Transition to Travel: From Burnout to a Year Around the World with Sofia and Teague

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Today we have an episode that started it all.

The transition to travel series has been near and dear to my heart for a few reasons.

First of all, they take a long time to make.

I interview an individual or a couple before they have gone on a big trip when they're

in the middle of a huge life change, either quitting their job to travel, selling their

home, maybe all of the above.

Then I catch up with them months or sometimes longer down the road and interview them after

they've spent a good chunk of time out traveling the world.

In this case, they had traveled the world for a year.

You really get to see if some of the fears beforehand were legitimate, if the idea of

what travel was going to be really matched up with the reality of it, and you get to get

a deeper understanding of the transformative power that travel has just by listening

to one couple's story.

That's all coming at you today in this interview, plus I am going to answer the question.

How do you use big picture thinking to accomplish all of your travel goals and life goals for

that matter?

I'll share what I mean by big picture thinking and why that has been so helpful for me.

I'll also share a book recommendation, something that very much relates to this episode

on book I'm reading right now.

And of course I'll leave you with a quote to all of this and more coming in today's show

right now.

So buckle up, strap in, thanks for being here and welcome to the Zero to Travel Podcast,

my friend.

You're listening to the Zero to Travel Podcast, where we explore exciting travel-based work,

lifestyle and business opportunities, helping you to achieve your wildest travel dreamers.

And now your host, World Wanderer and Travel Junkie, Jason Moore.

Hey there, it's Jason with ZeroToTravel.com, welcome to the show, thanks for hanging out.

Want me to bring a little travel into your ears today, this is the show to help you travel

the world on your terms to fill your life with as much travels you desire, no matter what

your situation or experience.

And I have been heavily addicted to small cinnamon buns lately, these little small cinnamon

buns you can buy in the store, I've had three of those and a coffee now.

So I'm all charged up, fired up, ready to bring you this episode.

What are you munching on?

What are you doing?

What's up with you?

You're doing well today and I'm so excited to bring you this highlight from the archive.

I have a whole series of shows I've done around the transition to travel.

If you've listened to the show for a while, you know I'm a bit obsessed with this whole

process of the transition, not what you were doing before and ending that, not the next

thing you do, but that middle part that feels messy for a lot of us, right?

You're trying to kind of figure things out.

There might be a lot of fears involved when you're transitioning from one thing to the

next in life, whatever that is.

In this case today, we're talking about that transition to travel, which a lot of us

have to make.

If you want to travel long term or full time, you're going to have to give up a certain

lifestyle.

If it's a status quo type of lifestyle where you're settled down and you might have to give

up your house and your job and things like that, or maybe you're giving something else

up a lot around that whole process of making the transition and that's why I started putting

these types of shows together, even though they take a long time to make, because I wanted

to give you an audio snapshot of what it's like when somebody makes that decision, how

they're feeling before a trip and then how they're feeling once into a trip or at the end

of a trip and putting it all into one podcast and this was the show that started it all.

Now let me tell you more about today's interview.

You're going to hear an audio snapshot of one couple who took the time to be interviewed

by me right before they were leaving on their trip after they'd put their jobs and done

all of the stuff it takes to transition to that long term travel lifestyle.

They were getting ready to travel for a year.

They weren't sure where it was going to lead.

They had an open-ended ticket and they were totally open-minded.

They quit their jobs and they were leaving.

It takes so much to get to that point and if you listen to this show, you know I'm fascinated

by this transition to travel, that time leading up to actually rearranging your life to travel

the world.

It's a journey in and of itself.

It really is.

Yes, you learn so much through travel about the world, about cultures, about yourself,

but you also learn so much rearranging your life just to get to the point of travel because

there are so many different themes involved.

If you think about it, you're talking about minimizing your life, maybe mentally and physically

detaching from some things you own, maybe even detaching your identity from your job.

If you have to quit your job and leave, what does that mean?

Who are you without your job?

All these questions that come up as you go through this, so I really wanted to paint the

picture of how travel can transform somebody for better or worse or just share that experience

in a way that was unique, in a way that was not done before that I know of.

So I got this couple to agree to be interviewed and, again, interviewed them right before

their trip after they've been through all this.

And then a year later, over a year later, actually, after they had taken this trip around

the world and you'll get to hear how they changed, what they learned about travel and

living on the road and they're going to share those tips with you as well, you know,

how they saved on their budget, how you can pack better.

All the things that you learn through experience and it's so fresh because they were just coming

off the trip.

So you're doing some crazy time traveling today, as I mentioned at the top, because you're

going to be hearing them before they left and then a year later, all in one episode.

And it's just a great opportunity to see how travel changes people and how it changed

at least this one couple and really better understand that transformation that can take

place and the fears that take place beforehand and, you know, were they matching up to the

reality?

And this is another question.

You know, the ideas of long-term travel or the nomadic lifestyle match up with the

reality of it.

I mean, I don't think the idea of anything can ever truly match up to the reality of it

because it's always a different experience, but you're going to get to really see how

it matched up for them.

And was it close?

Was it far off?

There's a lot to explore in this episode.

I know you're going to dig it.

Okay, let's slip and slide into this interview now and I will see you on the other side.

Don't forget to stick around.

We're going to talk about big picture thinking and I'm going to share a book that I'm reading.

That's been really enjoyable for me and why I'm reading it.

Plus a quote to leave you with at the end.

Stick around for all that.

I'll see you on the other side, my friend.

Today I'm excited to share another transition to travel story from two people in this community.

When I say transition to travel, I'm talking about the process of leaving a job and or

totally changing your life around to accommodate more travel.

It can be difficult, it can be scary, it can be intimidating or insert any number of

other adjectives.

Making that leap is a huge decision and I think it's important to share these stories because

they can help us gain new perspectives and learn what we can do better during our own

transition.

So I'm thrilled to welcome Sophia and Teague here to the podcast.

Welcome, my friends.

Hi, Jason.

Hi, thanks.

It's fabulous.

I'm thrilled to have you and I met Sophia while back via email because you sent me a note

after I read it.

I was like, oh my god, I need to talk to these two and this is going to be really interesting

because we're going to talk to you guys now before your trip and we'll get into that.

And then we're going to talk to you like a few months from now when you're already into

your trip.

So we can really get the reality of it, you know, and the expectations and where they

met and everything like that.

So, you know, you wrote in your email, you said the ensuing transition from, I think I

want to travel and instead to a lifestyle that facilitates that travel has been and

used a bunch of adjectives, daunting, liberating, frustrating, exhilarating, grueling, nothing

short of an adventure in itself, making the decision to go from zero to travel is nothing

if not a bet you place on yourself.

What pushed you over the edge to bet on yourself in this way?

I also put this in the email that at the time that we sort of decided initially to travel,

we both worked like all the time.

I mean, we live together and we really never saw each other because I was a personal trainer

at the time.

So I woke up at like five a.m.

I was gone.

He was a prosecutor, so he's gone, you know, until late at night, sometimes if he had

a trial.

And I think we just realized that we were kind of unhappy and that there's got, there's

just had to be something else.

Yeah, it felt to me kind of like, did the thing you're supposed to do, you go to school,

you get a grown-up job and now you're doing that grown-up job and you're, you get about

a year into it and you're like, wait a second, this isn't, this isn't quite what I thought

would be, this isn't really what I want to do with my life and I'm not ready to do the

whole mortgage lifetime in debt, you know, anchor down, work, a holic kind of thing, the

path that we were sort of on.

And it'd been something we'd been talking about sort of casually, like like people do, you

know, everyone's always like, oh, someday I'll travel, someday.

And that's, everyone says that.

And so it went from us being those people to being like, this is kind of miserable.

We don't like this.

We don't like this.

Let's travel.

And then from there, it just sort of slowly grew.

So if you did most of the research and we realized it was something we actually could do,

I think a sort of watershed moment for us though was vagabonding by Ralph Potts.

We both read that, we have the audio book and we just sort of listened to that.

I would listen to that book on my ride at 5.30 AM, my half hour drive to the gym that

I worked at that I was so unhappy at and listened to the stories of travel and travel quotes

and it was before I'd gotten into podcasts.

So I mean, you just get a sense that like there's something else out there.

Yeah.

And so that's it.

When are you guys leaving?

Just put some context around this because we're talking to you like a couple of weeks

before you leave.

Yeah.

So we actually leave the city that we're in right now, Albuquerque, New Mexico in six days.

Six days.

Yeah.

So we're kind of in that final mad rush of selling like, taking stuff to savers and

Craig's listing it and then we leave the country on November 9th.

But when you guys made the original decision, how long ago was that?

I, it was in July of 2015.

Okay.

And we're recording right now.

It's October 2016, October 24th, 2016 is when we're recording this.

And originally when we had, because when we first talked about travel, I think Teague

was a little bit less on board than I was.

I knew that we were going to do it like we're going.

There's no question.

But he, you know, had gone to law school.

And I think he was kind of like, well, you know, and I think we had a conversation where

Teague's like, well, if we waited until, you know, if we waited two years, think of how

much money we could save.

And I said, no, one year, but, you know, we could, and all right, one year and like two

months.

That's, and that's the compromise that we laid out.

And then I started doing some of the reading and realizing how possible that was.

I just, before you, you know, if you don't know anything about any of this stuff, it

just seems so daunting and so impossible.

The idea that you could go on the amount of money we're talking about going on just seemed

crazy to me.

And now that I know that that's a lot more possible, it's, it was a pretty, I didn't know

if you didn't really talk me into it because it's one of those things that I talked about

dealing, but didn't ever make concrete plans for.

And so if he was kind of the catalyst that helped me make concrete plans.

The story she told in the emails, one of the things that got me about what you guys

can tell you were exhausted on the porch in the middle of the summer one day, you guys

were coming from work and kick it with a beer there and tell me about the conversations

that took place on the porch that summer.

We'd come home from work.

It was like the sun was setting.

It was like a Friday or something.

And we had our beer and we're both just sort of talking about our work weeks and how tired

we are.

And I think I said like, you know, I hope we travel someday.

And he goes, yeah, you know, people do that.

There's, I think there's some people who do that in the world, which now seems ridiculous

because we know that there are so many people who do it.

And it's not really as fringes as we thought.

And I said, well, you know, maybe I want to go to Europe for like three months next summer

and teach like, well, I want to go to Europe.

And I was like, well, that's not going to work because you have a job.

How are you going to get time off?

And he goes, well, I'd quit my job, but we'd have to go for like a year.

And that was the, that was the moment where I was like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, let's do

that.

That's way better than what I had planned.

Forget this sort of temporary three month trip situation.

Yeah.

Why would anybody do that?

When, yeah, we can just go for a year or two and, and I'm grateful to him because I

never would have maybe had the courage to come up with that plan on my own.

So I think having someone to kind of like give you a more ambitious perspective, can

if you really, why do I have to just go for three months?

I can, I can go for a year.

Yeah, totally.

In a thing in a lot of ways, we kind of perfect stormed each other where we were the right

people at the right time.

And we both kind of came up with the plan that neither one of us would probably be brave

enough to do on our own.

That's cool that you guys have each other for supporting that way.

That says a lot about your relationship together.

So you mentioned earlier to your adult jobs, I think, was the term you used.

How long have you guys had your adult jobs, we'll call them.

I graduated law school in December of 2014 here in New Mexico, took the bar in February

and in April, I started working at the DA's office.

And so I was there about 18 months.

It's one of those things, you know, now that I've had some a little bit of distance, I'm

two weeks into my unemployment, first week was fun employment, fun employment, fun

employment.

I guess I'm just starting my second week today is the beginning of normally at this time,

I'd be sitting in a courtroom right now.

Way better.

This is way better.

I don't have to wear a tie for this.

No dress code for this podcast.

That's true.

It would have been great if we had, though, I feel underdressed.

But I had my grown up job for about 18 months.

It's one of those jobs at a law school a lot of people do because they toss you

right in, you're doing an insane amount of work, you rack up experience really fast.

And it kind of burns you out, you deal with some really horrific stuff.

I enjoyed it.

I got to do a lot of trials.

All the cool lawyer stuff people think about when they think of lawyers, that's what I got

to do.

