After an epic five-day journey including 4×4, bus, truck, ox cart, wading through rivers, trudging through bogs, and a blissful speedboat, I finally arrived in Andavaodak, Madagascar. I would spend my next three months here, diving, researching, and working in a remote paradise. This was the farthest point on the planet I have ever been, away from civilization and, as I was soon to find out, far away from proper medical care. The trip started out wonderful, diving or boat marshaling in the morning, studying in the early afternoon, capped off by football games on the sandy white beaches.

It was that trip though that changed my life. While I was enjoying that paradise, I was diagnosed with a corneal ulcer, I was to be administered antibiotic eye drops and given Codeine for the pain. However, things got worse, much worse, very quickly. Faced with the very real possibility of going blind, I had to orchestrate an emergency evacuation – in the middle of a hurricane.

Nothing prepares you for watching your own eye be cut open.

Nothing prepares you for an operation in a dinghy room in the third world.

And nothing prepares you for having it done by a doctor partially paralyzed by a stroke.

The only unfortunate thing in all this is that it took the loss of my vision to begin to see this more clearly.

Bart Skorupa recovered from the third world surgery and can now see fine, but that experience changed the trajectory of Bart’s life and career. He had to rely upon locals and missionaries for help. He only had the supplies that the locals had available and from that experience he decided that he wanted to help communities like the one that helped him.

He and Kyle Maclaren Miller founded a 501c3 charity working to create a world beyond poverty by investing in groundbreaking ideas, empowering local leaders, and engaging communities.

Groundwork Opportunities (GO) identifies and partners with local leaders in the developing world who have designed sustainable programs to address community-based issues, such as a lack of clean water, healthcare, or education. Once a partnership is established, GO provides the community with the start-up capital and guidance needed to turn their vision for a better world into a reality that will scale across multiple countries.

We first learned of GO thanks to a friend introducing us to GO’s volunteering opportunities in Africa. Then we found out that not only were Bart and Kyle offering some great opportunities for people to help and get involved, but they were offering volunteering for free. This is rare, and we are very excited to introduce GO to our Meet, Plan, Go! audience.

Listen to Bart’s complete eye ulcer story in full in this NPR interview – Blood and Faith.

And don’t find yourself in a situation like Bart’s without insurance. See how World Nomads can get you covered.

Learn more about Groundwork Opportunities and volunteering in our post “Volunteering Vision“.

I have been an avid supporter of Groundwork Opportunities (GO) since it was founded in 2008. I had just moved to San Francisco and I wanted to get involved in the community by volunteering for a local non-profit. I was first introduced to GO because a close friend of mine, Jennifer O’Connor, had just started working as their Development Director.

Heather's fundraising supported building beehives for a Ugandan village

She invited me to attend their first fundraising event and I instantly was attracted to their mission to create a world beyond poverty by investing in groundbreaking ideas, empowering local leaders, and engaging communities. The more I learned about GO’s mission and all of the diverse community led projects they were involved in, the more passionate I became about this organization. GO’s 100% to cause donation model and transparency was so inspiring that I wanted to do more than just donate or attend their events; I wanted to volunteer, fundraise, engage my network of friends/colleagues, and leverage my professional skills to increase the scope of its operations.

This past June, I joined GO’s racing team and became a GO champion. I chose to run the San Francisco Half Marathon on July 31, 2011 (my first race to date) and individually fundraise on behalf of GO. GO supports a model development farm in Masaka, Uganda that teaches other farmers and communities how to bring lasting food security to their homes, businesses and organizations. The model farm is used both as a training center and a community center for all program participants and gives farmers the skills they need to get out of poverty PERMANENTLY.

In an effort to build 30 beehives that would help 10 farmers to grow honey and get out of poverty forever, I focused my campaign to raise $1,000 to do just that. The support I received during my fundraising was remarkable! I was so humbled by everyone’s generosity and I ended up raising over $2,100, which ended up being enough to build 50+ beehives. Despite a foot injury during my training, I was able to cross the finish line with a smile on my face and know that I specifically ran those miles for the lives in Uganda that would be impacted forever.

