Why I Finally Quit My Job to Travel the World

I’ve always dreamed of seeing the world and have always been very curious. As a child, I was lucky enough to travel with my parents every year and I really mean every single year at least one vacation. Mostly to Portugal, where we originally are from. I didn’t always appreciate it and would even ask, in a bit of a naive and ungrateful way, why we never went anywhere else.

The more I grew up, the stronger my curiosity about the world became, and I kept dreaming of a world trip.

At the same time, I started postponing that dream, like most people do. First it was after graduating high school, then after my bachelor’s degree, until I eventually realized I was stuck in a cycle where I kept pushing it further away instead of actually making it happen.

Then Covid came and made everything even more complicated, but I saw it also changed a lot in the society we live in today.

Around the age of 24, I realized that if I really wanted this, I had to take initiative in a different way. I started going on resort holidays with a friend a few times a year, more as an escape from my own life back home, to be honest. That’s when I realized I wanted to build a life where travel and living weren’t separate things anymore.

At that point, I even considered moving abroad.

But then I met Jay, and everything changed quite quickly. We were forced to travel a lot to see each other and build our relationship. For the first time, a life that was compatible with travel actually seemed possible, just not yet fully shaped the way I had originally imagined it.

Our long-distance situation pushed both of us to rethink a lot of things and get creative about it. We also realized something important: we were young, without real obligations, and independent in many ways. It felt like the right moment.

So we decided to travel together before ever really “settling down” anywhere.
So at 26, I finally did it. I quit my job to travel the world with the love of my life.

It sounds like a cliché, and in a way it is. But at the same time, it was a mix of emotions, filled with doubts and questions. And honestly, quitting my job felt incredibly good. There was a bit of fear in it, yes, but mostly I just felt relief. I had actually enjoyed my job as a youth care worker a lot, but I knew it was time for something different.

Our families and friends were mostly supportive and excited about our decision. Some, however, were more skeptical and couldn’t really imagine how it would be possible to live outside a structured system like ours, especially without a stable income.

We often heard things like: “It’s too dangerous,” or “The news says this and that about that country…”
And we understood that. Because if you’ve never experienced anything different, how could we expect people to understand our motivation for leaving such a stable and secure life behind and going to countries that are often labeled as “dangerous”?

In the end, most people still wanted us to go and see the world, despite their initial worries. Many told us that if they were young again, they would do the same.
And that’s something that kept encouraging us to follow our own path.

What about you?

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Written by Fabienne, Tulsa, USA