And it was a lot of fun, but it definitely, it wears on you.

So it's been about 18 months and I'm ready to kind of switch gears a little bit.

I think also we both had the sense, so we're about to be 29, I'm 27.

We're creeping towards our 30s.

And I think we had this sense of like, well, we're getting, we're getting older now.

Like we got to, got to get those jobs, got to, got to probably, you know, get married

and, and have a house and get some cars and all those things you're supposed to do for

some reason.

Yeah.

Again, it's like going to Europe for three, like, well, yeah, like I don't have to do

that.

I can do a different thing.

And that's totally fine too.

So I think that, that like his career path was from a time, you know, a year and a half

ago, when we thought, like, that's what we had to do is we had to sort of do the conventional

thing.

But it's hard because you're, you're both invested in, in different ways.

I mean, Sophia, like, I'm sure in your career, you're, you're invested in, in some

way, whether it's your clients or like, just the time you've put in to, to build up

whatever it is that you have and teague, you know, you went to law school, which is a

huge expense.

What do you think about the idea of kind of hitting reset and, and cutting the cord on

what you've done to this point is that has that been difficult, like emotionally?

You know, not really because I, I think it's likely I'll go back at some point.

The type of job I had is sort of a first job at a school that a lot of people do and

people tend to stay there a year, maybe two years, and then they move on.

So it was about time for me to go anyway.

So I'm sort of looking at this as one option, as sort of a gap year, that if we go and

have a year, we want to come home, then I can, I can very easily pick it right back up.

If we go out and we come across some crazy opportunity and I never come back, which is

what I'm kind of hoping for, then that's fine too.

And you know, no harm now.

File.

It was a ton of work.

I invested a lot in it.

I fortunately don't have any debt, which is a big deal.

That would be impossible to travel with, but yeah, I don't feel that bad about letting

it go for a while.

I kind of miss who I was before I got into all that and I'm getting to sort of become

that person a little bit more again.

I've got a lot to say about this because this is definitely one of those transition things

that no one tells you about.

I was supposed to be unemployed by the time we recorded this podcast.

I have struggled with putting in my notice.

She waited till the last like impossible.

I waited until the last day.

Why?

Is that because you wanted to make extra income or because you just didn't want to like

sort of face that music?

You know, I think it's a, and it's one of the things that you never hear about because

everybody's like, oh yeah, I quit my job and I traveled.

But that, I think it's facing the music, you know, I'm about to be unemployed.

My whole life, my self-worth is on my ability to bring in an income and be that adult.

And so I have really struggled with going to my boss and saying, you know, I'm going

to quit to be unemployed and travel to Asia and Europe for a year.

It really was terrifying.

Have you done it?

Yeah.

I did do it.

Oh, because I had to because we have, we have plane tickets.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I mean, what did the conversation go like compared to what maybe thought it, how it

was going to go?

I kind of thought that there would be some pushback or that maybe they wouldn't believe

me.

And so I went and I said, okay, I'm leaving.

And they said, well, why?

And I said, well, I'm going to go travel and and all my bosses were like, that's amazing.

That's incredible.

So they like actually it was well received.

Oh, so what and the other employees who were like, well, what are you going to do for

money?

What do you do?

And my boss like defended me.

She was like, oh, I'm sure she saved him.

When she comes back, she can just get a fresh start.

Like, that sounds great.

Great.

Great.

Do that.

And I was shocked.

I'm judging me.

More than my employers are.

They're, they're like, go.

Be free.

And I'm like, but don't you need me?

We'll get back to the interview in just a moment.

Now back to the show.

I think that can be one of the big struggles is having so much invested in terms of your

identity to, to what you do.

You know, it feels like, okay, well, if I'm not doing this thing, then, like, who am I?

Who am I?

You know, that was my last week, first couple of days of last week.

I just sort of wandered around the house, like, freaking out about cleaning and packing.

Just like, who am I?

Who am I?

I'm this person, like, wandering around.

His second day of unemployment was a really rough day for us as individuals and as a couple

because he was very, I think, a little panicked.

It was, yeah, it was a little panicky.

Because I don't, I don't think of myself as like, I'm a lawyer.

I would like, I haven't lived my whole life wanting to be a lawyer.

It's just something I ended up doing and I enjoy it.

But I didn't ever intend for that to just be who I am.

But in the course of that kind of work, it just sort of absorbs you and you don't even

realize it.

And suddenly, when that's not there, and you're suddenly having to be a person outside

of that, I'm just like, whoa, it's been like a year since I saw myself in the mirror

and had like an honest conversation with myself.

That was a little, is frightening.

And how did that conversation go?

It was me working on calming myself down and trying to accept that it's a process that

it's going to take a while for me, I think, to fully go back to, I don't want to go completely

back to who I was before all this, but I want to take those parts of me that law school

and working as a lawyer killed or at least, like, really beat down.

And those parts of my life, I want to kind of grow back.

And I think it's going to be a bit of a process.

So that conversation was sort of realizing that that's going to take a while.

And that's great.

I mean, I got time.

There's no rush.

I think maybe that's the other thing we didn't anticipate is that you think of it as like,

you make the decision to travel and then you travel.

And there's like a weird in between space where you're really wrestling with what that

actually means.

Well, this is why these stories are so great because there are all these steps and

everybody's got their own journey.

I know you mentioned in the email, just how much of value you see in this journey.

And I feel the same way.

It's why I like to share them.

Look, Teague, like you can say, you hadn't had an honest conversation with yourself and

all this time.

And if, you know, that's the only thing that came out of this even over the last couple

of weeks, it was probably worth it, right?

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

We're staying.

We figured it out.

It's good.

I mean, also like I think people associate the trip with like, oh, this is going to be

this journey of like self-discovery and a new chapter and all this thing because it's

it's such a physical barrier to like you like leave the country, say and you show up in

a new place and you're like, okay, it is almost like hitting the reset button like you're

literally in a new surrounding, you're a different place and you're like, okay, we can

start fresh and figure stuff out.

But like what gets lost is like how much stuff I think you figure out leading up to that.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Well said.

I felt that a lot in like getting my big tasks since I've been unemployed is to like wrap

up getting rid of all the stuff I haven't gotten rid of.

I had a card that I was in debt for.

Oh man, that was a success.

I loved my car, Jason.

I loved it.

I still love it.

Yeah.

It was a little, little Honda fit whenever I see one go by, I just sold my car to I felt

the same way about it.

It was a Honda element.

Yeah.

So I mean, what are some of the things that you guys are excited about exploring?

I mean, you mentioned, okay, I want to, you know, like Tee, you said, I want to get back

to maybe some of the things that like my, my education is a lawyer killed, like, which

sounds so like hard, but you're just being honest.

I mean, and it is kind of sad in a way, like, but like also happy because now you get to

get to explore those things.

But what are some of those things for both of you?

Well, I know for Tee, and he's already started on it is he, we met in film school if you

can believe that.

Oh, really?

Okay.

We went to film school together and both kind of ended up taking very different routes

because I think it's that pressure again of like, we're artists, but there's no money

in art.

So we, we took these sort of different routes and Tee, it's a very talented writer.

I know from, from film school.

And that's part of what I, I want to get back to reading and writing.

It's one of the reasons I'm so excited to go to see all the great stuff and, and visit

all these places and really be challenged and stressed by being in new environments.

But a big part of what excites me about going is getting to read again.

I haven't been able to read for pleasure in almost four years.

And it's been, that's been an also a very tough transition.

And so I'm very excited to get to read again and to get to write again because that, that's

part of that, that part of me that got killed by law school.

When you spend all day reading, you can't go home and read for pleasure, it just trains

your brain to, to read in a lawyerly way, which is not how you should read novels.

So that's, that's one of the things I'm really excited to do.

It's like a simple thing like that, like get the opportunity to get to, like, sit down

and read a book.

Yeah.

Where today I have to catch a train in eight hours and in the meantime, I'm going to exercise

and I'm going to read.

I'm going to write a little bit.

Yeah.

And I'm looking forward to getting into, yeah, we're both super physical and both, I mean,

before the transition sort of started, we both are at the gym six days a week.

And so now we're both kind of trying to figure out how to keep physical while also not having

a gym.

And so I'm excited to kind of figure that out and maybe get into yoga.

I started doing handstands and inversions and gymnastics and I'm looking forward to having

the time to kind of play with that and learn, yeah, learn movement all over again.

That sounds really lame unless you're a personal trainer, but it's an important thing.

I mean, especially, so you guys sounds like your plan is you're kind of mindset wise.

You've set aside like a year, basically.

And you have money saved up for a year, I'm guessing, of travel budgeting, um, budgeted

for years.

And maybe it'll, maybe, maybe we'll not make it the full year, maybe we'll make it longer.

We have a budget per month and based on that budget holding true, we have about a year.

Yeah.

What is the budget that you guys have per month?

We have if we lived, especially in Southeast Asia, really generously, we have a thousand

dollars a month per person.

And so we managed to save that and people always trip out when I tell them this, we saved

that in a year.

I mean, we didn't have that savings until the day we decided we wanted to go do this.

So for people who think they can't afford to travel, you, you can't, you definitely

can because we, we started putting money in the bank that day that we, or that month

that we decided and just in a year, we managed to save, you know, almost, you know, $25,000.

Yeah.

Between, more than that, really, because we also have a nest egg for when we come back,

but, um, so, yeah, so we have a year budgeted.

Also, I mean, of course, you know, you're not going to be paying for accommodations back

at home.

And then you're cutting all these costs.

Like if you said you were commuting a half hour to work every day and you can take your

gas money, that goes right into the travel, funneling all these, I call them substitution

costs, but they're essentially costs that you would be incurring at home that you just

take on the road with you.

It's, it doesn't, there's no difference.

You got to eat at home or you got to eat on the road.

And oftentimes, you know, I would, I would probably choose the, uh, the 50 cents, play

the tie and tie lands, you know, like, yes, we're very, very excited for that.

That's nothing we're ready for the food.

We're so ready for the food.

So ready for the food.

Yeah.

How are you going to travel?

Are you going to just travel for travel's sake, and you mentioned reading, exploring

some of these things?

Are you guys planning to try to pick up some work at some point, or is it just going

to be literally just to experience the world?

So our plan, and again, this kind of brings it back to that book of agabonding is to travel

as light and lean as possible.

So we're each taking, don't laugh at us if this is like totally ridiculous, but we're

each taking 28 liter bat packs for the year and one pair of shoes.

And so that's sort of the ground rule is that we're, we don't want to crew anymore stuff.

And that, I think we do want to work, work away.

I've listened to your podcasts on, on all that and, and all the resources that there

are to sort of do work exchange programs.

I think we're interested, we're workaholics.

So I think we're going to want to have exactly, yeah, and that sounds like a really good

way to integrate into the community.

And so those are sort of doing some work, but as to how we're going to travel, you know,

type budget, try not to live like we do at home where, you know, on the weekends here,

we go and we, you know, we drink beer and we try to escape our lives.

We're hoping that on the road, we won't need to escape our lives on the road.

We'll get to, well, we'll want to be sober for every minute.

We'll want to be, you know, rested and bright eyed and bushy tailed every day.

The getting rid of your stuff, the whole getting rid of your stuff process.

How's that been for you guys?

It's been, it's been stressful in that I'm worried I'm not going to get it done in time,

but it's been really cathartic to actually get rid of the stuff.

I highly recommend to anybody.

Get rid of your stuff.

It's just, yeah, just take it out, take it to go donated to good will or whatever.

Even if you're not traveling.

It just feels so good.

And like I, I'm kind of a pack rat.

I have, I have the last big thing I have to get rid of is about three or four full sets

of dark room equipment.

I was a photographer and in college and I kept everything and I kept people kept giving

it to me.

I had a giant closet full of old and larger and chemicals and just everything.

And I'm so excited to leave that behind because that stuff weighs on you when you, when

you have stuff and when you don't have time to do it, I've used it since I moved to

Albuquerque five years ago, I think I've used it three times and I've carried it around

everywhere I've gone and I feel guilty for not using it.

So getting rid of stuff has just been a delight.

The actual process is kind of rough.

Like I've been getting scammed on eBay and some people trying to get me to ship them electronics

without paying for it.

