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Hey, welcome to the blog! I’m Kirstie, your resident wanderer. My story may not be your typical, quit my job, been on the road for ten years and never looked back since kind of story, but I have been backpacking or living abroad, on and off, since 2015. And now in my fifth year of my current home of Tokyo, I want to share how I did it and hopefully how you can to!
There’s already a lot of travel bloggers out there who will teach you how to quit your corporate job, pack a backpack and live around the world as a perpetual nomad for the rest of time. That's not me. And while I'd love to teach that, I'm not a full time nomad.
It may seem like the dream, but depending on your situation or individual goals, the self employed, digital nomad life can be pretty hard to actually accomplish for your average person. But that doesn’t mean it's the only way to live a life of travel! So instead, I want to tell a different story.
‘I quit corporate (ish) job to move across the world and work an actual corporate job–just somewhere else!’
Or at least, I did for a little while (for how I got my current job, come back soon for a post!). None of it was smooth, but the odd breakdown or two can be good for a person, right?
It's been a journey and one that's very far from over, so come along for the ride! I want to use this blog to share tips for not only backpacking and short-term travel, but also how to live abroad long-term as either a student or working full or part-time. And why not also share any other stories and insights I gather along the way?
I don’t really have a specific moment I can look back on and say ‘It all started when…’. For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to live abroad. I’d watch movies where kids' parents decided to up and move the family to another country and the kid would get so upset and refuse to go and all I could think was ‘Are you crazy? This is your moment! Your adventure! Why don’t you take it?’. But since my own family had no plans to move, I always assumed once I was old enough to do it myself, I would.
I got my chance sooner than expected when I applied to a study abroad program in high school and was accepted to study for a semester in Australia. I’m not sure it counts as solo travel since I stayed with a lovely Aussie family the entire time I was there, but it was enough to show me what it’s like to pack up and start a life somewhere new. The moment you step off a plane into a new city where no one knows your name is the most free you can ever feel in your life. Somewhere you can be anyone or anything you might want to be. I left Australia in tears, unwilling to accept my adventure was over. And with no future trips in sight, I returned to Canada to wait to be a real grown-up who could travel whenever I wanted.
However, I ended up finding out the unfortunate part about being a grown-up I hadn’t put enough thought into at 15–that life is a lot more expensive than you think and working a part-time job in university is barely going to cover your bar money let alone tuition. And it definitely will not fund months-long travels around the world. I started to see University as another obstacle to ‘get through’ until I could finally be the grown-up I wanted to be (queue my recommendation to take a gap year after high school if you have the chance!). But being the incredibly indecisive person that I am, I continued to add obstacles for myself that all added time and more money to my degree.
Deciding my university major was a decision I never really fully made. Torn between what I enjoyed and what I thought would get me a job, I swapped my major 3 times and even transferred schools halfway through while attempting to find something I thought was employable but that didn’t fill me with dread at the thought of the corresponding career possibilities.
With all this indecision, there was no way to graduate in 4 years as expected and I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
Enter study abroad! I had been waiting to graduate to finally try my hand at solo travel, but with a fifth year of Uni on the horizon with only a half course load, I started to weigh my options. And in the last week applications were open, I applied to study one of my final semesters in Madrid–a decision which turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.
‘Before Madrid, I still had never really gone anywhere by myself and wasn’t sure I had the confidence to.’
Before deciding to study abroad, I had been researching gap year trips for after graduation. Mostly group tours marketed to 20-somethings that cost upwards of $6000 to go to Thailand for 6 weeks (an amount I later learned could last 6 months with proper budgeting). But Madrid gave me the opportunity to test group tours vs solo travel. And it didn’t take me long to decide that solo travel was for me.
When I finally graduated with a degree in Finance, mainly because that’s what most of my credits happened to be in, I delayed applying for the corporate jobs my peers were aiming for and instead found a waitressing job at a local bar. I worked for 8 months until I had enough to get me to Australia, with a working holiday visa in hand.
And this is the point where most bloggers are able to tell you that they started a travel blog and it started funding their life and they’ve been on the road ever since...
This isn’t that point for me.
Instead, after 9 months when I ran out of money, I bought a one-way ticket back to Canada and started looking for jobs.
This could have been the end of the story. I found a job, and started living a relatively stable life in my home town. My friends were getting promoted, buying houses, getting married, and I'm sure I wasn't far behind. That was the success so many of us had always been taught. But all I could think about was my month in Japan. So I signed up for evening Japanese classes at a local university.
‘From that point, I knew I was going. What was the worst that could happen? I at least wanted to try.’
I applied for a job teaching English on LinkedIn, just to see what would happen. And the day I got the job offer, I booked another one-way flight. The one that still doesn’t have a return.
Travel has been the most impactful part of my life. And whether it's a weekend trip, study abroad, or taking the leap to move across the globe, if you feel like you might want to give it a try, I can't recommend it enough!
To learn how to move to Japan, for more on working holiday visas and backpacking long-term, tips for planning your gap year (not exclusive to after graduation!), or info on studying abroad, check out the blog!
And if you don’t know where to start? Explore, click a photo you like, or hang out a bit in the comments. We're happy to have you here!
Wander on friends,
XO Kirstie
