But what will you do when you get back? Sepha Brook
Bagan rainbow/Sepha Brook
This question once seemed very remote…
I’ve just landed back in London life after nine months of travelling the world. I’d dumped my corporate job, put my suits into storage and flown to Brazil. New experiences and friendships came thick and fast. Rats ate my sandals in India, a monkey bit me in Nicaragua and I ‘technically’ crossed the border into North Korea. My furiously militant world tour took me to twenty different countries across all continents (okay, not Antarctica). And now I find myself sat on my sofa back in Clapham…applying for jobs.
Daily freedom and excitement has been replaced by excessive napping and an unhealthy obsession with checking my dwindling travel blog visits (www.sepha.co.uk anyone?). I wait outside the gleaming offices of friends for stolen lunch breaks whilst former colleagues off work with newly birthed spawn beg for adult company.
Between outward bound expeditions I have become a productive chef, cooking and freezing in excess of 70 individual meals in preparation for efficient evenings when my daytimes are once again consumed with ‘actions’, ‘deliverables’ and toilet tourism (when nature dictates, covert visits to a different floor to cover one’s scent).
I’ve also become a labourer of sorts — cutting tiles, painting wood and brewing vats of tea. This is me ‘helping’ my boyfriend on various building, architecture and carpentry projects. In reality, I’m worried I might start browsing the Daily Mail website if left home alone for too long.
As I currently possess a post-travel food baby, possibly twins, running also gets me out the house. The world is my gym (I can’t afford my former yoga membership) and looking slinky in a trouser suit is my motivation (and cake).
For an unemployed person, I’m confusingly busy. But alas, the need to gorge on avocados and the desire to ski at least once a year has led me to drop the flip flops, wedge my trotters back into heels and to talk endlessly about my professional achievements to strangers in small rooms devoid of personality. In truth, a renewed sense of daily purpose will be revitalising and this crept up on me around month six whilst I was pottering around Tokyo.
It’s well documented that a daily occupation helps keep the mind healthy, and I’m moving closer to the edge. But when it comes to jobs, global adventuring has given me the confidence to know my worth, know my abilities and value what I enjoy. Consequently, I’m a more discerning customer. Admittedly, I don’t have the balls to train in taxidermy and stuff deceased family pets ‘in character’ (my plan of action whilst travelling…) but I did turn down a job offer which would fund multiple avocados but ultimately rot my under-stimulated brain.
So until my just right-porridge comes good, I’ll be stirring vats of chilli con carne and touring the perimeter of Clapham Common.