How it all began...

So, I'd been thinking about it since, like, University. But on a dark, rainy Sunday morning in Mid-April I had what I would call an 'Eat, Pray, Love' epithany. I woke up, after what had already been a depressing weekend, and I just couldn't put a finger on why I was feeling so down. At 8.30am the guy I was supposed to be going on a date with, text me to cancel and even though I was pretty pissed at the time, I now realise he actually set off what is now going to be an epic adventure.


I suddenly bolted upright and thought, I have an amazing job (a dream career), amazing housemates, a car, amazing friends and family - basically a pretty decent life. So why on earth did I feel so down, why was I not able to enjoy it, appreciate it? I should be happy, socialising, living, instead I was sitting in a dark room, feeling down like I had been for a few months, unsure what to do about it.


Then I started thinking;

• I'm single, what's the point in me waiting around to find someone, this is the perfect opportunity to go. 
• I'm currently not earning enough to stay out of my overdraft let alone save, I'm surviving, I'm not living.
• But do I really want to give up a dream job after only a year - would I later regret it, will I be able to find a job like it when I return?
• I have nothing tying me down to make me stay, so why am I staying?
• I'm 25, I'm young, single, and now is the best time to go. But I can't go I need a career...

So I sent my mum a text, asking her if they'd mind me coming back home, working and then travelling - would I be an idiot to give up everything to do it. Then I sat in the shower and sobbed. Sobs that if there wasn't anyone else around, make you want to wail. Sobs that physically shake your body. And I got dry and sobbed. I dried my hair and sobbed. And then I rang my mum...and sobbed.


And it was mum (and dad) who both made me realise, you haven't been happy for a while, you know what you need to do, you won't settle until you do it...so travel. You can sell your car, you can come back home, you can work temp jobs and save, and then you can go. You have a year in book publishing behind you, you have 4 years of employment since Uni, you won't come back to nothing, however it's more than likely you may even find something while you travel. This is the perfect time for you to go. And so the pep talk continued for a while, until I had run out of excuses, until I stopped justifying myself, and I then knew that is what I needed to do.


And so two weeks later I handed in my resignation at work (I got quite tearful actually - sorry Nicola!) and a week after that, I sold my car - and so a travel fund began to take shape. None of this was easy, and I am always going to think sometimes, that I have done the wrong thing, until I start doing the right thing. I told my friends and I told my family and I began to get excited. This is it, what do you do when the one dream you've always had - a dream that has dominated every part of your life so that it became an obsession, it was a jealousy that ate you up inside everytime someone else did it - becomes a dream you are living? I'm not sure. For me, it's planning and booking, then making the reality, live up to the dream and getting everything I can from it...and more!


And that my friends...is how this adventure was born!