Travel Time Out

I love to travel! A fact which, if you know me at all or have read any of my other writing, is in no way surprising. I could spend hours floating in the ocean, hanging in a hammock in the mountains, or driving through “flyover” states. For reasons I don’t fully understand, I am the nicest, most outgoing version of myself when there is a 99% chance that I will never meet you again in my life. Sitting in an independent coffee shop or diner in a small town and listening to locals shoot the breeze is almost a guilty pleasure with how much I enjoy it.

I love international travel! The excitement of getting to learn parts of a new language is overwhelmingly exceeded by the joy of actually getting to communicate in a different language. Please note that this is not a brag on my language skills, because those skills are usually limited to: “Yes,” “No,” “I don’t speak your language,” “Do you speak English?”, and “I am an American”. However, when I think back on the times I have gotten to communicate with people in their native tongue, I am blown away with a surreal sense of awe. The same is true with experiencing other cultures; seeing the different and sometimes similar ways that people live their life around the world is amazing.

So why, with all this love and insatiable hunger for travel, am writing a post called “Travel Time Out”? Simply put… I am not independently wealthy! You may now take a moment of either silence or laughter in order to commiserate in my pain. Trust me, I have laughed, I have cried… I am trying to work on my gratitude. But truthfully, I am mostly reminding myself that this is only for a season.

Back in March of this year I had a breakdown in my “adult” façade which lead to me being honest with myself and ultimately my brother (who is infinitely wiser than me), that I had no idea what I was doing with my finances. There I was with $7.00 in my checking until payday, thinking over my paystubs: “I am making almost as much as my dad did when I was a kid and he housed and fed a family of 5 on his salary. I know inflation sucks, but what the heck?!”

Granted, looking back, I can see how I landed myself in this situation. In January of 2019, I quit my full-time job with nothing in my savings besides but my Holiday bonus, so I could go back to school to become a Mechanical Engineer. Fast forward to August, I get kicked off financial aid with no warning and lose my work study job (FYI, you are not eligible for unemployment when the job you lost was a student work study program). Thankfully, between cashing in a couple savings bonds, dashing for Door Dash, and a credit limit that is higher than I should be trusted with, I was able to make my rent and keep fed until I landed a corporate job.

And then… 2020. It was a year that left most of us speechless as we wished and longed for some frickin’ “precedented” times. Enough said. I am grateful though and know that I was blessed beyond measure to have been employed throughout 2020. However, between furloughs and some type of cabin fever that turned Amazon shopping into a form of entertainment… let’s just say I could have made better financial choices in life.

So here I am, 7 months in on a 2-3 year journey to becoming debt free and it is the good kind of hard. I still love travel and that is part of the reason for my travel time out. The dream is to be out there in the world, meeting people and sharing their stories. Seeing amazing sights and trying to capture their beauty for others to see. However, in order to make that dream a reality, I have to focus on removing the hindrance of debt. And it was a lot easier (and faster) to build that hurdle, than it will be to knock it down.

I do hope you will bear with me while I keep my travels local. I know some people have been asking me when my next big trip is and it has been a little discouraging to respond with “No plans as of yet.” On the upside, I do live in Colorado, which means majestic views and fascinating stories are pretty close by.