there are people...

...who....

Don't want a condominium.Don't care about the new IKEA catalogue. Don't want a fancy car. Don't need stability. Don't want to have familiar things around them. Can't stand monotony. Hate the question "How Are You?" Hate the idea of seeing the same thing every day. Know that they are not meant to stay in one place. Do not desire a secure job. Never toe the company line. Realize that there is more world out there than they can ever see. Want to see every bit of that unattainable world. Chafe under any bit of harness that their lifestyle puts upon them. Knows that they can be more. Knows that they can be more TODAY!!! Feels squashed by the people around them who say that there is no other way. Know that there is another way, but can't seem to find it. Can see the other way, but can't seem to get there. Strive to get to another world, but cannot let go of the old one. Say what they mean. Like to listen to a confusing story. Never back down. Know there is ALWAYS ANOTHER ROAD. Think money is a means and not the end. Hate the idea of uninformed affluence. Can decide that they need a big change. Can accept that they were wrong. Can be right and STILL be wrong. Can realize that they are going the WRONG way. Throw everything to the wind, not afraid of how things will shake out. Have had things shake out bad, and STILL think that this is the right thing to do. Have taken a retarded risk. Have embraced a retarded risk without backpedaling. Welcomed a thrown punch as a Rite Of Passage. Entered into a situation, smelling a con, but trying to work it. Can go the RIGHT way, and then decide to go another way. Stood up, when every fibre of your being said "Sit Down". Said "NO!! when they wanted you to say "Yes." Looked down a rough looking street and saw experience and not a knife in your kidneys. Love their backpack. passed up on the fucking museum. Were not wishy washy to the tout. took a guy up on a possibly shifty proposition. Had a backup plan if things went south. Hung their ass out there, and got ready to fight. spent too much money on a local kid, and never got the thing they wanted because of it. Knew they got worked.....and took every bit of it in stride. Never thought that settling down was the right thing to do. Decided that they were a traveller, and that was all there was to it. Shouted "I am A Traveller" to their friends. and then shouldered their pack and took off.

There are probably a few about piecar, and many who might aspire to some of it. I reckon your sentence about midway

quote:

Can see the other way, but can't seem to get there.

about sums it up.
Some people have relationships and along with that, there can be expectations, comfort and inmany forms anchorage.
Other than that there is something called money.

But without relationship ties, enough money and ideally a little shack on the beach somewhere to call home and/or be prepared to make do with a motorhome, maybe it can be achieved.

You want it hard enough and be prepared to work at it, have a plan on how to achieve being with no plan, then why not?
Just have that fallback for when the bones age a bit more.

The above was written while I was a little drunk. Tend to be a naive idealistic nerd when I get that way. And verbose. Sorry.



That is the question, North. Can you toss money as the big goal? It is certainly the thing that makes every one of us go. But can it be the second thing to the affluent world?

quote:

Can you toss money as the big goal? It is certainly the thing that makes every one of us go. But can it be the second thing to the affluent world?

I'm not saying piecar that it is a case of being loaded enough to consider yourself affluent to the extent of never having a monetary concern, but you will always have costs for even the most basic of living to be met and the chances of finding the means to meet those along the road are probably not always so great.

quote:

Originally posted by Piecar:
Can you toss money as the big goal? It is certainly the thing that makes every one of us go. But can it be the second thing to the affluent world?

It's easy to have a big goal other than money. The problem is, that most of the goals I am interested in (including travel) take money.

KPG

Yes. That is my question. You get it, and I do. But we dance around it. There are costs, always. There are problems, always. I AM affluent. I live simply and travel frugally. But I am affluence personified.


My question is: Can you jump high and clear the safety net? Can a person say they are travelling and that is their thing? Is Rolf Potts out there doing what he is doing because he's writing cheeseball parables? Or because he knows how to make a dollar to keep himself going.

Sure - it's an attitude thing. I get it.

Some people will never have 'enough' money to give them the freedom to go and follow their dreams because there is no such thing. It's not about the money.

I had the enormous benefit of growing up in a dirt-poor family. It gave me the understanding that there always has to be another road. If I hadn't believed that growing up, god knows if I would still be here.

For me it's never been about the money. It's about freedom.

I'm not interested in my bank balance. I am interested in what I need to do to reach my goal. A lot of the time money is part of the equation. But it's never the whole.

Not a 'neccessary evil', but a tool. Just like time and energy.

KPG

I believe the key to the money question is that you never think in denomination, but in months. When I left Switzerland I had quite a bit of money in the account. But the way I was thinking was that I had '1 year of traveling + 1 year of education' or '3 to 4 years of travelling' in my account. I do keep track of my money, while I'm on the road (I actually use it as a time-waster during endless train trips...got to love statistics...there's always another way to look at it. ) but I never think of it as 'I spent 5000 bucks' but as 'if I keep spending the money at this rate, I'll have X months of traveling leftravelingt'.

I believe, if you translate money this way, it takes part of its intrinsic materialistic concept away.

I mean, there are ways to go where you don't need any or at least almost no money. But I seldom liked any of the people I've met on the road who did this. Met this Aussie 'neo-hippie' (my coining...) in Kyrgyzstan. She was stingy to the pathetic. One day, we took the bus to the market in Bishkek. She said, she knew which bus, so I just followed her. Half-way we realized that it was the wrong bus. The system on the buses is, you can get in and pay the driver on the day out. I've not seen one person who cheated. When she realized that we were on the wrong bus she was unwilling to pay the fare...of a whole whooping 3 cents - and jumped out the back door. I thought it was very embarrassing seeing all the locals stare at her in confusion.

Now, I'm not saying that all 'rock-bottom' travelers are like this. I go cheap as well: cheap places to stay, lowest class bus/train travels, street food, etc - but I'm also aware that everything has its price in this world, and will pay it.

I reckon, eventually this means that we have to find a happy balance between not letting money dictate our ways and accepting that money is (unfortunately, I agree) a fact of life.

Like this guyD.

Ok the drunk thing probably explains why it's one huge paragraph that made my eyes water and my head hurt! lol

I get what you're trying to express though.

Actually, I meant the tight paragraph. I'd delete it, but there are posts around it now.

\D

delete? no way! I can empathize with a lot of what you said.