Anyone just left it all behind?

RED_

Hi,

Long story short, I'm feeling a bit disillusioned with how my working life is going. Good career, where I know I can do well, but I feel a bit trapped. eg. If I carry on, I'll be old before I know it having never really done anything else.

I got a job straight out of uni, so never did the travelling thing. But with the pressures of work I never really get to do much else socially so I've definitely some kind of itch that needs scratching. Not that kind of itch.

My g/f feels the same way and we don't owe anything so are pretty much free, if we had the guts!

I want to know if any of you have just thought F*** it, I'm off - and have done something that turned out to be amazing and you've never looked back.

Moved abroad? Seen the world? tried something new? anything really.

Or has anyone regretted not doing something like this?

Answers on a postcard please!

Thanks.

OwenBird

Done it twice - Canada for 9 months, Australia for 8. Not back to back...

If you have the money to do it I'd say get it done while you have the chance.

Don't burn any bridges but deffo give ut a shot. Look into working visas (had one for both Canada and Oz) and scout around for a job while you're there. You can't properly judge a move/career change somewhere new without seeing it first hand.

Good luck, and get on it!

GHill

Chances are that you'll only get one shot, better to take the chance than wonder "what if" for the rest of your life.

cee

i was fortunate enough to do it before uni...

had some good times and some bad.....but wouldn't want to give the experience back...

if you can do it....do it.

neil²

You can do what I did and, after 10 years, took a job overseas. There's a lot of other cultures in Europe where work permits are irrelevant.

I went to the north of Sweden, just south of the arctic. We moved back to UK after 18 months.

Luckily, my job travels so I had no problem in finding something. I would recommend north Norway, Sweden or Finland - no language barriers and some good MTB!

acidstrato

found out today that a mate from work has accepted a job offer which i refused 2 weeks ago and now he's looking forward to working on cruise ships touring the caribbean and south America and leaving all the shit at our current place of work behind him. bit gutted now myself, just because I didnt have the balls and backed out.

in time we'll see which one of us made the right decision but suffice to say theres nothing on the horizon for me yet

thekickingmule

RED_ I'm in the same boat, except my 'career' is crap as there is no room for promotion, barely any increase in wages for the last couple of years and for the forseeable future and I don't know what to do with myself.

Bails started a thread about it not long ago (yesterday?) along similar lines, and I said then, do it! If I could, I definitely would. I'd love to leave my job etc. but I don't have the funds to do it, plus have other commitments like loan repayments etc.

If I had a gf that wanted the same adventure though, then what is stopping you? Save up for a few months, and get going. It may be the best thing you ever do in your life, or at the least, a huge experience that will remain with you both forever.

tlw1

you only regret the things you don't do!

thekickingmule

matthew h wrote:

you only regret the things you don't do!

Or the things you do that you regret doing :P

bails87

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... t=12682937

I'm in a similar situation, the consensus seems to be to go.

butcher of bakersfield

You obviously both want to do it, so I don't see any reason not to - whatever it is. Otherwise you'll wake up one day and realise you've wasted half your life doing 9 to 5. Fortunately we live in a culture where income is expendable and we won't die if we don't work for a short while. Save the cash and do whatever it is you want to do. The world's not gonna end.

dwill

go for it if you dont you will always regret it! i`m 40 now and still regretting not going for it. if it doesn`t work come home simple as

hyperman

unfortunately in this country we live to work, but is that it? is that what life is all about? we are all far too materialistic because lets face it everything we tend to do in life is geared towards bettering ourselves with material things, better car, better house, better bike. but there is so much more to life than that, countries to explore, cultures to experience,etc....so ask yourself this simple question, how many times do you live your life? the answer? once my friend, so, do what you want with it, not what society tells you you should do with it, travel, experience, enjoy....

neil²

dwill wrote:

go for it if you dont you will always regret it! i`m 40 now and still regretting not going for it. if it doesn`t work come home simple as

rather than regretting, why not plan for it?

I don't know your situation at all but maybe in 10 years time the kids will have left home or the house paid off or whatever... put aside a dribble of cash between now and then and see if you can get 3 months off unpaid and do some major expedition in 2020....


Hmmmm now I'm inspiring myself.....

yoohoo999

RED_

What skills do you have? i.e. how employable would you be when you get back?

I took a year out after law school and to be honest it was the best thing i've ever done. Glad I didn't do it when I was 18, it would have been wasted on me.

Because of the current economic climate, I've watched lawyer mates all over the country lose their jobs and worry what on earth they are going to do.

They've all got £2k+ mortagages, huge law school debts, some with families.

Problem is, no one outside of the profession wants to employ a lawyer that's been made redundant. For one, they know that you'll be straight back over to the law as soon as the market picks up, and also because our skills aren't that useful to many businesses (unless of course you want to actually employ someone to fill the role of a legal advisor in your company, which just isn't a justifiable expense for most companies).

The Guardian noted that there were 50 qualified lawyers competing for every available lawyer job last year. That's insane. That's 50 people who all have almost the exact same education and experience as you.


So what did they do? Most got rid of their houses and used their redundancy packages to ride out the worst of the storm, intending to get back into the profession once it picked up.

What actually happened.......................

they got rid of their houses and after a couple of months suddenly reaslised that you don't need over £125k just to "get by" in London at 30 years of age. They realised that they had been selling their souls and missing everything that was important, focussing too much on what they ought to be doing and not what they wanted to be doing.

So many of those friends are now travelling the world, spending time at home looking after the kids, I've even got one mate that ditched his amazing career at A&O and has now been working in a bar in Whistler for the past 2 years! He's never been happier!


