Unknown white male

For a long time I've been wanting to write about my going away. This year I decided to go travelling, you see, leave everything behind and go see a bit of the world. I made the decision earlier in the year after a series of events, or should I say non-events.

Once I'd made the decision my plans formed pretty quickly. South-east Asia was a priority. I've never been to that part of the world and was very curious about it, more so particularly since I've been practicing martial arts. Money was a worry, of course, for the whole trip. But a friend mentioned that her ex-boyfriend was now teaching English in Thailand. The idea fascinated me - what a perfect way to immerse myself in the culture and earn some cash at the same time. Australia would be next. My friend Su now lives there and will be getting married in September, so I wanted to time my travels so I'd be there. Then New Zealand - blame Lord of the Rings etc etc. Fiji came to be part of the plan after talking to the travel agent as we planned my route. (Though this is now up in the air after the military coup. I'll have to keep an eye on that one.) San Francisco would be next. Los Angeles holds no appeal for me, thanks to the descriptions from various friends and actors that I've met, though I may visit it for a weekend, just so I can get a taste of it for myself. Then I wanted to factor Canada in, as I have family there - three half-sisters. When one of them came over in October for my Dad's 70th birthday she invited me to stay for Christmas, which was a relief; I was a little worried about what I would end up doing on Christmas Day next year. Then it would be New York, just because I love it there, and my good friend Eloise lives there.

I've wanted to write about this trip and my feelings about it at various times during the year (but for one reason or another I've not been able to sit down and do so) and I've wanted to write about it for one reason - because a lot of people have asked me why I'm going. At first it seemed like a strange question, as it didn't seem like a big deal to me; a lot of my friends have gone travelling and it was something I'd always wanted to do as well. But I came to realise that it wasn't such an obvious thing to do for everyone. To some people I was giving up a good job, a career I was doing well in, my friends, lots of things, and it seemed like a huge sacrifice. For what?

Truth is there was a long time where I'd become a bit jaded by my job. I've now worked as a feature writer for the Press Association for six years. For at least two of those years I've been looking to move on to something else. A job on a magazine, maybe. But what magazine? A couple of times I came close to what would have been good jobs, but they didn't happen for reasons beyond my control. So I found myself in a situation where I liked my job enough not to jump ship to just any old thing (I've been lucky enough to have a job throughout much of my 20s where I get free CDs, free holidays, a free mobile phone, free parties etc etc, as well as a lot of scope to write about different things, plus I was good enough at what I did that my superiors pretty much left me to my own devices) but also having been doing it long enough to become bored with the process. Part of me was hankering for the next challenge, and the ones offered by promotion within the Press Association - managerial, editorship - were not ones I was interested in taking up. Instead I wanted a new job with new challenges, but one that was as good as one I had. Jobs like that don't come along very often, as I discovered.

So I started thinking about other options. Travelling had always been one. It had always been part of my loose agenda, really. I'd wanted to get at least two jobs under my belt first, get my career going, and then think about travelling. But that wasn't happening. Time was running out. I'm hurtling towards 30 at what feels like a rate of knots and being above that age puts certain limitations on travelling. But it wasn't just my own ageing that was an influence, it was my friends' as well. Marriages, mortgages and motherhood became regular topics of conversation as they became realities for my friends. The pseudo-family I had formed with three of my closest friends when we moved to London, and who I lived with for six years, began to separate as life took us in different directions. One of them fell in love with an Australian who she is about to marry (the aforementioned Su), another went off to have a baby, the other decided to buy a house. So I decided to follow the plan I'd always had in the back of my head - go travelling.

Another reason I'm going is because I can. I have very few commitments. I'm not stepping out of a particular career trajectory to do this, for example. The nature of the career I've chosen means I can just pick up where I left off when I get back. Or even pick it up in another country should I decide to do so. I don't have a mortgage, or a child, and I'm not in a relationship. Now is probably the best opportunity to go that I will ever have.

Of course it's not the case that I'm not leaving anything behind. I have a great network of friends whose support I don't think I'll truly appreciate until it's no longer a Tube ride away. I'm leaving behind an amazing job (although it has only become really enjoyable again since an end has been in sight). I'm leaving a city I love. London may be a hard place to live in - it has a rhythm to it and that rhythm's pretty fast - but once you get into that pace, you get so much out of it. And (the one thing that really makes me not want to go) I'm leaving behind a man I love, a man who I never seem to be in the right place for, nor him me. And just as he has come into a better place, I'm leaving and it's too late to do anything about it. Maybe that's the way it will always be, who knows? It's certainly the way it is now.

So I'm leaving behind good things, but for good reasons. As I've been saying to people, I'm throwing all my cards up in the air. But that's okay, I'm in a good position to get another good hand. There's one really obvious and pertinent reason for me going - because I want to. I love travelling. I travelled a lot as a kid. We never went any further than Europe on our family holidays due to financial constraints, but my parents took us away as much as they could, exposed us to different cultures, food and people in the likes of France, Germany and Spain. And, as I said before, I've been lucky enough to have a job that has enabled me to travel a lot. As an adult I've gone to places as far flung as America, the Maldives, Egypt, Holland, and Kenya. And now I want to go further, do more, and more intensely. The places I'm going are well-trodden, possibly not very adventurous in the eyes of a more seasoned traveller. And I'll admit, I expect many aspects of the places I go will have some familiarity and make my life a bit easier on the way. But what's important is that I've never been there. I want to experience these places myself, and see the broader horizon with my own eyes. I can do the more alien, the more difficult and the more dangerous when I've got a few more miles on the clock. For me this isn't just a one-off adventure, this is just the beginning.