During the current lockdown I have been musing on what I might have learnt from my year of travelling. Here are 10 personal lessons I have learnt so far.
Lesson 1.
I learnt a lot from just thinking about my travelling and making it happen - long before I got out of the door.
To elaborate. I’d been considering travelling for the last 12 years or so. The first thought I remember was back in Florianopolis in 2001. I was waiting for my (then) partner outside a market. I thought, “this place is across the world, yet all I have done is fly over the Atlantic. Wouldn’t it be great to travel overland as much as possible to Brazil, going Eastwards from the UK.” That was the start of it. I did a mini trip to the Baltic states in 2007 to see how it would be – then the long period of getting mentally prepared for it.
What got me out of the thinking stage and actually into the doing stage? The big “push” for me was the referendum result in 2016. That, and the resulting (sic) gloating on the leave side, made me realise that I never felt fully English. Being the only child of Scottish parents in England made me feel different when young and although I had adapted, Brexit brought those feelings back. Another push was a new next-door neighbour who turned my quiet, nature-focused home, into a battle ground.
The pull was the fact that I was not getting any younger. I couldn’t put this off any more. I had been thinking for nearly 20 years – if I carried on for another 20 years I would be over 80! My health was already declining (see my post on diverticular disease.) NOW is the time to travel!
Lesson 2.
Also pre-travel: I can’t do things alone.
Between deciding to put the house on the market and the actual sale, I had plenty of time to clear my stuff… but it still took me ages to get this done and I wouldn’t have made it without the help of two good friends and a professional “clutter clearer.” This aspect of things has carried on into my travel life too. I am more dependent on other people whether it be Airbnb hosts or going up to total strangers in order to make sense of the travel systems in a strange city. To quote Blanche Dubois in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ … “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Lesson 3.
The fear of what I was going to do was holding me back much more than the reality.
Friends said, “you can’t sell your house – it’s your only asset” when I knew not to sell would mean staying in Sheffield for the rest of my life. When I hit the road –being homeless only felt strange for a few weeks. Once I had left Donegal for Co. Galway, travelling was the new norm and I knew it would be my new life. Now I hear people say, “you are so brave travelling all the time – I don’t think I could do that.” I don’t see why not. The only things that were holding me back were the newness of the idea and the scariness of the thought.
Lesson 4.
I could still go travelling even though I had this nagging voice in my head saying “I don’t deserve it.”
Irrational maybe, but that didn’t make it any less real. I had had no problems travelling when I was younger – all over Britain when I was a ferroequinologist in my younger years – I think I made my first solo trip to London when I was 12! But I only left the country (for Ireland) when I was 31 and first went to the continent a couple of years after that – to the Netherlands to attend a co-counselling event . Part of the problem was that my gambling had made finances so tight that I tried to avoid any expenditure and foreign travel seemed like a luxury too far. Perhaps guilt was a hangover from my gambling days?
My way out of this was through co-counselling and journalling. I worked with my inner child to find out what was holding me back and to come to some sort of compromise which led to lesson 5, (and to this blog.)
Lesson 5.
I can travel and be useful.
What is the point of travelling? It’s a useless thing to do. I feel that I’m not as useful to society as I could be. I had done a lot of voluntary work in the past – but being so badly in debt, I needed to concentrate on paid work. By selling my house and becoming debt free I also become time free to actually do something useful, but I needed it to be something I could do from wherever I was. My answer to this was to look back to my gambling past. The most successful thing I had done in my life was to free myself of my gambling addiction. How could I use that experience to help others going through the same thing? The blog. But as I knew that it would take time for me to get a following, (indeed I don’t think I have, even now,) I had to consider an alternative – and that was to volunteer my time online. I researched “problem gambling help sites” and decided to go for one funded by The Gordon Moody Association. Partly because I remember them being well-thought of when I was involved in Gamblers’ Anonymous. Also because they catered for an international audience. I applied to be a volunteer but was told that the training programme wouldn’t start for several months and would take around two months to complete… So, I decided to help informally by posting on their forum and talking to people on their online chat.