The truth is, work is pretty rubbish. Even if you have a "good" career, you have to give up a lot of what you really want in order to pursue it.

If you haven't seen the world yet, ditch your job and do it. Lawyers are very unemployable after 12 months out of the profession because their industry knowledge isn't up to date - that used to be the worry of my redundant mates. Now they see being made redundant as a blessing to go and do something that makes them happy.

There will always be time to pick up where you left off - go and do what you really want for a while. If it doesn't work out, sod it, just go and do something else or go back to what you were doing before.


As you've probably guessed, I share the same sentiment. I feel like I'm giving up my life for something, but i'm not sure what that is. I worry that it's money. It takes an enlightened man to leave all that behind. I'm still waiting for that eureka moment, and then I can assure you, I will be off like a shot!

Go and do it mate, see all the places you'll regret never having visited. It's so cheap to see the world now, you'd be crazy not to.

Our generation has it easier that almost any other in history, we can literally do almost anything we want. We just choose not to most of the time.

Brassknocker

I think you've answered your own question. You HAVE to do it! and the fact that your gf wants to too -that's perfect!

I'm 35 now with a lovely little daughter, a mortgage etc etc... I wouldn't change it - but luckily I took time off in my 20s to travel & rockclimb and generally be a bum. 6 months here, 6 months there.
It will only get more difficult to do as you get older and gain more responsibilities, but there will always be that itch!

You'll only look back and wish you had if you don't (that's guaranteed!).

Don't burn bridges, try and line something up if it'll put your mind at rest- but I know so many people in 'careers' that have taken a year out and walked back into jobs afterwards.

It's something you have to do! Listen to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and then tell your boss you want to take some time off

God I sound old!

Good luck!

yoohoo999

despite my long post just 15 minutes ago. there is a flip side to the equation that I have been sitting thinking about.

a good career lets you do things that you could never do otherwise.

I've spent longer periods travelling when I was a student and on a year out. But i've been to far more exotic/lout of reach/luxury places for the years since I've had a proper job.

But you never really get to experience the place if you visit for just a week or two.

So the plan should be:

Ditch job
Go travelling for a year or so
Come back and decide what to do next

RED_

Wow, thanks for the great responses from you all.

It's definitely a case of 'when' now, and not 'if'.

The Pitch Pro will have to wait!

yoohoo999

Good lad!

sbonda

I agree,
go for it, whats to lose? If you go somewhere and don't like it, come back and you'll not be any worse of than you are now (ie you wouldn't have lost an amazing job that you loved).
I'm considering Australia myself, seems to be lots of jobs for mechanical/ project engineers, and having been brought up in Southern Africa i think i would quickly get used to the weather and way of life.
If you do go travelling don't forget, pictures!

Wooliferkins

Go for it. I would always say this but it's a bit more focused as a school mate shuffled off his mortal coil at 46 this week. This is not a dress rehearsal.

craker

RED_ wrote:

The Pitch Pro will have to wait!

This is how society / magazines / this forum makes slaves of us. Work hard, spend your money on overpriced hardware that is marginally better than what you already have, work hard and leave new hardware in shed.

Once we're weighed down with this kind of stuff it gets very hard to go anywhere.

clodhoppa74

the only difference between a rut and a grave is depth. go for it.

bails87

clodhoppa74 wrote:

the only difference between a rut and a grave is depth.

Brilliant!

Anonymous

im very envious of the position you are in.

i dont mean to rub it in for the followers of this thread but my life is pretty good, i like my job, my friends, my management, my wife, my house and the area i live in, i like my bikes and am looking forward to my upcoming hol and my current time off. life is sweet

but i would give my left bollock to be in your position.

the opportunity to make some amazing memories is something everyone dreams of and to have a bird with whom you can share it is better than money in the bank. good luck to you and i hope to hear what the next move is.

take the trip, start a blog and show us all what we are missing is my advice

yoohoo999

sheepsteeth wrote:

i dont mean to rub it in for the followers of this thread but my life is pretty good, i like my job, my friends, my management, my wife, my house and the area i live in, i like my bikes and am looking forward to my upcoming hol and my current time off. life is sweet

Yeah don't get me wrong, I love my life. But let's be honest, you've really got to get out there and see the world. It doesn't matter how good your life is, if it's been based solely in the UK, you've experienced just a fraction of what's out there.

I get to work in other countries and holiday in other countries and that has it's benefits. But nothing beats packing a bag and disappearing for a year!

I remember waking up one morning on the apartment floor of some girls I had met while I was living in the Italian alps, desperately trying to find my apartment keys so that I could get up and catch the first tracks of the day since it had been dumping snow down all night. I caught myself laughing as a ran up the road to my own apartment swearing at myself for getting so drunk the night before that I might have missed the best tracks.

If I had been in the UK, I would have been stressing about missing my train to work, but here I was jogging up a snow covered road in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt at 7am, really hungover, after having left some completely random italian girls' apartment, desperately trying to get my board and get up the mountain before everyone else.

Stuff like that is what makes travelling all worthwhile.

About a month later I was on a flight to Miami. No idea why we decided to go there, but didn't leave the US until my 90 visa expired. When I finally left I was in Huntingdon Beach (think of the programme the OC) and was heading to Istanbul (again, a completely random decision).

Screw the UK and having to turn up to work every day. I've got a great house, job, friends, prospects, girlfriend, hobbies, toys, family etc etc etc..........but you just can't compare it to not having a care in the world other than what crazy thing you've got planned for that day/evening/the next day/the next month.

Anonymous

my point was that even though i am enjoying life, i would love to drop it all and do something similar to what the OP is considering.

yoohoo999

i know, i was agreeing