Last week I announced I’m quitting my job at the end of the month to travel the world for the next 6-12 months.

It still feels weird to say out loud. It’s been a long journey to come to this decision, but I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that this might be the most excited I’ve ever been about anything in my life. And as excited as I am, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also note the fear, what ifs, and unknowns scattered throughout my thoughts.

The reality is I won’t be able to have extended conversations with everyone about all the details, so here’s my attempt to shed a bit more light on the why of my decision as well as the what and where of my plans.

Why?

I consider myself incredibly fortunate that international travel has been a part of my life for so long. Since late high school, I can’t think of a year where I haven’t been international, often multiple times each year. I have my parents (especially my dad) to thank for that. Thanks to his work I’ve gotten to hijack many a work conference and study abroad program. Those trips hold some of my favorite memories, from images burned in my brain looking down over the endless, jagged expanse of the Dolomites, to eating gyros the size of my face in Greece, to learning about my family history over a beer sitting in a Swiss chalet.

I’ve always found travel to expand my thinking patterns. Being in a new culture reminds me that normal is subjective. I come home with a deepened understanding of myself, how I operate, and what’s important to me. It provides a playground that has a tendency to expose my strengths and my weaknesses in ways I might not otherwise recognize. It’s created trial by fire adaptability as unexpected circumstances arise that force change, some which I have handled gracefully, and others which I have not.

There’s any number of stories I could share to illustrate all this, but I’ll save these for another time. The important thing to know is that my idea of normal has been slowly deteriorating in recent years, and I’ve become dissatisfied with the current trajectory of that normal.

For many, they’d see my trajectory as the ideal. Stable job in software working for a large company, six figure salary, working with people I enjoy, taking at least four sum total weeks of vacation each of the past two years. As good as it’s been, for the past two years, deep down, I’ve been desiring somewhat of a radical change. In many ways, I’ve lived the American dream (minus the house and family with 2.5 kids), and I’m slowly realizing that I don’t know if that’s my dream. Not right now.

What is my dream? Honestly, I’m still not entirely sure. For a long time I felt uncomfortable making a change without having a clear answer to this, and recently I’ve begun to understand that I don’t need the whole picture right now. I simply want to start moving in a different direction, and it’s inevitable that along the way I find bits and pieces that start to put the puzzle together.

Over the past six months all these deeply buried feelings have bubbled up to something that is becoming harder and harder to ignore. I’ve realized that if I don’t do this now, I’m never going to, and I’m going to regret that the rest of my life.

I’ve held fear closely in tension with this, because this decision is illogical in many ways. It’s letting go of security for no promises in the unknown. But I’ve realized that if I don’t do this, what else am I not going to do just because I’m afraid? I don’t want to take the safe road the rest of my (Lord willing) long life. I want to trust and believe that sometimes the illogical, counter-cultural decisions are where the greatest opportunities for growth lie. A friend of mine recently reminded me –

“Fear is not a good motivator to not do something. Do it scared because one day you might not be able to do it at all. You might find that it was terrifying, and that the fear was justified, but more often than not I’ve found that my fears were really just not that important.”

So that’s exactly what I’m doing. Stepping forward, excitement, fear and all. And strangely enough, ever since I made the decision last week, I’ve felt an overwhelming amount of peace about it. It’s so clear to me that this next season is going to be a fruitful one.

What?

So what am I going to be doing on this trip? There will be no shortage of sightseeing and typical tourist-ing, but those aren’t what I’m primarily focused on. I’ve spent more time thinking about what I want to spend my time doing and what I hope to gain from this trip rather than what I am going to see.

When I first started thinking about what I wanted out of this trip, I had far too many expectations that led me to put a staggering amount of pressure on planning “the perfect trip”. It’s been a process, but I’m starting to release my death grip around expecting too much. This trip isn’t the solution to a problem. There is no “right” answer. It will not be perfect. In fact, as great as I’m sure it will be, I’m going to come home disappointed with certain aspects of it. There are an infinite number of ways I could go about planning it. It is simply an opportunity. With that said, these are five things I plan to prioritize along the way.

Where?

The short version is I’m headed to Southeast Asia in mid October, where I will slowly make my way South to Australia and New Zealand over the course of 4-5 months. A lot of the details are still fuzzy (which might make you cringe), but I’m not too stressed about having every day and location planned out.

I know for a fact that some of the people reading this have visited, or lived in these areas, so any recommendations you have – I’m all ears.