Author: Gregory Rodgers

A Single Step Towards Vagabonding

A journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step – Lao Tzu

Stuck in a cubicle
There is no feeling that quite describes being stuck in a corporate office, worse yet, in a cubicle, when the sun is burning through a cloudless blue sky. For seven years, I miraculously managed to not throw a phone, flog away an intruder, or hang myself in the corner of my office with Ethernet cabling. Like everyone else, I knew there was more to life than waking up at the last minute and jockeying through traffic in a hurry to make a bunch of old men richer. However, a strange and powerful force kept me glued to my seat, sorting through corporate memos, reminding me to file my TPS reports properly and that Friday was wacky tie day.

What kept me stuck
Bills. Lots of them. Always creeping into my mailbox when I least expected them. There were the usual suspects like electric, water and a mortgage on a place so oversized for me that I hadn't even opened some of the rooms yet. Then there were the really bothersome credit card statements that included all my internet purchases. Among the damages, were expenses for high tech toys I thought would make work more bearable. My cell phone could play MP3s, games, movies and open random gateways to alternate dimensions with the tap of a stylus. Included were new clothes that were sure to impress my dates and restaurant tabs in overpriced places that make you feel important. Being a well trained IT geek, I decided to do an analysis of where my money was going. I constructed a simple spreadsheet where I recorded purchases for one month. I have the attention span of a bored cat. A couple of months passed before I found the spreadsheet again, hiding in a dusty corner of my hard drive.

“Oh yeah, I remember this,” I said and opened it with a snappy mouse click. I nearly swallowed my tongue at the results!

Things
Things needed for daily life – groceries and Redbull, made up the lowest expenses. Not just a few, but a majority of my purchases were unnecessary and compulsive – to keep me distracted. I was putting at least one kid through college with my cable bill alone – all so that I could catch hot dog eating contests on ESPN 13 at 04:00 in the morning. Woohoo!

I went into work slightly more enlightened than I was the day before, but I wanted to be sure. Was I being too negative about my job? Was I starting a just-turned-30 midlife/depression/crisis? Was I about to run out and purchase a red convertible and pierce my tongue in a desperate cry for attention from women almost half my age?

An experiment
As an experiment, I decided to count the number of smiles I received around the office and cafeteria for one day. Other than a nearly mad and shaking engineer who was watching the coffee machine fill his one-liter mug for the third time, the only smiling faces I saw on this beautiful June afternoon were the ones walking at a quickstep toward the door at closing time. Things were quickly beginning to make sense.

Building a plan
Like a twitchy convict who discovered a tunnel under his bunk, I kept my findings to myself, started building a plan. I made a conscious effort to slow the bleeding of money from my account on useless toys. I started researching exotic destinations on the internet. I was quickly becoming consumed by my escape plans. For seven years I had been a rat in a neverending race, I had finally discovered that someone had left the door open on my cage. Quickly, my happiness and my bank account began to build up. On one bold evening, I set a date.

Date set
My date was January 1, 2006. What a better way to start a new year than to start a new life! In the six months between my enlightenment and the beginning of my new less paying yet more satisfying career as a backpacker, I managed to save and sell my house myself. I picked up a copy of Rolf Potts' Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. I realizeed I was not alone. Many had made this walk before me.

I was having visions of living on an organic farm, picking fruit in the sunshine, meeting up with hippy girls to go surfing. Was I heading for financial doom? The thought did cross my mind, especially when I started trickling news of my plan to friends and family. Vagabonding and even gap years are not popular concepts in America, so my announcements were usually responded to with less-than-positive enthusiasm. I did not care. I was determined not to spend the best years of my life while I was healthy, saving money to retire when I was too old to enjoy it. In December, I gave myself the ultimate Christmas gift, I bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok and turned in my letter of resignation.

When the wheels of my plane left the ground and pointed its nose East toward the Pacific, I breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Luckily, the 23-hour flight provided lots of time for decompression and contemplation, which I took full advantage of. I still had no idea where I was going or what I was getting myself into, but it had to be more interesting than learning new acronyms at a company whose name was an acronym.

As I sit here and write this, one year has passed since I left the U.S. for the first time. I grin when I read back through my early journal entries, blush slightly thinking of what an inexperienced newbie I was. I still do not consider myself a hardened traveler, but I do want to share my beginnings with others and inspire them to chew their way out of the maze. Anyone can do this. I never met a single person out of hundreds of backpackers who had regretted their decision to give up the cheese and escape the rat race. I would not trade my adventures, experiences and new friends for all the promotions, cable channels, or wacky tie days in the world.

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