It's stressful.

The nuts and bolts are rough, but the actual act of doing it, you realize how little

you need.

I have taken out, I kid you not trash bags of clothes, Jason, just like bags upon bags of

the things that I've never worn that I've carried from place to place that I'm like,

where is this pink shirt that I've never taken the tags off of?

Why don't I have that?

So it's been kind of eye opening too about the type of person that you are like we know

now at the end of this transition that I have a shopping problem.

I do that for you.

But now you know it.

Now I know it.

And that makes all the difference.

No, no.

And really kind of examining like why do I keep buying things like what is it that I'm

trying to get out of purchasing more things that then I bring home and I never touch or

look at or wear and then I get rid of them and they don't mean anything to me.

What is, so that's been some, it's been an interesting part of the transition too to

kind of a value or even if something were to go wrong and like for some terrible reason

we couldn't go still just the act of downsizing to the level we've done it has been really

good for us.

And I wouldn't, I would really fight hard to keep it that way.

It's so easy to accumulate stuff.

It's just so, so easy to do and you don't notice it and it's bit by bit until you have

truckloads of dark room equipment that you haven't touched in years.

Yeah, I feel like once you go through it when you do a big purge or you just get rid

of a bunch of stuff you do get that good feeling, you know, especially if it's associated

with going to travel and I think that good feeling stays, stays with you.

So if you go through this transition one time, you know, you know, it feels good to get

rid of your stuff.

So then in the future it's like that becomes something that you associate with feeling

good.

And on that to be the case in my life as well, like to the point where like I feel really

bad when I buy things, I'm like, do I really, I'm really critical about like what I bring

in to my apartment now, because I'm living overseas now and it's like I have to get

stuff and I find myself like I'm like, I don't want to get stuff, but I'm like, but wait

a minute, I'm not traveling right now.

Like we do need some of these things, I'm like, that's such a conundrum.

Having a transition to like a new lifestyle of travel, you just have to let go of so much.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like your career, which might be like your identity, actual physical things, there's like

mental things you have to let go of, you have to adapt like a whole new life together.

Like you guys as a couple, like your whole dynamic changes now, right?

Definitely.

Well, how do you feel about that?

I'm really glad that we're going together because I think that and I don't know, solo traveling

also sounds amazing, but I feel grateful because I feel like I'm like the free spirit who's

like, let's go do this thing.

Which is great because it gets teag to kind of break out of his routine.

I'm the Grumpield man.

But I'm the Grump and together we sort of get a good middle road that keeps us both safe

and fun.

Big is so amazing in that anytime we leave the house, just even to like go to the grocery

store, Jason, he'll be like, okay, phone wallet keys.

Do you have your wallet?

Do you have your ID?

Like we'll just be going down the street to the bar and he'll be like, okay, do you have

your wallet?

Those are important things.

They're important things.

He's great because I never lose anything.

We have gone to the bar multiple times and I don't have my wallet.

Yeah.

I can't get it because I left it at home because I didn't phone wallet keys it.

There you go.

You got your own personal reminder.

Oh, yeah.

I'm very excited for that.

I think that's going to be great.

I mean, our dynamic, I'm sure, will shift.

I mean, obviously it's going to, we're going to be in bizarre environments and dealing with

each other like when we have like terrible digestive issues will probably be kind of fun

to just go through.

I mean, we've sort of done that with training wheels a bit.

We've been living together for how long, two years.

And we moved into in sort of getting ready to travel in this transition.

We moved from, we had like a basement apartment, which was huge into a, into a closet because

it's cheap and we're saving money that shares a wall with the bathroom that five other

people use.

Right.

Again, you're downsizing everything, including, yeah, including your living quarters.

That was one of those things we're kind of worried like it doesn't just share a wall.

There's literally a door living a very old house that's been like redone many times.

And so there's a door that if you're sitting on the toilet, you're looking right at the

door that goes right into our bedroom, because it's not actually a bedroom, because it's

like a closet.

It's like a Harry Potter closet.

And we thought that would be tough, but it actually, it actually hasn't been that bad.

And I think that bodes well that we can kind of live in uncomfortable spaces and that

will be nothing compared to who knows what we'll experience on the road.

But I think we have like the groundwork laid to deal with those kinds of things as they

come up.

It's going to be super shocking.

I think our dynamic will shift.

It's because of the transition.

It's because we've been very conscious about, you know, I imagine if we had just gone

from like, okay, well, we'll deal with travel when it gets here, boom, we'd be shell-shocked.

But I think because we've spent the last year and some months, the whole thing's been

a transition.

And we spent that time preparing slowly and I highly recommend that to anybody who wants

to travel, like take that time for yourself to work through the process and do it.

You have to do to get to a good place.

How do you guys feel about the time frame that it took you for this transition because it

looks like it's about a year and three months since you made the decision.

Obviously, for everybody, it's going to be different depending on your financial situation

and circumstances and how quickly you can save.

Do you feel that that was the right amount of time for you?

I think it actually worked out perfectly because at the time that we decided to go and

probably people who are thinking about it can relate, like, I was just so unhappy with

that, like, for me, if I could have gone that next month, I would have.

And I'm glad I didn't because I needed that time.

And I think if it were teag, he would have maybe stayed longer.

And so we sort of split the difference and the year has, I think, been perfect.

And I get, of course, it depends on how fast people can save.

But it's been the right amount of time where we've been able to stay excited about it,

but also be productive.

Yeah, and a lot of the stuff has just taken us time because I mean, everyone's busy

and we're no exception that we have a lot of other things that take up your time.

So it takes a long time to get some of this travel-related stuff done.

I mean, if we had a closer deadline, we probably would have met it.

But it feels like about the right time.

It feels like it's time to go.

I want to say how much of that is like, when you set a time, and then you have that

finish line, you're going to cross, you're going to finish that, cross the finish line

right as you're like, yeah, you're going to barely fall across it.

We made it, whether that, so, but yeah, I feel like it's about the right amount of time

for us.

How's it been so far slowing down and getting out of that mindset of like, oh, I need

to be doing something.

I need to be productive right now.

Are you finding it harder?

Is it, is it starting to level out a little bit?

It's been really tough.

That's been the part that this last month has just been really, really difficult, harder

than we thought, because we have to, part of it is we still have like a ton of stuff

to do.

So it's hard to get out of the mindset when you've got like hard deadlines.

Yes.

Tim Ferris has this really great quote that says, being busy can be a form of laziness.

And I think that that really applies to us because we're, you know, when you're busy,

you're not thinking, you don't, you don't have to think much.

You just go, go, go, go, go.

And so now that we're slowing down, we really have to sort of put some thought into what

our day will be.

And how does, you know, how we really, what's the best way to spend the time?

And that's been tough.

That has been tough.

I think that's going to be a difficult, because we haven't had to fully do it yet because

we still like have, I have a long list of things that have to happen.

So I get to indulge my work, I'll have a little bit more, I just get to like stress

out about stuff and get it done.

But I think that will be really tough.

And I don't know if it'll hit us before we leave or not, do you still feel like there's

some lingering stress from the jobs and wait, I'm still employed when I'm not supposed

to basically, the job, the job is really gone.

It's causing to me.

I think that it's going to take a second and I didn't anticipate that.

I guess when you think about, you know, you get the opportunity to quit your job.

You think you like quit it and you wash, wash your hands of it and you walk out and

you're a changed person and that really has not been the case, though I suspect that's

probably kind of normal.

Yeah, I can say, I'm only on day six of being an employee.

So I don't have like a ton of reference, but it definitely does take time and I can

tell like how I feel today compared to last Tuesday was just, I feel much more like

a regular human being and I'm able to sort of distance from that work stuff a bit more.

But that's going to take a while for me.

I think it's going to take a while to like see people as normal Jason, is that what

do you see that a lot?

What do you mean the stress part or yeah, like the inability to sort of or the like struggle

with letting go?

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, if you look at it, it's like logically, I would say it's like, you know, you're

in all these habits and work routines and then all of a sudden like all that just drops

off and you're like, um, okay, how do I be in this space now?

I'll kind of, you know, we'll get back to the interview in just a moment.

Now back to the show.

Teague, it sounds like you had a big, you know, that big moment two days into it where

you were like, you know, oh my God, like what's going on here?

And you got past it because it's what else are you going to do?

You keep living.

Yeah, exactly.

You don't get your job back, I guess.

But it's a, you know, yeah, it's not, you know, having the time out is not the worst

problem in the world.

I mean, we can, we can put this file this under hashtag first world problems, right?

Yeah.

But at the same time, you know, that, that, that is still there, you know, and I was just

curious how you guys are dealing with that.

Yeah.

I'm excited to see when we check back in, you know, three or four or five months, to

see where we've gotten to, yeah, because we'd, it's so, it's so uncertain.

And I really have even more of an appreciation for people who've done this before us.

Including you, Jason, who have made the leap, you know, it's a bet you place on yourself.

You're betting that you're going to be okay.

And you don't know, for sure, but you're betting that you're going to be able to navigate

and make it.

And you guys will be, you guys will be great.

Oh, yeah.

We'll hear it in the next segment, three or four months later, whenever we record this,

where are you guys going?

So we're flying into Bangkok, Thailand.

We have about two weeks planned in the city, and by which I mean, we have lodging.

And from there, we made a very specific effort to not book anything beyond that, because

we don't part of doing this is that we want to get out of the preset, you know, the routine

and that this is the plan.

We want to go, we want to listen, we want to talk to people, we want to, you know, figure

out what we actually want to do and then leave Bangkok from there and go wherever it is,

we feel like we need to go.

Your head is Southeast Asia and just hanging out in that region for as long as you do.

Until I get to, yeah, and then I probably go to India.

And then I have a, have it on my bucket list that I really want to go to Sophia Bulgaria.

So we'll probably go get up Eastern Europe.

I want to point to every sign that says Sophia.

Maybe so many pictures of her.

Well, maybe we'll run into you guys somewhere, because I want to do some more traveling in

Eastern Europe pretty, pretty soon actually.

What are you most looking forward to?

I think I'm looking forward to, and this is something that I didn't realize I was looking

forward to until we started that transition is I'm looking forward to not owning anything.

Like I said, where my back is, my backpack is 28 liters, I will have, I have a very

specific wardrobe that I've put together in this time that I've done a lot of research

on.

I own that some travel gear and that's it.

That's all I have to worry about everything I own in the world.

I can fit on my, in my backpack and carry on my back and gosh, that's awesome.

I'm really looking forward to the sense of freedom that I think it's going to give us

that, that we have chosen to travel in that way where we don't want to plant things out

too far in advance, where we can sort of say like, do you want to stay here for another

week?

But we want to be, we're planning on going in like a slow pace, like we're not trying

to see the whole world in one swoop.

We want to go nice and slow and I want to have that freedom that if suddenly we're like,

you know, I ran into a guy and he said that like Nepal is great this time here, we should

go to Nepal.

I'm like, you know, why not?

Let's go to Nepal.

Like that kind of freedom to go out and see the rest of the world and be able to put

ourselves in more of a, a global context, I mean, we haven't traveled across, I mean,

they off the continent ever and we haven't had a lot of experience with vastly different

other cultures.

So I'm excited to have the freedom to sort of go get a wider cultural context that we live

in and sort of appreciate how other people live.

Are you nervous?

Oh my gosh, yeah.

Are you nervous?

I want to just me.

I'm nervous in the sense that like we got a lot of stuff to take care of and I know

like there's going to be uncomfortable, painful things, but I'm also pretty confident in

our ability to cope with that and figure it out as we go.

So I wouldn't really say I'm a nervous.

It's sort of the nervousness right before, you know, an exciting nervousness.

Yeah, before you jump, you know, or before you're going up the roller coaster and you get

to the top and you're like, oh my gosh, but you're nervous because it's going to be crazy,

but you're excited because it's going to be really fun.

Friends and family, are they on board with this?

They are.

I mean, we've we've been really, really lucky.

I told my mom, she was the first person to know.

And then we slowly told Tee's family in that like, yeah, we're thinking about taking

a trip at some point to somewhere we for, you know, like a little bit and they're more

conservative.

I'm guessing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're from Tee.

