“ONE  DOES  NOT  DISCOVER  NEW  LANDS  WITHOUT  CONSENTING  TO LOSE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SHORE  FOR  A  VERY  LONG  TIME.”

The past five years have encompassed an interesting time of my life.  I may not have appreciated it at the time, but I was given an opportunity to rewrite the outline of my life and redefine my dreams, my focus.

I experienced a devastating breakup which propelled me into a life of travel.  My subsequent years of being single have allowed me to develop a relationship with myself.  I was able to set personal goals and achieve them, pick a travel destination and not have to argue with anyone on why I should or shouldn’t go somewhere.  It was liberating to move past all my fears, purposely putting myself outside my comfort zone in order to have some of the most memorable experiences of my life as a result.

What started out as a healthy (and much deserved) reward to myself became a necessary component of my daily life that extended into my future.  The constant education became an addiction.  As much as I was meeting people from around the world and learning about distant cultures, I was learning more about myself.  I learned things like how much discomfort I was willing to endure in order to make a day-dream come true.  I’ve learned how much I love to fly and the number of sleepless hours aboard a plane it takes to make me twitchy.  And I realized that at a time when I may have lost faith in many areas of life, human kindness, good will and the promise of fulfillment were found very much alive.

In what seems like a short period of time, I have expanded from smaller trips nearby my permanent location to longer trips much further away.  I have overcome my fear of getting turned around, eating alone and being lonely.  As I constantly conduct case studies on the environments I find myself in, in order to read those around me and assess my experiences, I have noticed that people are genuinely good and helpful and I am never truly alone.  This realization, combined with the desire to trek the globe, led me to  entertain the opportunity of really being a local somewhere…semi-permanently.  One or two weeks was no longer enough to see if a new situation really suited me.

In the past few years, this life experience is one I have given considerable thought to.  The first step on this journey was to obtain my TEFL or TESOL certificate.  This was cheap and easy to acquire due to the many online resources that are available.  After my certificates were in hand and my CV was created, it was simply a matter of double-clicking my way through job postings to see which ones I qualified for, which packaged deal sounded the best, and which countries I would be willing to reside in for a year.

After many inquiries and responses, I was offered the job in Indonesia.  At this point I am yearning for challenge.  The life I have been living is consistent, easy, routine.  There is nothing wrong with this system except that I am not being challenged on a daily basis.  I was growing too comfortable and my skills, senses and mind were growing dull.  A shock to the system does a body good and moving half-way around the world, by myself, to a place I have never been, where I don’t know anyone, to do a job I have never done, seems like the biggest challenge I can possibly give to myself.

“TO  LIVE  IS  THE  RAREST  THING  IN  THE  WORLD.  MOST  PEOPLE  EXIST,  THAT  IS  ALL.”

– Oscar Wilde

So this is where I stand.  Rhode Island has been an awesome home for 7 years, and I truly feel that I have sampled a large majority of what Rhode Island and New England have to offer, so now it is time to move on.

A month from now I will be traveling to what will be my new home for the next year.  As I sink my teeth into every new aspect of life, I will be sure to add plenty of commentary as I navigate around a new job, city and country.  With about 17,000 islands that stretch along the equator, I’m sure there will be no shortage of wonderful excursions and challenges to experience and share.  And even if I decide that living abroad is not for me and the only times I should be in another country is for vacation purposes, at least I will be able to look back on this time of my life and say “I actually did this!”

“IT  IS  NOT  POSSIBLE  TO  FAIL  IF  YOU  HAVE  GROWN  AS  A  PERSON  IN  THE  PROCESS.”