Quitting our jobs to travel
Anusha Sekhar
Those who know me through work might find it surprising that I quit my job to travel. Generally speaking, I've erred on the side of overworking, and doing things like checking email on my honeymoon, or taking work calls at 5am during a vacation in Hawaii, even when nobody expected me to. Despite how off-brand quitting seemed, I saw it as just the other side of the same coin. For the past few years, I stayed at home more than usual, had overexerted myself at work, and experienced intense pandemic fatigue. I knew something needed to change, and I thought taking a break to travel might just be what I needed.
My husband Suhas, on the other hand, is generally more balanced when it comes to work, and better at disconnecting than I am. He is also less emotional in his decision making, and approached this in a more logical and structured manner. Since we both had worked for over a decade, it seemed like a good time to pause and reflect on where we wanted to take our career next. We were debt-free, in good health, with no pressing obligations, and a decent amount of savings to pull off something like this. Borders were opening up post-pandemic, and our apartment lease was also ending in a few months. It felt like the right time.
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One thought gave us pause though: "Should we both quit our jobs heading into a potential recession year?". We deliberated, discussed, and debated on our timing for a while. The more we talked about it, the more we realized that there was never going to be an optimal time to quit our jobs to travel. And no matter when, there was always going to be a good reason to do this later. We decided not to overthink it.
And so, after a decade of setting up out-of-office messages to take vacations, we fully disconnected from work, and sent out goodbye emails instead. We set off on a three-month long out-of-office adventure to South America and Antarctica, between September and December 2022, to immerse ourselves in new places and experiences.
This blog documents our amazing trip for posterity, with stories and experiences that made a lasting impression on us. We hope you enjoy reading this! 🙂
P.S.: Special shoutout to our AI writing assistants, ChatGPT-4 and Wordtune, for making us sound smarter and wiser than we actually are.