Lost Cruises in Mexico, about three hours south of Albuquerque on the board.

This brother just had a baby though.

So we're like, we're like, we're like, we have just nothing to find the baby and we're

like, we're leaving.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're really supportive.

I think my parents are more, much more nervous than Sofia's mom is, but they were, they're

really supportive.

Yeah.

I got to really hand to my parents because I did tick like a very conservative and traditional

career path.

And I'm sort of, you know, just around the first bend, like jumping the track and doing

something completely different.

We didn't know how they would react.

Yeah.

We weren't really sure, but we did do like the kind of slow, like, I think that helped

out.

So we didn't like shock them.

I'd hate for my mom to have a heart attack or something.

Carol Ann's been fantastic.

Yeah.

She bought us, she bought us a, how to travel south of the East Asian on a shoe string.

And oh my gosh.

And it just like made me cry because it was sort of the, the moment where you could just

see it in her face that she was like, yeah, go do this thing.

Like, this is amazing.

And here's my blessing.

And that always stands out to me.

And in terms of friends, everyone's been really supportive.

I got a lot of support from my work friends, which I was kind of worried about.

But every like grizzled old attorney that's been doing this for like 40 years, when they

found out what I was doing, every single one is like, good, go, go do that.

Do it now.

Get out.

Get out.

Get out.

Like every single one.

And so I was like, clearly like, clearly you're making the right decision.

Yeah.

You don't need it validated, but it is nice when it gets valid.

Yeah.

Right.

And I love how Sophia says, you're riding the, the brother's baby wave.

That's, that's, that's not what goes, you know, well, um, congratulations to both of

you.

Sophia, I really appreciate you taking the time to reach out in the first place.

Teague, it's great to meet you as well.

And I'm really excited for you guys because you're going off on this thing.

And I love that, you know, you haven't waited until like you are that 40 year old grizzly

attorney or that, you know, 40 year old grizzly personal trainer that's getting bitter.

Like, oh man, like, well, we could have done this.

No, we didn't.

Whatever.

Like, I mean, and if you're listening to this and you are, you know, later on and at that

point or whatever, that's, that's okay.

Like it's never a time where you can't do it, you know, I think that's, that's the message

behind these types of transitions is just, you know, taking the steps to do it, saving

up the money, taking the steps you need, um, and getting rid of your stuff and all the

the laundry list of things to do.

And eventually over time, you get there and then you're all of a sudden you're six days

before your trip, right?

Oh, yeah.

And I can say one thing to like me a year and three months ago and to like anybody who's

listening to this, I think it's super important.

You're going to feel fear, like you're going to feel afraid.

Do it anyway.

Just do it.

Just recognize that it's normal and there will be parts of it that are stressful.

And that's okay because that's life.

Do it anyway.

Cool.

Yeah.

Well, that's, that's a great thing to end on, I think.

And we look forward to hearing from your future selves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wonder where we'll be.

You're listening.

Then it's going to be like in 30 seconds.

So you'll have blocks.

It'll be like former lawyer turn.

Yeah.

Super.

Super vagabond.

I'm so excited for this.

This is something I've wanted to do for a long time.

Like you said in the email, Sophia, there's so much value in it.

The stages, what did you say, the stages of travel preparation, the transition can be

just as valuable and daunting as the travel itself.

And I guess we'll have to ask your future selves to find out that's totally true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wrote that.

No, no, it's obvious.

I had no idea what I was saying.

No, but I think it is.

I mean, it's, it is part of the journey.

It's like the journey before the journey is so huge.

So congrats to you guys for doing it.

You're getting out there and I'm looking forward to chatting with you in, uh, I don't

know when we're going to talk three or four months from now.

When you guys are really dug in, you like, you know, after the sort of the vacation wave

is over and like you get mellowed into the trip a little bit.

And then when you have good Wi-Fi, of course, because you definitely will have my contact

information.

So.

Sounds good.

And we'll look forward to chatting with you guys soon.

And thanks again for your time.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Talk to you later.

Bye.

There you go.

You just heard the lead up to this trip.

Now, let's jump into time machine over a year later after they've been around the world.

And here what they're up to, where they're at, where they've been, how it turned out

for them, what they thought about the long term travel lifestyle, what they learned

along the way.

They're going to share their top lessons with you and so much more.

We're going to get into part two recorded over a year later.

Right now, please enjoy.

Here we are, mere seconds later.

But a lot of time has passed.

We've gone through some kind of time warp here and I have on the line.

One year and almost four months later, Sophia and Teague, how you guys doing?

Hi.

We're doing good.

Whoa.

This is trippy.

Yeah, this is crazy.

I haven't wanted to do this.

Down older and wiser.

Well, it's been over a year and four months like we recorded last October 4th, 2016.

And now it is, yeah, February, 2018.

So one year, almost four months, does it seem like that much time has passed like it

seems like many lifetimes have passed in that time.

It's, I was, we were emailing about this earlier that I think the last time that we interviewed

Teague was getting ready to quit his job or you had just quit your job?

Well, let's see if it was October 4th, I think I had given notice, but I had, because

my last day was 12 or the 15th or something like that.

So I was at the very end of my job.

And he actually is starting to work tomorrow.

Wow.

So we've come full circle.

Yeah.

You guys are back.

You're back.

Okay.

All right.

So, yeah, because when we spoke to you, you were two weeks into your unemployment.

We called it fun employment because you're up and you guys were six days away from leaving

on your journey.

And actually, the last thing you said at the end of the last interview, Teague was, I

wonder where we'll be.

And you guys are back, but you've had a lot of adventures between that time.

So I'm.

You're something you can come home again.

We're going to get into the coming home.

Thanks.

I have a lot of questions about that, but where have you guys been in the last year plus?

Oh, man.

Okay.

We'll do the spark notes version first and then we can slow it down.

We did a year almost exactly on the road, leaving to Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, India,

Nepal for a month each for a month each.

We did those countries.

And then we decided to not because we were mad at each other, but because we just wanted

to split up for a little bit and we both kind of wanted to go different places, do different

things.

For six weeks, we split up and Teague motorcycle Vietnam and and and went and trained

with Thai in Thailand.

I left and went to go to London, Belgium, Portugal and Spain because that sounded more fun

to me.

And then we remet again in Paris, France and then we got engaged in Paris.

Oh, man, I'm getting the chills now.

The things that can happen on these trips, okay.

So I keep giving us the overview then we'll go backwards.

There's so many stories.

And then we went and we worked construction in Italy and went to Greece and then we went

and lived in Bulgaria for a month and from there we went back to London, Ireland, Scotland,

back to Portugal, back to France and then we traveled America for a month.

And there we also did the Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany, with my little sister, my

little sister met with us for a few weeks and we sort of zoomed through Europe somewhere

in there before we went and lived in Bulgaria for a month and a half.

We went everywhere, Jason.

We went everywhere.

Did you say you hitchhiked from Paris to Italy?

We hitchhiked around Italy.

We flew into Venice because you can get really good flights from Paris to Venice if you're

willing to fly at 4am, which we were.

But we ended up while we were there having some transportation issues.

We had to get to a different city on a Sunday when the buses didn't run and the woman that

we were staying with said, oh, your Americans, they're going to kick out of it, just take

a sign, go stand by the road and somebody will pick you up.

And we did that and sure enough we did, we made it all the way to the coast.

The police came and talked to us first and they at first we thought they were going to

really give us a hard time but they seemed to get a kick out of it as well, even though

what we were doing I think was illegal, but they seemed to enjoy sort of intimidating

us a little bit.

And then yeah, some really nice people picked us up and we made it all the way down the

mountain.

All the way to the coast.

Yeah.

You guys had like a somewhat open plan.

I know you had sort of your beginning planned and then it was a bit open.

And I remember during the last interview, Teague, you said kind of offhand like, hey, if

we run into a guy and he says, hey, Nepal is a great time of the year, then we can go.

And we can't.

So forward to having that sense of freedom.

Well, you guys went into Nepal.

I don't know if that's because you ran into a guy there or whatever, you know, said

to go, but how did this trip evolve?

Was it totally organically like, how did you guys end up going the places you went?

And we can get into highlights and stuff later because I have a lot of travel questions

too, but I really want to hear about your, you know, a little bit more about your time

on the road.

But yeah, how did this like trip unfold for you?

Okay.

So our process was pretty fluid.

We had, and all the credit to the planning does go to Sofia.

She was the master of searching for flights and staying on top of all that.

But we had a really rough plan intentionally of spending about six months in Asia and then

six months in Europe.

We often sort of decided on a whim where to go.

For example, we knew we were, we bought our big ticket from LA to Bangkok, months and months

in advance to leave.

We got that really cheap.

And then we did a month in Thailand, and that was pretty free form.

We just sort of did what we met people.

They recommended going places.

We looked stuff up.

And then we, I don't even remember how we picked Cambodia next.

Well, we were just, we were still kind of enjoying Southeast Asian.

We decided, you know, bus tickets to Cambodia were $20 or the equivalent of $20.

And so we thought, okay, well, we'll go to Cambodia.

And while we were there, we heard the islands were really great.

We ended up on an island.

We heard.

We worked on an island for a couple of weeks.

And from there, like to Malaysia, it just happened I got online and looked for a cheap

plane ticket and saw that plane tickets to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia were $25.

So I turned to Teague and said, do you want to go to Malaysia?

And neither of us knew anything about it.

We had never been there.

We had never thought we would go there.

Yeah.

We just...

We bought the tickets.

We did like three or four minutes worth of googling to make sure like, okay, we can get

the visas.

That's easy.

Let's go there.

And then yeah, we just bought tickets.

So we did a lot of like that.

It was very free form.

It was a lot of like while our visas are ending, kind of like throw almost like throwing

a dart at a board and like, oh, it's going to be good.

Just keeping it open.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Once we got into Europe, it was a little more structured just because it's more expensive.

So we had to plan ahead, like for example, we scheduled pretty far in advance our month

in Scotland where we worked on a farm in the north of Scotland for a month and that had

to be set up fairly far in advance.

But sort of the joy of Southeast Asia is that, you know, it's all really accessible.

It's not scary.

It's very, very, like, you know, traveler friendly.

There's a whole highway metaphorical highlight.

And then maybe literally a highway setup.

You make it so that you can travel around and go to these different places and, I mean,

really, really easy to kind of decide on the fly where you wanted to go.

So it was easier than you thought it was going to be going into so much easier than, I

mean, I, people would say like, oh, you're so brave for going to Southeast Asia.

And now that we've been, I can tell you if I can do it, anybody can do it.

And I know people say that.

I mean, it was just unbelievably accessible.

That's the thing I tell whenever it comes up and people like, oh my gosh, I can't believe

you did that for a year.

My thing is like, it's the thing I always tell them is that it's so much easier than you

think.

Like, you know, the hardest part is being like brave enough to actually pull the trigger.

But the actual planning of it and, you know, you can, you can do it.

If you can use the internet and you can Google a little bit and plan just slightly ahead

because we made like, we made a lot of mistakes.

We made a lot of mistakes.

We made a lot of really impromptu decisions like going to Malaysia, we were just drinking

margaritas on a beach after having lived on this island without power for two weeks.

And we're just kind of living it up and thinking, what should we do next?

And it really was just like, oh, yeah, Malaysia.

I've heard of that country.

I was like, oh, my old roommate went to Malaysia once.

I think she really liked it.

That's all I really know.

Let's buy these tickets.

And it was one of our best experiences.

We worked in a hostel for the better part of a month.

We made some really good friends, ate some of the best food in the world.

And just we met Jackie Chan in Malaysia.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah, we tried to go to a movie and it turns out the movie was canceled and Jackie Chan

was there.

Yeah.

We tried to go see Lala land because Malaysia is so fascinating because Kuala Lumpur's

is giant metropolis, but also this like very old country.

So we're living in Chinatown where they're chopping up frogs in the alleys for the soup.

And it's really this kind of like old-world feel.

And then you walk 10 minutes to a eight-story megamaw called the Rise of Opulence that has

like a three-story Chanel store.

It's really like bizarre, different, crazy name for a mall.

Yeah.

The Rise of Opulence.