Lesson 6.
I can value myself
After several months of training and a few months of volunteering, someone connected to the website pointed out that the work I was now doing (helpline volunteer) was being advertised as a paid position and that I should go for it. This appealed, mainly because I had restricted my volunteering to a couple of hours a day but I knew that if I was being paid I would commit to more. Also, I felt that my experience and qualifications were WORTH something. So I applied, was interviewed and … was rejected.
The main reason given was that they were looking for people with foreign language skills. That did make sense, but the “advert” also said that they were willing to look at people without those skills if they had appropriate qualifications and / or experience. I think they would have been hard pushed to find someone with a more applicable experience / qualification skillset… but at any rate I was rejected.
Almost as an emotional response to this, I applied for an English tutoring job on-line with Cambly, was “interviewed” within a couple of days – and was accepted. The pay was pretty low – just over $10 (£7.50) per hour. But it was paid – and I felt valued, so reluctantly I dropped the voluntary work I had spent so much time training for – though keeping my presence on the site by answering forum questions etc.
I now try and earn £350 per month on Cambly – and feel I am beginning to get my relationship with money, worth and self-esteem about right, although I recognise that I still have a long way to go.
Lesson 7.
Mixing with fellow “travellers” is good.
This one came about almost as a misunderstanding. After falling out with a friend back in Sheffield. I posted something about my low self-esteem on social media and had many comments, most of which had the tone, “you need to go out and mix more.” Although I didn’t feel this was the reason for feeling blue – I decided mixing would do me no harm and went out to a couchsurfing “language exchange.” Couchsurfing by its very nature connects you to other travellers and although some had not been on the road for some time – it was good to meet new people, share stories and to try out my foreign language skills.
Lesson 8.
I still have a lot to learn.
Apart from other languages? Well working for Cambly has made me realise how much I still don’t know about myself. Although I am now earning some money, it is such a low amount that I sometimes think in terms of Cambly hours for treats – so a pastry in France might cost me half a Cambly hour – as would a pint of beer in Ireland. A meal out might be two Cambly hours. Clearly my relationship with money is not yet sorted – and as for relationships!
Lesson 9.
That I can be assertive and look after myself.
This came to the fore when I was travelling with others and found that I couldn’t keep up. I had to take time out – whole days sometimes. I later discovered that the cause for this tiredness was a vitamin B12 deficiency which was soon sorted with a series of booster injections back in England … but at the time I just thought I was mardy. And that was part of the point. I needed to get assertive not just with my travel companions, but with myself. It is easy for me to think that just because I am visiting a place and it may well be my only chance to see something, that I have to go the extra mile – but I have to realise that I don’t have the energy that I had in my 30s and that I do need to recuperate sometimes. Not only was that a lesson in coming to terms with my age, but there is also a lesson in coming to terms with my death – the final lesson!
Lesson 10.
Death will happen – soon!
Okay, maybe not tomorrow. But at 64, (in 2021) – I know I have a lot less ahead of me than behind me.
I know this sounds dramatic, but every day I travel leads me to think about how many days I have left in the country I am in – I am planning my life out day by day. By extension it makes me think of how many days I have left – full stop. I have a grand plan of where I am going and which route I am taking and, by my best guess, even with only going for a few weeks or months to places, it will take me over 10 years to accomplish what I want to do. That will mean me travelling until I am in my mid-70s. Of course, things can interrupt my journey, like this current virus – so it may be that I will be in my 80s before I finish… but the point is that travel is making me face my own mortality, which is different to staying at home and watching TV all night.
Do I wish I had started the journey when I was younger? Yes, of course and I still have some sadness for the “gambling Steve” and indeed for those who are still gambling and not realising their dreams. The learning for me here, (number 11 of 10?) is not to put things off and I am applying this in my life right now. Perhaps it is late on – but I have realised that if I want something, I have to take steps to make it happen today. And wanting to see the world is all I am asking for – it is still a beautiful place.
