leaves me with only a few options.
1. Getting a job I will in all likelihood hate (I have no passion as of yet, other than this list, and sadly it does not pay the bills) to help pay for a house in a city I truly want to leave.
2. Traveling solo
3. Finding that mythical partner-traveler who has as much time and money as you and wants to see roughly the same things

Number two seems to be the most reasonable option, which is where Mr. Matt Kepnes comes in. Traveling alone isn’t something I’m opposed to, it is something I want to try, but the idea of embarking on months, possibly a full year, of gallivanting around the globe solo is pretty terrifying considering I have never done it before. Matt makes it sound like a pretty fantastic and empowering experience, because “[y]ou have to adapt to your surroundings, meet other people, make your own decisions, and plan your life.” Nothing wrong with that. He really encourages the “fuck it” sort of attitude I would love to have and have been trying to cultivate. In reality though, would I be able to touch down in Beijing, Amsterdam, Sydney, or anywhere for that matter by myself and be able to survive all on my own? Could I navigate the Tube in London by myself with my horrendous sense of direction, let alone in a country where everything is in a different language? The biggest lesson I’ve learned in 5 years of academia is that theory and practice are almost always irrelevant to each other. So is Matt’s suggestion of “[j]ust do it”,because in theory it will work, really enough to make it actually work for me in reality?

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Photo courtesy of http://freedigitalphotos.com

It scares me a little that I have to make these decisions within the next year. When did all of this happen? I’m suddenly 22 and trying to decide between travelling the world and buying a condo in Calgary, Alberta and I have no idea how it happened.