Do you want to go see a movie?

The Rise of Opulence.

And so we tried to go see Lala land and we get there and every showing of every movie

is canceled and they're all just showing Jackie Chan's new movie, which is called Kung Fu

Yoga.

And some guy walks up to us and says, I have these tickets.

My friends are coming.

Do you want them?

And we're like, I guess we'll see this kind of crazy looking movie.

The posters like Jackie Chan flying through the air in a Jeep with like a lion in the back

seat.

Yeah.

I love Jackie Chan movies.

Yeah.

You know, it's really great because it's clearly not a movie meant for Western audiences.

And so like the conventions within the film are so different that it was kind of, it was

really a bizarre experience.

But he came into the whole cast, came into the theater beforehand, shake hands, cats,

gives like a speech.

And the people just went nuts, like the whole theater is screaming and we're like, we're

just going to go see Lala.

Yeah, everything that you would be in a movie theater shaking in Malaysia is shaking hands

with Jackie Chan.

Right.

It's like one day you wake up wherever and like by the end of the day, you've met Jackie

Chan and like, you never know what's going to happen when you're when you're out of

the road.

Yeah.

And all of that stemmed from just a kind of random choice because tickets were cheap.

And we had like, you know, half of a recommendation that it was a neat place to go.

So I think the opportunity is is everywhere.

It sounds like you guys kind of did a combination of like planning your trip around places you

wanted to go, of course.

But then like the Malaysia thing was just like, Hey, I'll kind of on a whim or our visas

running out.

We got to figure out where to go next.

Let's just go here.

Maybe you were traveling sounds like to some places for the work opportunities that

that dictated some things and meeting up with family and all these different things,

which I think, you know, makes a lot of sense when you're out on the road for a year.

How was the transition to living on the road because you guys went from, you know, sort

of this, quote unquote, regular kind of life, you know, Western, you know, job and living

in one place and all that stuff to living on the road.

Can you give us the, like the arc of a, of how you felt during your time on the road

from like the beginning and to settling in and how did that all go for you?

Yeah.

I think we have sort of slightly different experiences.

Taked really well.

Um, I kind of struggled with it to be, should be perfectly honest when you first get

on the road, you're used to like being home with your clothes and your hair products and

your showers and your warm showers, your warmth, your toilets that have seats and, um, it

was really probably the first month took me quite a, quite a minute to kind of get used

to like, okay, you have four shirts, you have two skirts, your five pairs of underwear.

This is your life now, um, we, we lived on an island for a while and the only showers

you had were dumping cold buckets of water over your head and geckos were pooping in the

water and there are scorpions crawling around on the floor.

And it was a weird adjustment to kind of let go of vanity, I think really for me was the

struggle that, um, you know, your hair's kind of crazy this week because you live on an

island and, uh, the tradeoff is that you don't get your sort of creature comforts of, uh,

pretty clothes and nice shoes and, um, and I think it's a really cathartic experience that

was super valuable and it's been really valuable for me coming home and, um, I would say it

took me about four weeks to adjust and then you kind of get to a point where it's your

life now, you know, it's, it's normal. There were growing pains for me for sure though.

Yeah, but I, I feel like I adapted to that part of it just fine.

Like your dream. Yeah, kind of, kind of as I like the idea of I just wear the same t-shirt,

like I have like three identical shirts that I wear and that's it. Um,

that part wasn't difficult, uh, I think, so that transition was fairly smooth for me.

Um, I know that after a while living out of the pack, like the, the, the low level stress that it

is does kind of add up, like the idea that everything I own and everything that's super important,

I have to keep track of all the time and not having like a safe spot that's your home.

Like we didn't have anything valuable. We just had, I guess like a passports and we had a

little cheap like Chromebook. Yeah. And, um, so we didn't own anything valuable, but if any of

that stuff had like disappeared, it would have been really stressful. And so having to

carry that on your back all the time after months and months to kind of wear on you,

and that was what made doing things like working in a place really nice where you are kind of like,

like living on the farm in Scotland, but you know, it's very safe. You had your own room. And so

about halfway through, I was kind of tired of living out of the pack in the sense that I had to

always like being on everything. Yeah. Yeah. And so then when we started switching and doing some

of the longer term working, it was kind of like little islands where in between the islands of

working, we're doing all the like cool crazy backpacking and you're moving quickly and you're

staying in all these random places and you're meeting a lot of people and you do that for a month

and then you get to like, say on the farm for a while. You make friends and you can unpack your

clothes. Yeah. And so, and so we started to move into like that rhythm where we're like, let's move

and then we'll stop. Let's move and then we'll stop. And that was I think really nice because

the the constant moving was too much. And if we stayed in a place too long, that was also too much

for a year. So after a while, we kind of settled into that rhythm, which I didn't expect at all.

I thought we were just going to like, we slowed down significantly basically is, you know,

the course of a year. But I think it was a really positive experience in teaching you,

you know, you really don't need that much to live and to be happy and to have good experiences as

you, it's sort of all window dressing at the end of the day to, you know, what you're really there

to do, which is experience new things and meet new people and no one cares what you're wearing.

I mean, all of you. I will say though, we were both so glad to get rid of our like walking

sandals. Yeah, we always did the one pair of shoes the whole time and they were perfect. They were

great. But I never want to put them on again. What kind of sandals? Chakos. Oh yeah, we both

bought chakos by the and mind split. Yeah, they're great. They really are. I I recommend I'm

there. The ugliest shoe I think in the world, but they are so comfy and so durable. And they'll

make it through. But man, mine are still just sitting on the porch. I haven't touched them since we

got back. I'm cracked in half a month before we came home and we were just gluing it. So we'd

like go to the dollar store, we glue the shoe together and then every good trip involves some

gluer duct tape. You know, like if you're not gluing or duct taping something, then what have

you done? I'm saying this is a trip, but you just brought up the fact that it like changes from

a trip to life, you know, at a certain point, me a trip is like two or three weeks or I mean,

you can't put a number on it, I guess. But when you're on the road for a year, you're just you're

living your life, you just happen to be traveling while you're living your life. So that's where it

becomes a different experience, I think, because you're you're now getting past the

vacation mode and you're getting into just, hey, this is my life. So really quick on the work

opportunities, because it sounds like you guys have done a lot of cool things. Can you just again

rattle off a few of the things you did? And where did you find all these opportunities? And what

were some of the highlights there? Because I think people that it might be attracted to like slow

travel or the idea of exchanging, I don't know if you did it for accommodations in exchange,

like a volunteering thing or like talk to me about that experience. Yeah, we we got a profile with

workaway.org, which I highly recommend. There's some tricks to using it. I think you have actually

a previous podcast on it, Jason. You know, you want to make sure you get a place with good reviews

and you never know what you're really going to get. But we'd volunteered on an island in Cambodia

where we bartended and sort of breakfast. We worked at a construction. I put that I was a handyman

on the profile. So ever where we went, I did a lot of construction. Either do put that you were

where was that? That was in Cambodia on. Yeah. If you can do construction, put it on your profile

because everybody needs somebody to work construction. That being said, you will get put to work.

And then we did a month in a hostel in Malaysia where we were put up in an apartment in Chinatown

and we walked to work every morning and I made breakfast and teak work construction.

Yeah. And we worked construction in Italy on a 400 year old stone house and we worked on a farm for

a month in Scotland. Yeah. So we kind of tried to plan like the more expensive places like Scotland

where we knew that either we'd only be able to go for a weekend or we'd have to, you know, work

away as a work exchange. So you get room and board typically, at least a meal, an exchange for five

hours, roughly of work a day, roughly five days a week, which was fine for us because we like to work.

I mean, it doesn't really change, especially because you're not on vacation. You're living,

you're living your life like you said and you need something to kind of fill your days and give

you value. So I think work away was really great for that. Yeah. It was. It was a sense of home and

it definitely was where a lot of our good friendships came from because so often on the road when

you're meeting people like they are on shorter trips and so they're like, hey, let's party.

Like let's go out and do crazy stuff and that's fun every now and then but when it's your life,

like you just can't do that every day and they're just coming at it from such a different mindset

that it's hard to, you know, it's just hard to connect with someone when you're sort of crossing

in the night. They want to go go out and like, well, we've been on the road for six months and

we don't really want a party every night because, you know, we were doing another six months and

so when you would, but when you're working with people, they're kind of in the same mindset of you

and you happen to have conversations and yeah, we made some really good friends in Malaysia and

Scotland and Italy are was a really good basis to really get to know some people to get to know

that area really well and kind of, you know, settle in because if you, you know, if you spend like a

crazy week in Bangkok, I feel like you probably don't know Bangkok really that well. But if you live

there for a month working, we didn't do that in Bangkok, but, you know, like you're going to get

a sense of of knowing it. We did that in Kuala Lumpur and I think it made a really special experience.

By the way, the site, I think is workway.info. Oh, workway.info. Yeah, that's okay. I like that tip,

you know, kind of using this strategy, if you want to call that inexpensive places, but I think

saying it's a strategy kind of undermines like the value you can get out of this or it sounds

like that you guys have gotten out of this experience because it wasn't just about the

those cost savings, although that's a part of it, but there's a lot around that. I mean, not only

are you getting yourself more in the culture, but like, Tika, I mean, you came from working as a lawyer

to now you're just like doing construction for free. Like, I mean, you talked to me and so

you talked about letting go of like, you know, vanity or whatever in the beginning of the trip.

Like, what are some of the other things you guys had to let go of as far as your identities?

I don't know if that's the right question because you are who you are, but did you feel like

you were detaching from certain things? Yeah, definitely. I know for me, like, detaching from

the like work lawyer mentality was a little difficult at first, but I think one of the

healthiest things I got out of travel because my job before, I don't remember how much I talked

about it in our past thing, but it was a really stressful job that just absorbed 99% of my mental

energy and completely dictated who I was. And that's kind of, I think, how lawyers tend to be

is a really wrapped up in your profession and it really defines who you are as a person.

And so being on the road suddenly, none of that mattered anymore. And it was kind of like a good

chunk of myself that wasn't particularly healthy or good for me got locked off and I had to sort of

exist in a world without that. Like, no one cares what you do back home on the road. So suddenly,

like, oh, everything I used to talk about and be just doesn't matter anymore. And I had to sort of

not become a whole person again, but, you know, I had to kind of like parts of me that, you know,

was, you know, having a good conversation that wasn't based on the crazy case I was working on,

you know, it just sort of, no one cares. And so it was really good for me to kind of let that go

and sort of sound so stupid to say, find myself. But I guess that really is what it was to sort of

find who I was apart from that in a completely different context and then bring that home. And I

think it's made me a much like more whole and centered and happy person. But that was a good

when you examined. Well, I think I found that, you know, I got too wrapped up in what I was doing

and I was letting it make me super unhappy. And I had a lot of really bad habits associated with it

that, you know, I've since been able to kind of leave behind and just be like a little more

of a relaxed calm centered person who understands my much smaller space in the world than I used to

believe it. I used to think I was more important than I was. And I wouldn't have said that at the time,

but in looking back on it, you know, I took myself too seriously and travel, whether it's, you know,

having terrible food poisoning or, you know, missing a bus or, you know, getting made fun of by someone

because you are doing the dumbest thing because you have no idea what's going on. Like it really

humbles you, you know, and that's really good. I think that's one of the better things I got out of it

is, is being directly humbled like that. I mean, by the way, all those things you mentioned

on your long trip are guaranteed to happen to you. It's going to happen a lot. It's going to be like

your most common experience. You're going to feel the food poisoning come on and just think to yourself,

well, here we go. Yeah. Get the bucket. Yep. And it's just like you, you just sort of walk around,

especially in Asia with like a sort of, you're just moving so much you just always have kind of like

low grade food poisoning. And you get really hearty about it. It's like, yeah, I'm sick, whatever.

We just keep going. So we're still going to go to the beach, right? Yeah. It's character building.

