That’s it folks, I quit! :)

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” - Henry David Thoreau

Last month was my last at work. I quit, finally!

Surprisingly, it wasn’t all about travel.

Although travel had a lot to do with this decision, it was also not entirely about it. It was something so much more than travel. Something that travel had introduced me to, freedom! The freedom to do things we want and things we must. I love to travel, no doubt, and having a steady job with good income and a great number of vacations per year was actually working out quite well for me. But somewhere along it felt like I was trying hard to play catch up and never really caught up. The last few months have been so crazy I’ve hardly been able to do anything I like. It was an exciting period both professionally and personally but it drained me out completely and left me mentally exhausted.

Despite having never gone to gym, I used to be pretty fit thanks to frequent short yet strenuous treks. But over the last few years I have become so dull, I struggled to climb every single time I have gone trekking in the recent past. Being unfit in the outdoors is so not fun, trust me! No treks, no sunsets, no cool evenings, it seemed all that time was spent in traffic. And the rest of the time, I was busy playing catch up. I got a lot of writing done (Read : Reflecting on a year as a Travel Writer!), got a lot of experience and all that slogging was part of the mandatory early learning curve but it had to go away. It had to end.

I had already given up on material possessions in favor of meaningful experiences, you know how travel does that to you, but I wasn’t counting the mental energy and precious time I was still investing to keep up this lifestyle. One fine day, as I struggled with this new discomfort, I came across Henry David Thoreau’s excellent quote “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” That did it for me, I decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. I didn’t want the extra money at the cost of living with stress and restraint. I wanted freedom - the time to indulge in my passions, to travel, to read, to write, to go visit my family and have the bandwidth to explore and do/create something meaningful.

I did not want to settle for what’s been handed to me. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t escape me for one moment that I’ve been blessed with extremely good fortune where I have a good life, am free to travel, have my health, earn well and have a supportive family that doesn’t require my financial support. Because I had nothing stopping me, it made all the more sense to go after my dreams or make better use of my time than participate in the rat race. If not, all that good fortune seemed just like a crutch to take support from forever instead of making it a pedestal from where I could fly higher. I’ve taken the path of least resistance so far(finished school, took up engineering, took up the first job I got) but now it’s time to tread new waters and push boundaries.

Years from now, I don’t want to be wondering “what if?”. Travel has showed me how beautiful life and this world can be and I intend to experience as much of it as possible. Cliched as it may sound, I want to feel alive and be free.

Of course I will be traveling more but I am not taking off on a six month trip to some place exotic because time is what I need, not more travel. All I want now is the bandwidth to try out different things, enjoy the sunsets, think about how the next years of mine should look like, write and read more. I want time to stand still while I figure this out. But since we do not have that luxury, I want to slow down or just stop in my tracks, turn back and start over. I do not want to escape the hard work, just that I want to invest my time and energy in doing things that matter to me and are close to my heart. And that’s the freedom I dream of.

I am excited about the future, that which is unwritten, wide open and mine to create.

The one where endless possibilities await!