Posts Tagged ‘thoughts’
592 Days
June 16th, 2010 | 
Author: Monday 14th June was a big day, it marks my return to gainful employment for the first time since that rainy October evening back in 2008 when I walked out of the BNP Paribas offices in Geneva for the last time.
Perito Moreno, Feb 2009
It was a strange feeling then, and it is a strange feeling now and it’s got me thinking about what I’ve done in my 84 week “holiday”. There are plenty of websites out there devoted to all sorts of different types of travel; backpacking, a gap-year, the career break. These sites are filled (for the main part, there’s a lot of self-obsessed twaddle out there too) with information on where to go, how to get there, what to do when you get and, most importantly for my current state of mind, how to cope when it’s all over.
The thought has not been with me much over the last few months. Deep down I’ve always known that one day I would return to the world of work and it has held no terror for me. I think this is due to the fact that, unlike the gap-year student or the “career-breaker” I knew that this was much more than just a trip abroad. Deep down, I knew I wouldn’t be coming back to Europe a year later. Even if I did I woudn’t be returning to the life I knew before. Having made the decision to leave (I described it to someone the other day as the easiest decision I ever took – it was) I knew that whatever I would do in the future would be on my terms.
Train Cemetery, May 2009
The fact that I’ve gone back to work doesn’t scare me, nor does it bother me. Over the course of the past months I’ve come to realise that it hasn’t been the not working that was important. As strange as it might sound, I don’t think that it was the travelling either, although obviously it’s been an incredible experience.
What has been important since leaving Geneva is that, for the first time in my life, I was able to do exactly what felt right, at that particular point in time. People have often said to me that I’ve been very lucky to be able to go travelling (instead of working), and I would often reply that it wasn’t luck, anybody could do it. I still believe that to be true to an extent, but the thing is, lots of the people who tell me I’m lucky, would like to do the same but won’t. They tell themselves, and others, they can’t, but the truth is they won’t.
Doing what I did is not for everybody, and in some ways it was painful, I’m a long way from home. However, coming to South America was one of the best things I ever did in my life, for the simple reason that it was the first time I stopped listening to voices telling me I couldn’t do anything different and just went ahead and did it.
Now I’m here and I know that nothing will be the same again. Never again will I find myself in the same state of mind that lead to me leaving in the first place. Life is great, and it’s 100% on my terms.
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Livin’ La Vida
I’ve been here over 2 months now, so what do I make of it all? I chose to come to Argentina based on a 2 week holiday I spent here in 2007. Buenos Aires felt then, as it still does, like a place I could spend some time. It’s a big, noisy, smelly place certainly, cheaper than Europe (although it had gotten a lot more expensive between trips) but it feels small. People talk to each other on the streets, they hang out in shops talking to their mates, they walk their dogs (lack of owner discipline is a big cause of the smell), they shout, they laugh. It feels like a friendlier, yet still recognisable version of Europe. And then every time you feel yourself getting comfortable, you see something that could only be South America. It might be two adults and a child on a moped tearing through the traffic with no helmets on or a cartenero pulling his enormous load of recyclable cardboard down the middle of a 6 lane road or some kids sitting outside a shop drinking a bottle of beer and offering you some.
Driving round the Northwest, I suddenly realised that I simply hadn’t got used to it and whilst the initial shock of seeing all these different things has worn off, I’m still surprised by so many things. Guys in shops with huge wads of coca leaves in their mouths, police checks every 50 miles or so, and very polite policemen, driving on a dirt track and seeing nothing for 40km and then coming to a busy little town in the middle of nothing where people live their lives without a thought of what is going on in Europe. Can’t really blame them.