Volunteers helped construct the beehives

Volunteering for GO has been an amazing and rewarding experience on both a social and professional level. I have strengthened my communication, negotiation, marketing and event planning skills. Volunteering has enabled me to be more connected with the local San Francisco philanthropic community and various business networks, while building lasting relationships that share my positivity and passion with my coworkers and customers.

As a result of my philanthropy efforts, I was recognized by many of my colleagues at Thomson Reuters, as well as the CEO, who presented me with a company Community Champion Award this past October. The best part was the award was a grant donation for GO! Through my ongoing volunteer work at GO, I have learned the phrase “You Give What You Have” which, in my view, means that whether someone only has a $1 to spare, advice to give, or volunteers their time, it all really makes a difference in helping those in need. With GO, I have learned we can demonstrate the power of how just one person can make a difference and help change the world.

Heather will be visiting Uganda this summer to see the impact of her project

Learn more about Groundwork Opportunities and volunteering in our post “Volunteering Vision“.

I first started fundraising with Groundwork Opportunities (GO) in the summer of 2008. The first fundraiser, actually. Over a beer and a couple of bar napkins, Bart showed me his and Kyle’s idea for what they were trying to accomplish. It wasn’t going to take much to convince me. I’d come from a background of organizing, was working in education, and was just getting my photography career going. We decided to throw a party at One Rincon Hill. Our goal was a few thousand dollars. It was going to change people’s lives.

Over the years I helped coordinate events. Throw more fundraisers. I auctioned off photos to help raise money and it gave me confidence to continue to work at building this career while working a full-time job. I watched Bart give himself to this thing entirely and that helped me keep going when I had no idea where I was headed.

We talked about my going into the field at some point. I really wanted to make that happen. Not just because I love to shoot and travel, but because I thought I was missing something fundamental by living my life on this side of the planet and helping to change someone else’s life on the other side. I believed whole-heartedly in what GO was doing, and what I was helping them to do, but it felt unfinished for me, personally. I knew that I was never going to truly understand what kept these people going day after day after day if I didn’t go out there into the world to see what this is really about. And to see who it’s about.

It was in a conversation about something unrelated that Kyle made a passing comment about making a trip to East Africa. That was in the spring of 2011. He ended up not making that trip. But, after eight weeks of planning, I had enough gear and enough time off to do it.

To explain what it was like to arrive in places that are war torn and filled with joy, it just doesn’t work in formats like this. Imagine the most moving moments of your life. The times when you realized that there was simply no way you could possibly exist, the you who you are, without other people. It was something like that. When I arrived home I had a difficult time understanding what was happening, or how the streets could be so clean, and calm, or how they could even exist at all.

I found myself in awe of what, before I left, was common-place. Literally staring, blank-faced, in the middle of streets. I also found myself in elevators with people not talking, or looking at one another. I found myself slipping back into craving things. The best that I can sum up volunteering in the field is that I think of my life now in two pieces. I think of my life before I went into the field with GO, and I think of everything I want it to be after that experience.

My husband, Jim, and I have always loved travel and adventure. He held various exciting jobs before we met from working ski lifts on Mt. Hood to being a crew member on a fish processing boat in Alaska. I grew up taking near yearly road trips around the United States with my family as well as living in four different states by the time I was 13 years old.

When we got married in 1990 we knew we wanted to explore the world but had a normal “American” preconceived notion of how holidays work. I started working in the travel industry and, in fact, we did start seeing the world in one to two week intervals. In 2003 we had been to 20 countries on five continents but we felt like we weren’t truly experiencing the places we were merely visiting. One or two weeks at a time were simply not sufficient.

Around that time I was searching for airline tickets and found the website that would alter the course of our lives… BootsnAll. Sean Keener and the crew were some of the first ones out there promoting extended travel and had some fantastic resources. We started reading other travelers blogs and stories, researching where we’d like to go and starting to think this was something we really wanted to do.

We, very fortunately, sold our house in spring 2007, right before the markets crashed, and embarked on an amazing, exotic, frustrating, fascinating, challenging trip. We covered 19 countries over the course of 14 months, exploring at our leisure, moving on when we were ready instead of rushing to see as much as possible in a limited amount of time.

