A Year and a Day #1: An Introduction – Author Bio

An Introduction

I’m Daniel Wallace, an English guy in his mid-twenties, and I’ve decided to give up my career and monthly salary to see the world for a year or two. Travelling the world for an extended period of time is something I’ve wanted to do for years and years, but it’s funny how the lure of a steady, secure job can change your priorities. About this time last summer I realised that I didn’t want to stay at my current job for more than another year or two, and so had to decide whether to finally take the opportunity and see the world, or stay in London and find another, hopefully better job. After a quite incredible amount of dithering, and infuriating my friends with my indecisiveness, I resolved to go travelling once I had saved up some money and had worked a bit longer.

The saving, planning and dithering are now almost over, and on the 20^th of July 2003 I fly to New York to start my adventure! My route is essentially going south and west towards Australia: Flying to New York, then travelling around Western USA and Vancouver, then south down the US West Coast to Mexico, then travelling down to Panama, then flying on to Ecuador, continuing to the bottom of Chile… then flying on to New Zealand and then Australia, where I have a year long work permit so may pause for a few months or more. From there I think I’m going to head towards SE Asia and India. But as I don’t have a round the world ticket, all this is only written in pencil – part of the point of this trip is to be flexible and open to anything that comes up on the road.

I’ve called my travelogue “A Year and a Day” to reflect that. This is a period of my life where there are no goals or deadlines, just time to travel and experience as much of the world as I can. I figure (using incredibly dubious financial calculations and estimates of how quickly I’ll want to move around) that I’m going to travel for about a year and a half, but “A Year and Six Months” doesn’t have the same mystical associations as a “A Year and a Day”…

What am I looking for? To meet all kinds of people, to learn about different countries and see some amazing landscapes. I’m hoping that during the trip I’ll find a place or places where I’d want to live for a while – ideally I don’t want to come back to London for a few years at least. A large number of people who have met me note that I am quite posh, often a little tightly strung, and very “English” – part of the point of travelling is to relax a bit, become a bit closer to the person who I think I want to be.

I plan to study Spanish, maybe find work of some kind along the way, find beaches to get better at surfing (which I haven’t done since I lived in Hawaii), walk through parks, hills and deserts, and eat, travel and live pretty cheaply wherever I am.

Send me an email at danielwallace@ekit.com if you’ve got any questions about my trip, have any questions about London, or about whether giving up work to travel is a good idea, or if your route sounds similar to mine and you’d like a travelling companion for a while.

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