"love"

One of the questions I receive via email the most – other than “how do you pay for your travelling” / “you have a trust fund, right?” – is “will taking some time off work to travel hurt my career?”

I totally get it. The job market can be a cruel and competitive place, especially, from what I’ve heard, in the United States. People who have written to me often say that their families are putting pressure on them, encouraging them not to travel or “sabotage their careers”. While I am writing a post soon about garnering the courage to travel, and I’d also like to write about education and travel, I thought it would be helpful to write a post why I think long-term travelling can help your career. It has certainly helped mine.

Over the last year and a half, my degree and my job have taken up most of my life. I have sadly had to let this blog slip behind a little bit, which breaks my heart. I love writing blog posts. Sometimes I go back and read old blog posts for inspiration for the book I’m writing, and once in a while I feel really proud of what I’ve written. A lot of the time, however, I cringe. I’m totally guilty of doing some really lazy travel writing. Lock me up and throw away the key, because I have definitely described a city as a “fascinating blend of the ancient and the modern”.

So, mostly out of sheer self-shaming (in the hopes that I never blog/write using these words again… or at least minimise my use of them) here are the words I think are overused in travel writing and travel blogging.

As much as I love travelling and as much as I love learning about the countries of the world, there’s a lot I don’t know. Often the only thing I know about a certain place is that there’s something tugging me there, and that, for whatever reason, my wanderlust has been piqued. Cyprus was one of those countries. And while I knew that it is famous for its beach holidays, I was so excited to spend most of my time there exploring the capital city of Nicosia and its surrounding hills.

If you find yourself heading to Cyprus, I definitely recommend checking out Nicosia. Full of history, culture, and great food, it’s the kind of place you could easily spend a week or two. If you only have one day, however, here are the spots I recommend.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post called On Being Happy With Being Content. In it, I discussed how since moving to London I’ve embraced the idea of settling somewhere and the feeling of happiness I get from routine in my life. To be completely honest, I wrote that post to try to make sense of what I was feeling at the time, the restlessness mixed with the feelings of withdrawal from a life of almost constant travelling.

I am never going to deny that some of the happiest days of my life have been while I was on the road. So today, in honour of International Day of Happiness (don’t roll your eyes), I thought I’d post some of the reasons I personally feel happy when I travel. Travelling makes me happy because…

For many, spending days aboard a cramped train with minimal electricity and plumbing would be extremely unappealing. But for as long as I could remember, I had dreamed of taking the Trans-Siberian through Russia, one of those grand, Theroux-inspired adventures. Within a few days of boarding the train that would take me over 6000 kilometres and eight time zones across Eurasia, I realised that this journey would be much more arduous than I could have ever imagined, and yet much more rewarding than I could have ever hoped.

There’s really no beating around the bush here, as the title gives it all away. I’ve alluded to this in the past and openly talk about it with friends and family, but I rarely mention it on this blog or any of my social media. I’m not quite sure why, but I thought it was high time to do it, purely to put it out there. Once it’s out there, I can’t take it away. I’m writing a book.