I love Peter Pan. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought in my head, “I never never want to grow up! Yuck!” That doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to stomp my feet and throw tantrums, but it’s the other grown-up stuff I don’t like. The past few years it’s been the two-day hangovers (does it get to three and four as I get older?), gray hairs creeping in and little wrinkles at my eyes.
And then there’s the responsibilities: as of Tuesday I’ll officially have a mortgage. I have a well-paying, steady job that allows me to even have a mortgage. (And I’m not complaining about the mortgage — part of being grown-up means not having a desire to pay rent, live with 6 other people, and furnish my living room with that couch we found in the alley). But even though I’m officially a grown-up, my mode of travel hasn’t changed. I’m on a similar budget as I was in my early 20s, so I stay in hostels and cheap guesthouses where the younger folks congregate. Despite the wicked hangovers, I still like to kick it.
Right now I’m contemplating a trip to Central America next winter, because it’s been way too long since I’ve traveled. Even my husband, who most likely wouldn’t be able to join me, agrees that I need to take a trip. The problem? The standard two-week vacation just isn’t for me. I can’t imagine buying a ticket to somewhere far away and not having the time to explore the place I’m going to. I want to learn the language, hike around and really get to know a country. I need a month at a minimum, and several months at best.
So my problem is how to negotiate the very grown-up issues of marriage, my upcoming mortgage, and my well-paying (and boring) job.
I’m lucky in that I just signed my first contract to write for Lonely Planet, so it’s possible that I could make travel-writing a full-time vocation, satiating both my need to travel and to eat (and pay the mortgage). No doubt, it’s what I want to do. But those things take time to get going.
So in order to take that much-needed trip next winter, I’ll likely have to quit my job, leave my sexy artist husband behind, plus have no source of steady income for my kick-ass new crib.
Has anyone out there found a happy medium between being loose, footloose, and financially sound? I could use some advice.
Thanks to YoHandy on Flickr for the photo “Hostel Shotgun.”