I quit my job to travel the world
Three months ago, a couple of weeks before my 39th birthday, I quit my job. I quit my job as a General Manager and executive board member at a global recruitment company. A job where I love the people I work with, am respected and valued, have climbed the ladder swiftly, where my future is bright and there would be big opportunities for me at home and overseas if I wanted to pursue them. Instead, I’ve quit, with no job to go to and no fixed plans about what I might do next. *cough, mid-life crisis, cough*
Eeeeekkk!
So, what on earth possessed me to chuck in the big job, with the big paycheck and the big future?
For a while now, there’s been a whisper in the back of my head asking, is this all there is? Is this what I’m going to spend the rest of my working life doing? Do I actually care about this? What am I passionate about? The voice was getting louder and more insistent over the last 12 months. But when thinking about what else I would do, I was coming up blank. I’ve never been someone who had a clear alternative. I’ve been fortunate enough that generally opportunities have found me and I’ve said yes, rather than actively pursuing a new path.
But the voice kept on and I kept coming back to, what makes me happy? How can I make a living doing something I truly love?
For the longest time I dismissed food, wine and travel as just my hobbies. Things I loved doing, but couldn’t seriously expect to be a potential career. Then I stumbled across an ad in an issue of Gourmet Traveller for a Masters of Gastronomic Tourism, run by Southern Cross University in conjunction with the Cordon Bleu Institute. I went to the link in a ‘pretend to be nonchalant, just interested in looking’ way. It took 12 months to be brave enough to actually put in an application. At some point, I had a lightbulb moment – food and wine and tourism are some of the biggest industries in the world. Of course I can find a career path in those sectors! Whether that will be using my current skillset or doing something completely different remains to be seen.
The Christmas break gave me enough time and space from work to reach the decision that it was time for me to take a leap of faith. I wasn’t sure exactly when that would happen or how, but I knew it had to. So, after getting through the first quarter of the year, a move from Brisbane to Melbourne and a lot of soul searching and double guessing myself, I jumped. With no safety net.
I had to have “the courage to lose sight of the shore in order to cross the ocean” – Christopher Columbus
Within 30 minutes of announcing my decision to leave, I had booked a one-way ticket to Greece. I wasn’t leaving myself with an inch of wriggle room. It’s time to take some time out, see more of the world and allow myself the thinking and breathing space to see what might be next.
I finish work on 7 July and leave for Athens on the 25th. I’ll be blogging here and posting photos and updates on my socials. If you’re interested in seeing where this adventure takes me (I know I am!), I’d love you to come along by following me and subscribing to this blog. This is all new to me, but it feels like I’m going to have some fun roaming around the world, eating and drinking and figuring it out
