Hello! Welcome back to my blog. Its been about a year and a half since I’ve posted anything and I’m very happy to be back because that means I’m traveling again.

So I did a big thing this week, actually a few big things:

1. I resigned from my job to pursue one of my dreams of traveling the world without a return date
2. I packed all my belongings into a Uhaul and moved them into storage at my brother/uncle’s house in Ohio
3. I made it through one year since my mom passed away

Phew, all very big milestones to say the least. It was an emotional week. I know I’m in a very unique place in my life to be able to make this dream happen. I have the finances, the time and few responsibilities at this point in my life and it’s very unusual for someone to have all three align at the same time. I plan to do a weekly recap while I’m traveling to keep everyone updated so let’s dive into week one.

See you soon North Carolina

Over the past month I’ve had several meet ups with my friends in North Carolina to say farewell. Durham really does feel like my second home so I will definitely be back.

My last days of work

Here are some pictures from my last days of work in PASS clinic.

Moving day

I finished work on Friday 10/28 and packed up a Uhaul on Saturday 10/29. My brother Joe flew down from Ohio to help me move, and my friend Zainab brought some of her family to help me out as well. Thank you Zainab! Seriously could not have done it without this crew. We had to walk everything down three flights of stairs (no elevator) and then organize it in the Uhaul. It took about 2-3 hours.

Ohio

It felt very strange to be moving my things back into my childhood home, but I’m really happy to be back and I’m looking forward to spending more time with my family over the coming months. I’ll be using Ohio as a home base in between my trips so I wanted to have all my things nearby. Conveniently my brother/uncle have extra rooms that they don’t use so I picked the largest one and loaded my things in.

Unloading the truck was so much easier than packing it up. There are only 4 steps into my brother/uncle’s house and it took less than an hour with four people. Thanks for helping Ange!

Happy birthday Uncle Jim

My uncle turned 60 last month and we had a surprise party for him while I was home this week so I could participate in the celebration. It was great, he didn’t see it coming at all and was completely surprised!

Mom’s one year

I also want to acknowledge that last week marked one year since my mom passed away from lung cancer. This played a huge role in my decision to start this journey because if she was sill alive I wouldn’t be doing this right now. When she was sick and going through cancer treatment I didn’t want to travel and be too far away in case things got worst quickly. Which they did unexpectedly and I was able to fly home immediately and be there for her in a way that was really important to me.

Her death made me realize that I didn’t want to wait any longer to pursue dreams that I’ve had on the back burner like taking time off to travel without a return date. She had a lot of things she wanted to do after she retired and she never got the chance. It really broke my heart for her and I thought to myself I don’t want to have those same regrets in the end. So why am I waiting? To save more money? To meet the right person first?

The idea of waiting any longer suddenly became unbearable and that was the turning point to beginning this journey.

Next stop

So what’s up first? Japan with my brother for three weeks! Let the adventure begin.

Leave me a comment below 🙂