30 years ago today, on April 18th, 1990, I set out on a world trip that changed my life forever. Just recently, my sweet mum found my journal I filled during my months of travelling, so I thought it might be fun to share some of it. My hope is to recap this trip over the next few weeks with photos or stories and more importantly about the ONE I met, who transformed my life.
Why I left
Here’s a brief backstory explaining my reasons for leaving my homelad. Enter your typical English girl. After finishing grammar school at 16, I left home an attended college for 2 years, planning to move on to a university and finish my degree. However, the last part of my plan had failed. I hadn’t made the cut.
Not to be thwarted from my dream of being an advertising executive, I spent a day calling every ad agency in London. By the end of it, I had an interview with J. Walter Thompson Co. They offered me an entry level job. Starting work 4 weeks later, I moved down to London. Woohoo I felt like life was finally beginning to look brighter.
Meaning to life
Fast forward about 2 years. Moving to London at 18, I now had a bunch of new friends, earned my first promotion and had everything I thought a girl could want. But all I felt was an vast emptiness in my soul.
These external life changes had done nothing for my soul. I was still that lost insecure person inside. Looking for fulfillment, all I had found was the endless 9-5, the striving for the next thing, the parties, hanging with friends who were as confused as I was. At the end of 2 years, just I was seriously disillusioned with city life, and pretty much any life. I began to think that if this was all life had for the next 70 years, then life was not worth living.
I needed meaning to all this mess called ‘life’ or it was not worth the effort. To begin with, I would ask any one I met what their meaning to life was, usually receiving weak answers or just a blank stare. I started seeing a therapist and began researching different religions and belief systems. This turned out to be even more confusing. The therapist would take my life apart, give reasons for how I was thinking or feeling, lay the blame to someone and then think that would somehow help me move on. All that did was leave me in pieces and more bitterness.
Answers
Nothing seemed to answer my questions about life and the emptiness I was experiencing. Someone in the world had to know – so I set out to find them. My then boyfriend was going to visit family in Tasmania, so I decided I would take off by myself around the world and meet him there later! Great idea! Someone somewhere had to have some answers.
Selling everything I owned, I quit my job, and bought an ‘Around the World Airline ticket’. Yes, they used to sell those! It cost me about $1500 which at the time seemed like a fortune.
My journal reads,
“I am very lost pulling away from the systems of life, frightened, alone, out on a limb, but I know I have to take this step”.
With my ticket, Youth Hostel Membership card and traveler cheques, I flew off from London to New York on April 18th 1990.
A Fresh Start
Now I thought I could have the life I wanted, not dictated to by circumstance of life. Perhaps like some of you, I came from what society thoughtlessly calls, a broken home. This had formed the way I looked at people and the world. Thankfully my mum is one of the most resilient people I know. She taught my sister and I to keep moving forward, no matter what.
Being the kind of kid who talked too much and asked too many questions I always needed a reason for everything. I had a feeling that I was missing something deep inside that was essential to life. My mind would flip flop from chronic insecurity and depression, to a scary over self confidence. So here was a chance for fresh start. I could have a glittering career, meet new people, see the world and with no desire to ever get married or have children, I was free to be a whoever I chose to be.
Stay tuned to see where this trip took me to next and how it challenged everything I had ever known.
