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Need a Vacation? |
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You are a worldly, well-traveled executive. You’ve flown all over the world for business, yet the only thing you really saw in Tokyo was a conference room, your hotel, and couple of high end restaurants. You were jet-lagged and in a meeting, the 7th meeting of the day. You most likely sat there and daydreamed about all the other places you’d rather be than in a conference room discussing budgets and time-lines yet again. You are surrounded by people with blackberries permanently affixed to their hands. The person sitting next to you has no less than 3 electrical items clipped to his belt resembling an IT superhero of sorts. You wonder how in the world you ended up in this place, this place of constant real-time information, and gadgets. You are so far away from the true culture of the city that you are in – you could be in Atlanta – not Tokyo. You have thousands of air miles in your account, you can travel in business class for life. But do you ever actually take a vacation that’s not associated with work, a vacation without your blackberry? If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? That was my life 6 months ago, I lived it in a conference room with no windows looking around at my colleagues with their blackberry thumbs flying. I used to be an Information Technology executive at a large US Retail Corporation. Somewhere as we were zipping along the information superhighway we deleted the definition of vacation from the electronic dictionary. However, I was trying to do my part to keep the real meaning of vacation alive. I would meticulously plan my vacations overseas so that no one could get a hold of me when I left. When I would go on one of these precious vacations, I would come back home and be a miserable lump. I had ‘re-entry anxiety’; it took me weeks to get back into the corporate world. Sure, I was there physically, but not mentally. My brain fought off assimilating back to the blackberry world, yet slowly – day by day, the blackberry would take over another section of my vacation memory bank. Finally, it was gone and I was knee deep in projects and management issues.
This led me to the decision of a lifetime - I needed a break. I wanted to see the world beyond the conference room and my desk. I wanted to see new cultures, see what is was like to just live – and not worry about office politics. I quit my job, cashed in and invested my options, sublet my apartment, and took off on a plane to Africa. I was 36 years old, and I took a mini-retirement in order to travel around the world for a year. Retirement these days doesn’t have to be this end all, be all Holy Grail that you wait and work your whole life for. I’m proof that with a little planning, some good investments, some risk taking, and an adventurous spirit and you can experience many mini retirements in your lifetime. Gone are the days when you father worked at the same company his whole life, until he retired at 65. Instead we are a mobile society, we move from job to job, position to position, country to country. So why can’t you take a little break from the work cycle and differentiate yourself from the rest of corporate America. I can guarantee it will expand your horizons, not limit it.
Around the world travel isn’t just for the Europeans, Australians, and recent graduates! Americans can do it to – whatever your age. I love to see the reaction on people’s face when they hear what I’m doing and then they find out that I’m from the US. They are shocked. What does that say about our American travel culture? Americans have a poor reputation when it comes to international travel. Sure – we are the best travelers in the world when it comes to business – but what about pleasure, what about for sheer adventure and life experience? We fall short.
Over the past six months, I’ve climbed peaks in Africa, hiked on glaciers on New Zealand, slept in a hut with a tribe in Thailand, been a part of religious festivals in Bali, pet live tigers, and even ate a rat (it was cooked). Travel has expanded my resume by teaching me patience, tolerance, planning, budgeting, leadership, creativity, quick decision making and most importantly it has taught me how to take a risk. Sure, everybody puts ‘risk-taker’ on their resume, but what can they really share to prove that they take risks? Quitting my perfectly good upper management job, putting my possessions in storage, and traveling solo to different worlds for a year – now that’s a risk. I’m positive that there is a company out there that will appreciate the skills that I’ve gained this last year.
One of the most common questions that I get asked is – what will you do when you go back? I honestly have no plan. My feeling is that like most things, it will all work out. You can try to control your life, and plan it out as meticulously as you do a Power Point presentation, or you can simply let life present itself to you, and you make the decisions as they come. I prefer the latter – it’s much more satisfying for me. I will go back to work when my mini-retirement is over with more skills and knowledge than I’ve ever had.
