The Beginning
Career Crisis
Glenn says: For a while now the daily grind has been getting me down. I've been watching life tick by a weekend at a time. It's not that I don't have a good job—I work with good people doing good stuff. The only problem is, I just don't enjoy what I do for a living. I got to where I am completely by accident during the narrowing down process that you have to go through in the education system.
I just kind of ended up here.
I'm happy in every other way. Isla and I got married last year and we're really enjoying life. We have a great house, we both want to start a family. We have everything to look forward to. The problem is, I just can't face the thought of keeping doing what I'm doing now until one day (if I'm lucky) I get to retire. That's nearly 35 years away.
I need to do something I enjoy. So what am I going to do about it? I'm not the world's best person at seizing opportunities and just going for it. I tend to over-analyse—and by the time I'm finished, I've missed whatever chance it was that came my way… Or I can't be bothered any more. As I have done with similar off-the-wall ideas lots of times before, on 29th December I just happened to say to Isla "Why don't we sell up and disappear for a while?" She's a lot like me and she often says OK to hair-brained ideas like this, but we both know we don’t mean it, or at least, won’t do anything about it.
The difference this time was that when she said yes, somehow we both knew the other one meant it. "I've been thinking the exact same thing. I'm in a rut at work too. Let's do it."
Stop the Train
Isla says: I can't help feeling that my life so far has been a bit directionless: school, college, uni, job… in the proper order and without really stopping to think whether each choice was the right one to make. For the past 28 years I've been on a life-path that is heading, like a slow but unstoppable freight train, towards pensionable age, at which point I suppose I'm just hoping that I'll have the time, income and health to do all the things I want to do. Not that I feel that I've been unlucky—quite the contrary—I've had some great experiences, I've met and married a lovely bloke and I have a very comfortable existance, but…
At some point last year I began to wonder if it wouldn't do the pair of us the world of good to spend some time being a bit less comfortable, but up until now I'd thought that having a house and possessions and a pension plan and a career meant that taking time out wasn't an option—we'd have to sell everything and quit our jobs.
And then, at Christmas, after eight months of marriage and with a new feeling of self confidence we both just said "why not?"
2 Comments:
you guys are truly inspiring and I'm amazed that you had the guts to pull it off. I'm from India and reading your blog about it brought many dear memories back. I wish I could show you the real India, since I was there at that very moment, but I honestly enjoyed reading your posts, especially the ones about your bargaining, and I was quite surprised that a British person would ever be so proficient in the art. Good job guys, and Good Luck!
Wow, thanks for the kind feedback aamer! Having had a few months to think about it, we now feel that we would like to try India again some day. It was our first 'difficult' country and it just wore us down. As for having the guts to pull it off, we found that telling friends and family about our plans was the best way to make sure we couldn't back down! It has been much easier than we thought. There are things we miss about home but we're certainly not ready to go back yet!
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