It is. It's very character building. I'm very, very quick to get comfortable with being sort of

uncomfortable because the exchange is that you get to be in these amazing places and do these

incredible things. So why else does travel good for you? And is there anything about it that was bad

for you? Trying to think if there's anything that that's that I mean, I think that

it was really perspective building in as Americans who had not really traveled a whole lot before,

you are forced to sort of confront your own biases about places, about people assumptions that

you have and and realize that like one, you do have your own weird biases that you, you know,

no matter how progressive and cool you think you are, you go to a place and you realize like,

oh, wow, I really don't know anything about this culture and I've never bothered to learn.

And you sort of come to realize that, you know, everybody's just like you. They're people who love

their families. They're trying to work jobs. They're trying to have a good time and I think that's

really really valuable. Yeah, I think it's perspective shifting in that way that you

or I had a more like different, but it's not really that different. Yeah, the people are, you know,

like, yeah, the window dressing of different cultures is different, but like basic human values

are so similar everywhere and it's really uplifting. And I attended towards being kind of like a

skeptical pessimistic person beforehand and traveling and, you know, receiving the kindness of

strangers, you don't have to help you. Oh, man. World over like, and how much we depended on that,

it really affirms like the basic decency of human beings. And that's really positive.

You're so vulnerable when you travel and that's valuable just to be vulnerable for a little bit,

but we'd still be stuck in India if it wasn't for the kindness of strangers. And that was so cool

that, you know, people helped us out and we literally got stuck in India. We literally got stuck and

could not get out, but for like these random people who would like be like, they couldn't,

you know, they couldn't really speak to us, but they'd be like, here, here, come here, come here,

and they'd take us to wherever it was we needed to go and point at the thing. And I mean, yeah,

we would still be in church or a folly. What was the second half of your question though?

That was what's bad. Yeah. I think I think, and this is just us, we got really tired after a while

of being sort of in transient relationships with everybody. There's something about, I don't know

if it's just maybe our age or just being a human that you after a while do miss having like long-term

friends. And when you travel fast, you do kind of get jaded to it's, you know, a new person every day,

a new person to, hi, where you've been, where you're from, what are you doing? That after a while,

I think got really old. And yeah, you had to be careful not to get, yeah, really closed off because

you have the same conversations over and over. Yeah. After nine months of meeting hostile friends

and having the same conversation about who you are, where you're from, where you've been,

where you're going next, you, you do kind of get burnt out. And that's not, that's not great. I

would, I mean, we would guard against that next time and you'd be more careful. And it's good,

it's good to keep in mind when you're traveling fast to, to take time to slow down to have good

relationships and, okay, so you guys were together all the time as a couple. And then you decided to

split up. And I'm really curious about this part of the trip because now we get to see, okay,

first of all, your experience together as a couple and like the fact that you didn't want to

have this solo travel experience, why did you decide that? I think we talked about it on our,

on our last interview, but we always, it was sort of in a rough plan that we would split up

at some point. That was important to, you know, if we were going to do this, like let's really do

this. And I think we sort of anticipated that there would be a point where we would maybe

want to do separate things. And we both had sacrifice so much to be on this trip that it didn't

seem right that either one should have to compromise. And sure enough that that moment came where

basically I was ready to be out of Asia. And he was not. And I think you even said like I'm not ready

to leave yet. And so that was that exact moment that I think we had sort of been realistic about.

I'm ready to go. I don't want to spend another month here. He really wants to stay. And it's not,

you know, if he comes with me to Europe now, he's going to be maybe resentful or, you know,

wish that he had stayed. So was part of that like also wanting to have this solo travel experience?

Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you travel as a couple, first off, like you really get to

know how you work as a couple when you travel together the way we did. Like, let's see, like

Thanksgiving. So we've been on the, we're in Thailand and northern Thailand. We've been on the road

for like, you know, just a couple of weeks. And so Fiya decides she really has to rent a scooter.

And everybody has a scooter, Jason. Everybody has a scooter. And like, she's never ridden anything before.

And I'm like, all right, you know, like it's a cool adventure. Let's do it. Like it's beautiful.

We're up at its in pie. There's like beautiful mountainous countryside. And so we get scooters. And

her lesson is like five minutes in an alley with a 12 year old Thai kid who just like, you know,

doesn't speak any English sort of points. And he's like, all right, here you go. And like hands

are the keys. And I remember thinking like, I don't know, man, this isn't good. And every third

person in pie is like a person in elephant pants with like a limb bandage. I didn't realize that.

And it's because they rent scooters and wreck them. And so that happens. So Fiya wrecked a scooter.

And then she got really terrible food poisoning all within the same day on Thanksgiving day.

And I literally had to like carry her back to the hostel and then make polite conversation

with the two delightful Scottish girls we were sharing a room with while Sophia's in the bath.

I'm just like, you get very comfortable. Like I'm like, spelling liquids for every

place. And you can hear everything basically. Yeah. Yeah. And so like traveling as a couple,

you get really intimately involved in each other's lives in a way that you did not anticipate before.

I look how politically correct you are about like the story. You're just really weaving your way through

it. Like very, very lawyerly. Not too many. Definitely he had to hoist me up on his shoulders at

some point and like jog through the streets. All the people thought it was really cute and they're

waving. Meanwhile, I'm like, she's going to throw up on the back of my neck. Like she's going to

right. She's going to poop on me. We will not be including the audio from that until

you know. But so that that's part of it is that you do get like super comfortable and

involved in each other and very dependent. And so I think if you're not careful, you can just

depend on each other so much that you don't have to like go outside of what becomes a fairly

comfortable space because you can just rely on each other and you don't have to rely on other

people or get to know other people because you're traveling together. And so the decision to

split up and travel separate for a while, I think, was really to, in part to counter that,

to see like, can I really do this on my own? Like what happens? Can I hack it if I just, I mean,

the middle of Vietnam and something goes wrong and I'm completely alone, can I like figure out

what to do on my own experience? Yeah, exactly. And that's really important because you are

confronted with a lot of stuff that you wouldn't have had to deal with if you had your other person

there. Yeah. Well, let me hear about it from each of you. What did, how did you find the solo

travel experience? We had spent a month before in India, which is its own fun side adventure.

And I, and then we were in Nepal and I was just getting, I was just ready to go, to go somewhere

with the toilet paper. Teague wanted to go motorcycle Vietnam. And I knew that that was not

something that I was particularly interested in doing it. I had just, especially after the motorbike

incident. Yeah, I was done. I was like, no more, yeah, no more two-wheel transportation on this trip.

Right. So, and I had always wanted to as I think probably most people listening to, you know,

you always think like, oh, I remember the backpack year up. I'm going to take my backpack and I'm

just going to fly to London and go and do it. So that was sort of my, Emma was to go live out that

dream, the backpacking year up dream. And I flew to London and couch served, which is another great

service that people can use. I couch served with a Polish house. Yeah, you kind of learn who you are,

when you're on your own. And nobody that I met on the road knew me in the context of Teague,

or in the context of our life before. They just knew that I was like some girl with a backpack

traveling through Europe for six weeks. And it's really cool to highly recommend sort of solo

backpack, because you think it kind of opens you up to people and kind of to who you are. Well,

now that I'm not in a couple, what do I want to talk about? What are the things that are important

to just me? And you do miss your other half, but yeah, it was, yeah. Yeah. So you did you did London.

I did London. I did Brussels. Amsterdam. Amsterdam. Portugal. I went up and down

Portugal, the coast of Portugal for two weeks and couch served. And you got to do whatever you

want. You didn't have to make any compromises. Yeah, it was really, really great. And it's an

interesting thing, because I was couch surfing a lot, because I was like, I'm going to do Europe on

$800 for six weeks, which was a terrible idea. But I depended a lot on couch surfers. And also,

because I was trying to meet people, because it was just me, and I'm five, two, and a girl,

I think people were very, very open to taking me into their home and showing me kindness. It was

a lot harder to find couch surfing opportunities when Tegu 63, and a little bit more intimidating

than I am was with me. So I got to kind of move freely and very fluidly. And oh, I think I'm,

you know, someone offered to host me in this city tonight. So I think I'm going to catch a boss

out of town and walk to this person's house. And when I say it like that, it sounds really dangerous.

And don't tell my mom. But it was, it was fantastic. Okay. Teg has, has better stories,

because he was in Vietnam. I left first, flew out of Kathmandu to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

And I'd, we'd set it up, because we had, we'd done a meditation retreat in Nepal was our last

thing we did there. And so we set everything up before that, because then it was like 11 days of

complete isolation and no internet and everything. So we had all the tickets and everything bought

right before that. And I rented a motorcycle in Ho Chi Minh City and then spent a month slowly

headed north on a motorcycle ending in Hanoi. And had a lot of crazy adventures on the way. It's,

if you like motorcycling, Vietnam is a pretty great place. I'd be sitting on the, on the Duro River

in Portugal, having a, at espresso and an amazing pastry. And I'd get a picture of Teg on the back

of a motorcycle. And in front of him are like, sharks loaded onto a truck. Like people weaving

in and out. I mean, and I would like look down at my pastry and just be like, I made the right choice.

Yeah, we definitely both made the right choice. You would have hated it, hated everything about it.

And I loved it. It was really great because I did have to sort of do all that on my own. I had to

negotiate dealing with, you know, the police in Vietnam on my own, getting a motorcycle, meeting

people on the road. I made a lot of friends in Vietnam because, you know, you're all suffering

through the same thing and nothing bonds you quite like suffering. So, you know, you would all

be on the road together. And I met up with the same people three or four times while in Vietnam,

you just happen to run into each other because it's a very narrow country. And if you're all headed

north, you know, there's only a couple different places to stay in certain spots. Yeah, I did that

for a full month. I got really sick a few times and just had to ride that up by myself too, which was

interesting to not have someone looking after me when I'm really sick. Yeah, but it kind of builds

care. I mean, it's very like, yeah, you're like, it's fine. I can take care of it. Yeah, take care of

myself. When did you decide to pop the question? Because you came together again in Paris? Was that

yeah? Well, so how did I go down, man? So, congratulations once again. Thank you. Yeah, we're

really excited. I sort of knew it would happen at some point on the trip. And we had spent six.

I'm glad you were right. Well, yeah, I mean, we left the trip and you're like, you know,

I don't know if this goes for me. I mean, I guess in some ways about what it sounds like when she's sick.

This is, I mean, traveling like that is the ultimate like relationship crucible. Yeah, because if

we can spend six months together 24 or seven and we're sick and stressed out and dealing with all

this stuff and we still want to hang out together, I figured that was a good metric. And so that was

kind of my thought is like, I think that's going to happen. We really, you really know someone after

that. And so then the six weeks apart in my mind was sort of like, okay, we had this really intense

time together. Now we have a couple weeks apart. I can get like a little distance on it and really

think it through. And so that was my thought. And that's what I did a lot of time when I was like

totaling up a hill and Vietnam for hours by myself. Well, I totally have the vision of you on the

motor. It's very romantic vision, right? Like I'm like, I'll buy yourself like contemplating life

trying to decide if you're going to do this thing. How did that happen? Was it was it like the first

day you came together or did like, we um, I had also done my own contemplating Jason. Yeah,

were you going to say no? You know, I also got a ring to go to Paris. Whoa. Yeah. Um, because I

had a sort of a similar experience to Teague, which is like, you know, we've had this really intense

time together. I feel really grateful to have someone who traveling alone a lot, especially as a

woman. And I would tell people I have a boyfriend and they'd go, oh, your boyfriend let you come

here. And I'd be like, one, but boy, let me do anything. Let me tell you that. Yeah. So, yeah,

that is pretty cool, right? He's really cool with it. Um, so it was so grateful for him when we

were traveling together because he, I'm very high strong in the planner and he would always be like,

it's fine. Relax. Like it's okay. And that's such a valuable partnership. And then, you know,

being a part, I thought, yeah, I think I'm going to propose to Teague and Paris for sure. Yeah.

So we get to Paris. Um, we had so much catching up to do because six weeks in travel time,

as you know, as a traveler is a lifetime. I'm sorry. I just assumed the traditional, you know,

yeah. So we both had rings. That's what the story. I bought a ring. Who did it? Who made it, Jason?

I don't know. I don't know. I can't. I'm going to, I'm going to guess that Teague beat you to the

punch. I don't know, but I don't know. Sophia, maybe, maybe I'm widely, you're widely, you're,

yeah, unpredictable. You know, you don't know. So here's what happened. Here's what happened.

