This past Friday, a friend (you can find his excellent blog at talishzafar.blogspot.com!) and I were getting together, and we somehow got to talking about taking trips lasting a month or longer. You know those moments where you simultaneously divert a conversation to the right topic? Both Talish and I managed, without having a psychic connection, to hit upon the topic of European/Australian backpackers; we did agree that Aussies have a high tendency to travel, in our experiences. (Another topic was about living and working at hostels around Europe, but that’s a post for another day.) We both reached the consensus that while we’d absolutely love to take at least a month off to travel, we a) don’t have the financial means to do so and b) aren’t cut out for that. I know that as a travel blog, I feel ashamed that I haven’t gotten a chance to go on these trips that so many of my favorite and/or the popular travel bloggers/writers have gone on, but I just don’t think that I’ll be able to do so. Again, I want to reiterate that it’d be an absolute treat traveling by my young self for an extended period of time, but as we agreed on over beers, we’d miss home too much. (By home, I mean Moscow, where for the time being we’re both living and working in. For that matter, we’d miss both the US and Canada as well, where we respectively hail from.) Looking at travelers like Be My Travel Muse, for example, I honestly envy the fact that they have the financial means to support themselves. It does give me hope that I will one day have that stability to pursue my longstanding interest of travel, especially since I’m only 23. In an ideal world, I’d be able to parlay my experiences as an English as a Second Language teacher into some form of traveling and writing, either with this blog or with something/someone else. At either rate, the prospect is split 50-50 between wanting to take a year off to travel and pursuing my Master’s once I’m done with teaching. Maybe this is because because I’m afraid of the unknown and the worst that potentially would happen. I don’t think I could get over the shame of having to abort this dream, you know? But maybe, maybe I need to go ahead and do this. This might be the final milestone I need to conquer to signal that I’ve truly entered the “real traveler’s club”. Either rate, I don’t know if I can, and that’s what scares me.

If you have any comments, tips, or anything you liked about this, feel free to tweet me @CSmeeth.