Why You Should Live Life By A Compass, Not A Clock
Don’t let your career be an excuse for missing out on the small, but important things in your life.
Goffkein.pro / Shutterstock By Cassandra Marie Vella
It’s so hard for so many people these days to just up and leave to travel the world when they can’t miss a day of work and they certainly can’t afford a trip longer than a weekend.
Those financial woes are always the worst to come face to face with, and the phrase “I’ll travel eventually” seems to haunt any of these busy bees.
When you work 3-5 jobs and still barely make your bills each month, it may be time to re-evaluate what’s going on.
It doesn’t matter how many jobs you can balance or how many shifts you take on, Jaime Lyn Beatty made the golden rule official when she sang the words, “Jobs fill your pocket, adventure fills your soul.”
When it’s so hard to make ends meet, there is always room for relaxation, or else you might actually die from the boredom in your life.
That being said, even a drive to the nearest lake, beach, mountain, forest, whatever it may be can bring the most beautiful memories to your mind, and guess what? They’re usually free! Just imagine how many Kodak moments you can have out there with your friends!
There are so many articles out there talking about the simple tips and tricks to saving money for your next big adventure, but all you really need is the will to do it.
If you really, really, really want to go to Italy one day, you’ll make it there when the time is right. Take the wedding plan technique for example; pick the time of the year that you want to go to Italy, and pick a few months or years in advance that you want to work towards your goal.
Then you’ll be able to give yourself the amount of time you need to find any friends you want to take, make more than enough spending money, get your travel documents prepped and double-checked. This technique can work for any simple weekend trips as well; be sure you don’t overlook that!
Do you truthfully believe you were only born to work? I understand that the biggest picture accepted by society is working those 9-5 jobs.
We all go through the same process of schooling, graduating, and being thrown straight into the real world. It’s almost as if we created a place for structure but absolutely no fun to counteract it.
I’m not saying to go off and quit the job that you worked so hard to get in the first place. I’m saying sometimes we all need breaks from our structure.
Sometimes we need to stray from the path we had handed to us since the day we were born. We came into this world with the rules already made for us. We had to go to school, we weren’t allowed to miss school, we couldn’t even go on a family vacation without our schools giving the okay, which would only happen if your parents could come up with why the trip was educational.
It was educational because we were seeing outside of school walls for a change, we were experiencing new places, and we were learning how to value spending time with our families.
Don’t try to turn taking time off of your job to travel into needing permission to do so. Without traveling, without experiencing different places, different cultures, and a change of scenery every so often, we would lose ourselves in the structure that was built before we were here.
Traveling frees your mind and gives you time to expand your mind on different topics other than work.
Don’t lose your personality by sticking closely to your path. Find more of your personality and expand the parts of yourself you might not know yet, by straying from your path every so often, to experience new things, clear your mind, and travel.
Never make the mistake of leaving this life wishing you would have seen or done more with it. It’s your world too, go out there and experience it now, while you have the chance to.
When you get your next weekend break, or any break for that matter, be sure to catch a sunset/sunrise, some fresh air, and make a wish on a star or two!
Don’t let your career be an excuse for missing out on the small, but important things in your life; some of them truly only happen once. Jobs may fill your pockets, but adventures truly do fill the soul.
In collaboration with Brittany Grzejka
Cassandra Marie Vella is a writer, blogger, and managing editor for Unwritten. She writes primarily about pop culture, lifestyle, love and relationship topics. Visit her website for more of her work.