I bought a ring in Thailand right before we went back together because it was sort of like,

yep, I've had my time to think about it. Definitely doing this. Sophia had a ring. And then we met

up in Paris and we had this awesome little Airbnb and we were there for three days. Paris is

incredible. Must've been so nice to see each other again. So nice to see each other. Yeah.

I mean, we're like meeting again for the first time on like a picnic blanket under the

Eiffel Tower with like a bottle of wine. Wow. I mean, it didn't happen there. No, it didn't.

We had, we had so much to talk about that. Yeah. Well, and when we first met up,

Sophia was super stressed out because I was really confused by the public transit in in Paris.

And I was like an hour late. I wouldn't have phones or anything. And so when I showed up,

she was like, he got kidnapped. This is it. That's called parents. I'm like in a coffee shop crying,

trying to get reception. And then like, I look across the street and teeks, like,

bopping along, like playing, you know, and I've run out of the coffee shop of tears.

So the first, the first meetup wasn't a good time. I was also, I'd had like a really weird flight

from, I flew out of Bangkok and had a layover in Ashkivat, Turkmenistan, which is a crazy

place. And it was like, you know, jet lagged and really confused about what time it was and being

in such a different climate. So we had three days catching up, three days catching up and just

sort of enjoying Paris. And then on the third and final day, right before we fly out to Venice,

Venice was next. We had a bottle of wine. We got a bottle of wine. We went to the steps of the

Louvre. It's like a beautiful spring night. We're our plans to like, we both had kind of plans for

that night. And it was to like go watch the, you know, the Eiffel Tower. They light it up. But

on the hour, so we had midnight, we were going to go to the Eiffel Tower. But first we got this

bottle of wine. We're sitting on the steps of the Louvre, talking, we're letting we're getting

kind of tipsy. And we just kind of lost track of time. Like we didn't. And then suddenly we realized

like it was almost like 15 minutes. Yeah, it's like, and we have to get to the Eiffel Tower from

there very far. And we get a little confused on the subway and we're like sprinting through the

like subway stations in Paris trying to make it. And we eventually get to the right station and we

get out and we can kind of see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. And we're like, we're just like

mission impossible styles printing through the streets. Our plans messed up. We're laughing because

we're like, we're like, how could we possibly, I'm like, how could we possibly be late to,

I'm about to get in gate. I'm just going to propose like, and I'm late. I'm the worst traveler

of all time. And so then like it hits midnight and the thing sparkles. And we're just in like the

middle of a, of I think it's New York Avenue in Paris. And there's like no one out. And there's no

traffic or anything. And so we're staying in the middle of the street and we're laughing and we're

like, sweaty and a little drunk. And I was just like, Hey, will you marry me in the middle of the

street? And she's like, yeah. Yeah. Did you tell him that you had, oh, you guys can kiss now. Go

ahead. I felt, I felt the moment coming. That's awesome. What a great, great story. Wow. So

the tagline is we were, we were a little drunk and late for our own engagement. Yeah, yeah.

So perfect. Well, it's nice to like the solo travel really does give you time to reflect on

whatever is going on in your life. And I find like just having space like travel gives you a

certain space from a lot of different things that it can be hard to get in your regular life.

If you're not making a conscious effort because I feel like it's easier to get in sort of habit

loops and different things in your regular life and routines and you all of a sudden you're not

paying attention to the fact that like, well, three months just went by you haven't given

yourself any space to like explore certain things about yourself or whatever. So you know,

you mentioned like finding yourself and which is like a typical travel cliche, but I think for

a reason and I'm just, I think it's not so much the travels just like the travel sort of

facilitates the space in a way. So what did you guys find? Just to your point and what I think is

one of the most valuable things about travel is that you find on the road. You suddenly just have

a lot of time, you know, in your in your regular day to day life where you work if you have

relationships and you, you know, you never have you don't have as much time to sit down and just think

that suddenly when you're on the road and you have an eight hour bus ride to Poland, you find that

you have just an infinite amount of time to stare at the window and kind of think and confront

things and the road I think is the best place to get your thinking done and you have to be sort of

comfortable with just sitting in that thought and sort of facing down those things that maybe in

your real life, your real life, quote unquote, your you never really have to examine. So I think

you're absolutely right. I think what we found about ourselves is that we are lifelong travelers

who want to go to new countries and experience new things, but we definitely really miss the work.

You know, we miss structure and we miss friends and we never really got fully

into vacation mode because we were always sort of looking for something to ground us to a place.

Yeah. I think I did a lot of kind of peeling back and looking at my inner clockwork and seeing

how I tick and I think I realize that I do need to work and I have a tendency to fall into the kind

of things like situations like my job before and I had something I have to sort of guard against

that I don't, you know, fall into it and let my health deteriorate and like my mental health go

to go to pot because I've decided to do this super stressful thing. But at the same time,

I also have a need to do work that I feel is important and that often can lead to that. And so

I did a lot of thinking about how I'm going to be able to sort of balance those two kind of

contradicting things in the future. And a lot of conversations about, okay, when we do go back

to the US, like what's actually important to us, like what do we want to build long-term versus

I think before we left, we thought of everything in terms of like, well, we just got to do it,

you just got to get through today, you just got to go to work or you just got it, you know, without

really being intentional and careful to think about what it's all for, what you're sort of working

towards and you know, now that we're back and we had all that time to think on the road and sort of

find ourselves we're living much more intentional lives. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it is

that it's really easy to not live very intentionally because the world will supply you with things to

worry about and things to focus on that maybe is aren't things that you would choose, but you sort of

choose them by default and the chance to step back and look at it all and re-evaluate what's

you kind of calibrate and choose the things that do matter to you, which it turns out like a lot

of the things that I think do matter to us are sort of conventional things like we want to

sort of settle down for a little while, you know. We want to move abroad. We want to move abroad

eventually, but we want to like- That's our new life goal. We need to settle down eventually and have

kind of rewarding careers and save a lot of money so that we can travel in the future. So a lot of

the things I think we ended up learning about ourselves and what we want for the future tend to be

more or less conventional, but we're now doing it intentionally and not coming at it from

the sort of default position. It's yeah, like you said, it's a different way to approach it

completely. You could have the same exact thing, like you could take the same exact job back and

everything, but like if you're doing it intentionally, that's a totally different situation.

Even if on the surface, it might look the same, you know. Let's talk about like coming home in

this next step for you guys, this intentional choice to settle down. What are you doing and like,

how did the travel influence those decisions? I guess we touched on that a bit, but let's hear

what you're up to. Here's like a kind of a preface. I think coming home can be just as jarring as

leaving. Yeah, yeah, that's it. But we did it in a really like soft ramp kind of way. We flew from

Paris to New York, spent like a week and a half in New York, which was so different from our regular

lives that even though we were like back in America, it was different enough that it still felt kind

of on the road. And then we spent about a month in the Pacific Northwest visiting friends.

And so it was kind of this like nice off ramp of travel where we're kind of back in the

we are back in the country, but it doesn't feel like man, we just like arrived at home. And then we

spent some time traveling with friends staying at their place. We're in one place for two or three

weeks. And we kind of settled down, get back used to just sort of like American culture. And then

we actually came home. So it's we took us like a whole month basically before we were actually like

back home, seeing our families. And I think that made it so much easier. I think it would have been

really tough to just if we came back and um, yeah, like went back into jobs and I had a friend that

flew from I think from like Shanghai back to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he's from,

where his family's from. And he said it was the most like jarring thing that he spent like a

week just like completely kind of freaking out because he just like it popped right back in the

middle. So we didn't do that. So the transition back for us, I think was fairly slow and smooth,

but it still was really strange. Like, I don't know, we went to a Walmart and I was just like, yeah,

that's right. I couldn't I couldn't handle it. I had to get out of the Walmart because it was

just too much and so gross. Yeah, our first week back, we had to go grocery shopping for a fridge

because we had a fridge that we put food in and we were just like, what is it? Like it is. Yeah.

How does how does the American culture seem different to you now or does it seem different?

It's yeah, it seems really different. I think um, a lot of the stereotypes you run across about

American culture ring a little more true. Like we are kind of like this consumerism based kind of

wasteful society and we have all these like giant unnecessary things. Like when we went to that

Walmart, I got the cart and I thought, this is wrong. I got the giant cart. Like where's the regular

size cart? And no, it was the regular size cart. It's just it was super giant. It's like how could

you possibly they are comically large? Yeah. And and that really is everything in American culture.

Everything is so giant and so over the top and mostly unnecessary. I remember I kept freaking out

because it as you probably know in Europe, they don't they don't give you the plastic bags or

if you want a plastic bag, you have to pay for it. And we were checking out and the lady was like

bagging and double bagging and like just taking bags out throwing stuff on them, you know, and I was

like, oh my gosh, this is such a strange. You're just noticing things you might not have noticed

before. Yeah, that I never thought about before that like we're bagging five items and it's now we

have these eight plastic bags where we had just come from Paris where, you know, they're like, well,

you're carrying it or it's, you know, 50 cents or whatever the purchase for the bag. And I was I

think like American culture, at least back here in New Mexico, like because we're a more like

rural state, you know, it's a car based culture. Everyone's in their own cars. You don't really

interact with human beings as much in like a person to person way that you would even in like

while New York, like you're smashed up against everyone. And so it makes it's a little more isolated

than I remembered thinking it was before I thought that was completely normal. And now that I've

come back, like there's a distance that I didn't realize there was before. And I think that that's

kind of a bad thing about our culture is that we have this built in distance that kind of dehumanizes

other people and keeps us from, you know, experiencing people who are different than us. And that is

not a good good part of American culture. It's good to be aware of now. Yeah, I'm much more aware of

it and you, and you realize that that and that leads to so many weird biases and fears that I think

kind of are bubbling around in the overall American psyche. I did find though, like, and maybe

it's just that finally or somewhere with a common language that when I did bump into people,

strangers and did chat with them, everyone was super friendly. And that wasn't my memory of

it before I always thought of us as a little more standoffish. And we were in a lot of places where

people were very friendly, but coming back home, I would come home and be like, I just had a great

conversation with a little old lady in line at the first story. You felt like that way, like you

were traveling again, like you had a random, you know, I personally think it's empowering the idea

of when you settle back down or whatever words you want to use, whatever lingo. When you've done it

before, like, you know, you can do it again, right? So I don't think it's a scary to sort of get

ties again when you've done it before and it's not as like intimidating to do. Does that make sense?

Yeah, you're perfect. Yeah. Perfect. In fact, we say all the time, you know, if teak starting

this new job, I'm thinking about starting a new career and we say to each other all the time,

you know, if it ever gets to a point where we wake up and we're not happy, let's buy a plane ticket

to Bangkok, you know, like where you some of the value of travel is that you know that you are never

or you're only ever a stuck as you choose to be because you can do it again, you've done it before

and if you need to, the whole world is out there and it's waiting to sort of welcome you and

and accept you and so, you know, we would never have the fear again of being entrenched in

sort of a life that we're not happy in because you buy a plane ticket and you go and the rest sort

of takes care of itself. And I think that also gives like a kind of a takes away some of the

unnecessary seriousness with which we often approach life. Yeah. Like you take yourself in your job

so seriously, but knowing that like, you know, if this all falls apart, like I'm just going to go

back to Thailand and do my tie. We work in a hostel, you know, and be so much happier than I am in

this miserable moment and just knowing that that option is there and that there's all this adventure

and stuff you can do in the world, you know, and that you are a person separate from your crazy

job or whatever that you can just, you know, it makes it, you take it a lot less seriously, you take

yourself a lot less seriously and everything isn't quite the black and white. I have to succeed in

this or I'm a failure type of a mental environment that you find yourself in. And so travel is always

out there. So the exit ramp strategy. I like that. If you're going to do like some travel in your

home country, maybe saving that towards the back end is a great tip to kind of re-acclimate.

Yeah. If you will. Yes. Definitely. What are some of the other tips you guys want to share to like a

newbie nomads or people that are going on your long trip or longer trip like this as far as like

Sophia, you mentioned doing well with the flights, like whether you have some cheap flight

strategies, we talked about work away, any budget saving tips, packing tips, anything like that. If

you just kind of want to rattle off like a year's worth of wisdom for us. Absolutely. Yeah.

I'll go to like my go to things are if you can get some sort of budget planner on your phone.

They have acts for it. We used trail wallet. I don't know if we can plug it or not, but we used trail

wallet. It was really, really good. And I logged all of our expenses. It's really good for just keeping

you on track and knowing sort of where your where your money is going. And they say, you know,

some of the conventional wisdom is if you're not keeping track of what you're spending, you're spending

too much. For packing, I would say definitely carry on packing cubes. I don't know how anybody

travels without packing cubes indispensable. I traveled with three packing cubes, one for pants,

one for shirts, one for underwear and bras and stuff. We did the one pair of shoes flights.

If you were the type of person who likes to plan and produce flights, like I do, I just looked

every day, you know, keep track of it sort of keep the data in your mind. We used hopper flights,

flight scanner, Sky scanner. Sky scanner. So and Google flights just every day, I would just kind

of look, it takes 30 seconds and you sort of know what your options are. If you find a good flight,

I buy it. I'm a trigger puller. The chances that it's going to go down are I think it only

happened to us once where we bought a plane ticket. And then two days later, I got a notification that

that flight got cheaper. But almost always, it gets more expensive. So, you know, my advice to people

buying flights is, you know, did you have certain notifications set up? Yeah. So on all those sites,

you can put notification, you know, give them your email and they'll send you notifications.

In Asia, it's, you can buy your tickets, you know, the week before and it's fine. In Europe,

I tended to buy our tickets three, three weeks or a month. Every so often, I could look two weeks

or a week before and it would, it would be cheap. But most of the time they get more expensive,

always flying out of major airlines. And if you're willing to fly in weird hours, those flights

are always cheaper. So I would say to people backpacking for the first time, if you are capable of it,

you know, plan to travel either early in the morning or late at night because we got like 20,

$20 tickets from Paris to Venice are like, I think left super early or something. But

a lot of people ask about phone. What did you guys do for phone service? We just took our

phones, but used them just as Wi-Fi devices. Okay. Yeah, we never got chips. We never got some

things. I got a SIM card in Vietnam because I was going to be alone on a motorcycle. And I,

that's true. I went on the recommendation from the Haslo staying at and the guy was kind of shady

and I thought this is kind of a bad idea, but I did it anyway. And my phone worked while I was in

Ho Chi Minh City and the second I left the city, it never worked again. So it was, I didn't have it.

What's app is a really good app that's internet based. You can download it onto your phone

and it works without a SIM card or anything. And then if like,

Teague downloads WhatsApp or my mom downloads WhatsApp, then it's sort of like a text device.

Yeah, I use that all the time. It's incredible. We use WhatsApp, we use MapsMe. MapsMe

I highly recommend it. Because then you can, it just downloads the maps and you don't have to

have any sort of service or anything. And that works really well. I mean, I navigated Vietnam using

MapsMe. You can pin locations and send pins. But yeah, I mean, the phone thing may be worth it

if you're going to be in one area, but we're moving around a lot and it was going to be pretty

expensive to either get a plan that would work for that. I mean, and the truth is that so many

places have Wi-Fi now. I mean, Cambodia, little tiny, you know, restaurants have Wi-Fi. Like,

you're never really that far from Wi-Fi. So I remember that the phone thing was a great stress to

me before we left. But once you get on the road, you're never more than five minutes from some Wi-Fi.

So as long as you just have your phone and can connect to the internet, if you have WhatsApp,

if you have email, I mean, it's really fine. It's so much easier than you think it's going to be.

Yeah. Do you guys have a site you want to share or anything? Were you blogging about the trip

or anything like that? We were. We're not currently. We've been back for a few months. And I think,

yeah, we don't really have. We have had an Instagram handle, but it'll be for our next trip.

Yeah. That we're planning to share this whole experience.

Yeah. We just missed you, Jason. Well, I missed you guys. I was so thankful that we were able to hook up

here this year plus later and catch up with you guys and do it all in one episode. This is like

you guys have made one of my dreams come true. It's a light put an episode together like this. I

just think it's really awesome to see. And here, I should say, you know, your unique journey before

that journey, before the journey that we talked about. And then now after. And wow, I mean,

I know you guys have a million stories to tell. And we could keep going on. But like, yeah,

I first of all, just once again, congratulations on the engagement on the trip. Thank you.

Everything you guys have done. And it's so cool that, you know, travel is important to both of you.

And now you've had these experiences together. And obviously that led to even more togetherness.

We made it. We're alive. We lived. We can do it. You can too. That's great. Final words of wisdom,

right? Final words of wisdom. Yeah. Do you have anything else to add to that?

Take a tiny pack. Get the pack back. You think you need and get the next size down.

You're going to be so much happier. You're back too big. You're back too big. I promise you.

We would see people. We would see people with like a backpack, a smaller backpack,

and then like a tiny your bag, and then like a purse. And it's like, I don't know what you have

in there. It sounds like one of those Russian doll situations.

If you let, if you're willing to just sort of let the vanity go and travel with a smaller pack,

it makes your whole life so much easier. We did it for a year. And I think, yeah, that would be

like our most valuable piece of advice. It's just like carry on size, tea used to go rock. I used

to torture you. That's so important. You need so much less than you think. Yeah. And if there's

anything you actually do need, they're going to have it wherever you're going. And I didn't think

of that when we went. I thought I was like packing like I was going to the moon. Yeah.

But you get, you know, if I was starting again, I would just fly to Bangkok with like my passport

and a toothbrush and just get everything there. That's my number one thing. Small pack, one pair of

shoes. That's okay. Okay. Great. Have fun. You guys shared so much. I mean, totally just

honest laying it all online on this podcast before and after. It's so great to catch up with you

both. And I hope that you come through Europe again, at least when I'm here or maybe I can come

through. You guys live in New Mexico right now. We live in New Mexico, but our long-term plan,

Jason, is in the next five years to move to Europe. Okay. So we'll come see you. Well, I would like

to come to New Mexico and get some air because it's cold here right now, but we always have a

place with us. Yeah. Well, I hope we cross paths soon. And yeah, I really,

truly appreciate your time. And thanks for sharing everything you have. And congratulations

on everything and welcome back home. And we'll keep in touch. Absolutely. Happy travels.

All right. Take care. Cheers.

There you have it. Just traveled through time and witnessed how powerful and transformative

travel can be. And I want to say thanks once again to Sophie and Tee. They really kick started

me in the direction of recording more episodes like this for you. Again, they take a lot of

time, but well worth it in the end. And this was the first one. I hope you enjoyed listening to

this highlight from the archives. Two more things before you roll out of here. I got to answer

that question quickly at the top of the show. How do you speak picture thinking to accomplish all

of your travel goals and more not to go too long-winded on this. But when I talk about big picture

thinking, I'm talking about taking like the birds I view and looking at things as big chunks of time.

And it's really easy to get caught up in the smaller picture, right? A good example of that is

knowing when you quit your job to travel the world that the next week you're not going to have a

paycheck or the next three weeks or the next four weeks. And that's scary. I mean, you have to take

that seriously. That's no joke. And I'm not saying this to like, you know, downplay any of the small

picture things that happen. But when you zoom out and you look at the big picture and you're working

towards a vision or towards your dream or something else, you know, maybe that big thing in the small

picture becomes a small thing in the big picture. Another example might be when I took off to

go to college, I didn't really even think much about it. I was just like, hey, I'm just going to go

into this debt and spend four years at this school. And it's not like I regret it and I value my

education, of course, and I'm so grateful that I that I went and had the experience. And I think it

was something I needed for myself. But at the same time, it's like, I didn't even question it. It

was just kind of what everybody did. And it's just what I thought I was supposed to do. And that's

a huge chunk of time. And it's really easy to kind of just fall into those commitments just because

it's kind of like, hey, that's kind of what you do without actually taking a step back to think

about the big picture and to question it, you know, is it really something you want to do? Is this

the best used to my time? Is this the best use of my money? Is this the best place for me to be

right now in my life? Just because it seems like the right thing to do or society says it's the

right thing to do doesn't necessarily mean it's the best thing to do. What if I took the same

amount of money and, you know, educated myself through online courses and used that money to travel.

So I was educating myself around something else I was passionate about and working on that craft

while I was getting a travel experience. I mean, there are a lot of different ways to do things as

my point. And getting caught up in the small picture and the minutia things is can be a trap. It

doesn't mean that those things shouldn't be taken seriously or those aren't real challenges to

overcome. It just means that it's easier to make big decisions, I think, when you're looking

at the big picture. And it's easier to create a vision for yourself as well. And if you think

about it, I mean, if you imagine a foggy day and you're down on the ground, it's hard to discern

where you're at. But if you rise above the fog, you get some perspective. And then you can see

where it's clearing. Maybe you see across to the horizon or it opens up or whatever. I mean,

it's just a metaphor. But the point is it allows you to see your own vision and allows you to see

maybe some potential solutions to challenges that you may not have considered before. So I like

zooming out and taking that big picture thinking approach when I'm trying to figure out what I'm

going to do with this next chunk of my life or whatever because knowing and understanding my

past and how I can now reflect on chunks of my life and how I've spent them and what it's done

for me in hindsight. But I didn't know at the time. And there were certain things that were

challenging at the time, but ended up being good for me or helpful in some other way. Of course,

it's hard to understand those things until you experience them. But either way, at some point,

I think I figured out that thinking about the big picture was more helpful than

concentrating on all of the various challenges of the present moment or at least

letting them overwhelm me to the point of inaction. So that's what it has done for me. And I

just wanted to share some thoughts around big picture thinking with you today. And just always

a gentle reminder here. But I love to hear from listeners. I mean, I make this show for you. I'm

not making this for myself. I'm standing here by myself in my little loft studio. But I'm talking

to you. I mean, we're hanging. You are why this show exists. So please get in touch. Jason

that's here to travel.com. Let me know what you're up to. I'd love to share these stories with

the community so we can all help each other learn and grow. That's what this is all about. Speaking

of learning and growing, I am going to leave you with a quote. And it's from a book I am reading.

I mentioned that I'm reading a book. It's very appropriate to this episode because the book is

called Transitions. Making sense of life's changes. There's a revised 25th editions. This is

an older book. But really timeless. I'm reading it right now. And this is going to put a nice

bow on the episode. I would say because transitions happen throughout our lives. And this book has

even illustrated some that are common to certain ages. And it's brought up a lot of questions.

And it's made me reflect on some of the transitions I've made. Not just my transitions to travel.

But other transitions out of, say, a nine to five job out of being a nomad and into living

a sort of regular life, transitioning to being married, to having children's all these things

happening. And transitions are part of life. And if we can learn to manage them in a way,

that feels empowering to us, I think that's a huge skill or maybe a huge thing. I don't know if

I call it a skill, but it could be an important thing to be aware of knowing if you are in fact

going through a transitional period now, what that might mean, and how to kind of treat yourself,

how to think about the situation. What it means, there are a lot of questions. And I wanted to leave

you with this quote that I just highlighted from the book the other day. And in the book, he says,

finding out what it is time to let go of often provides the way to initiate a transition

meaningfully. So he's talking about initiating transitions here. Unfortunately, people are more likely

to ask what new thing they can add to their lives. Even though they may get an interesting answer

to that question, they won't be able to use it to make a meaningful transition because people

have to start with endings, letting go of whatever it is time to let go of before they can make

new beginnings. If they fail, they find that even great ideas and quote really exciting

possibilities simply do not help them. So start with this question, what is it time to let go of

in my own life right now? And I found that poignant in a lot of ways, letting go of something,

you can't really get into the transitional phase properly until you let go of the sort of phase

that you were moving on from. And I'll leave it at that. A lot of these things obviously up to

interpretation based on what's going on in your own life. And that's what I'd like to do here,

is kind of give you some food for thoughts, everybody's in their own different situations,

having their own transitions going on right now or not. But you can take with this from this episode

what you want, what's going to help you. So I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks so much for spending time

with this podcast and with me today, a wonderful day, smile, and make it a great one. Take care

and I'll chat soon. Peace and love to you.