Like many people I had always been torn between two lives; my career ambitions and longing for stability and a comfortable life was constantly battling against my love of travel, living life to the full and breaking the mold. I decided last winter, aged 29, that it was now I never. I needed to stop fighting the latter and give my adventurous side a chance to explore. So, I agreed to a six month sabbatical with the director of the marketing agency and headed to South America, planning to travel for three months, (and here’s where my sensible side refused to totally give up the fight!) and put the rest of my time to gain a skill, trying to learn Spanish in Buenos Aires.

My first three months went by like a dream. Traveling with friends, acquaintances and total strangers, I fell in love with South America, its incredible landscapes and fascinating variety of cultures, whilst also becoming increasingly obsessed with getting to grips with Spanish. When I landed in Buenos Aires, my home for three months, my quest to learn Spanish intensified. Taking private lessons at Expanish, reading books, watching films and translating articles.

After a month and a half, and with the clock ticking on my time in Argentina, I began to worry about going home, and then my worry turned to panic and sleepless nights. Going home is always tough but it’s an inevitable part of traveling and just something I was just going to have to deal with. But this felt different. I had an incredible three months of traveling behind me and had made some headway in my quest to learn Spanish, but the thought of going back to England, back to the same job, sitting at the same desk made me feel as if it might all have been in vain. I didn’t feel ready.

Once I admitted to myself that I didn’t want to go, my ambitious and sensible side began fighting back. I had to find a job and learn Spanish properly. So that’s what I did. I got a marketing position in the Spanish school I had been studying at and spoke to my very understanding boss back home, informing him I wouldn’t be coming back as planned.

Making the final decision to stay wasn’t easy, as one would expect I went through many periods of doubt, questioning my decision, speaking to my friends back home on Skype to get their advice and questioning my new found friends in Buenos Aires. But ultimately the decision at this stage was one I needed to make myself.

The numerous questions going round in my head included:

- Why am I giving up such a great job back home?
- Will I still have a career when/if I decide to go back?
- How will I deal with missing my friends back home who are so important to me?
- Will I be able to make new friends?
- How will I cope with the huge salary cut?
- When will I next see my family?
- Can I cancel by British Airways flight?

However, once I had secured a job, and a flat, and made the final decision to stay, the transition from being a traveler on a six month sabbatical, to an expat living and working in Buenos Aires, became a whole lot easier. I was on a high, exhilarated at the thought of living in such a wonderful city on the other side of the world. Having time to explore it properly and become a local was exciting. Enjoying the beautiful weather, days by the pool, evenings on roof terraces meant I felt like I was on holiday all of the time, even during my walk to work. I was doing something I had always wanted to do but never thought I would.

Don’t get me wrong, there were times when I struggled, I missed having a solid group of friends, learning Spanish became challenging and frustrating, and the low wages and relatively high living costs in Buenos Aires meant I had to go back to basics. No more Saturday clothes shopping trips and nightly dinners out. But I have never once regretted the decision. If, and when I go back to London, I will go back a more confident person, with many new and wonderful friends and some great work experience under my belt. Plus I can speak Spanish, which has opened up a whole host of living and job opportunities!

Becky Hayes is a Londoner living in Buenos Aires and working for Expanish Spanish School in Argentina.

I can’t picture being where I would be today if I had not taken the leap and simply booked a flight to New Zealand. While smart financial decisions and pre-entry planning made returning easier, it was ultimately a positive attitude and helpful support from others that prepped me for the adventures that have followed.

Cate Starmer is the Online Editor at Fodors.com and a career breaker. She looks forward to returning to New Zealand with her husband Aaron to complete all of the Great Walks (and maybe bungee jump).

Here’s a round-up in case you missed any of them!

I always feel more lost upon returning home.

It probably doesn’t help that my husband and I live in a camp trailer, but to us wheels are freedom.

Our first trip in 2009 was the trip to begin all trips. We quit our jobs, sold our home on 80 acres, and leapt off the American grid for seven months around the world. When we came home we were faced with culture shock as well as a desire to live differently. I wanted to reduce my footprint, but see more places; live simply, but pick up more recipes and hobbies.

We had already accomplished the “art of non-conformity” in one sense, but we were ready to scare our friends and relatives just a bit more. Hey Mom and Dad, if you thought we were crazy then, wait until you see the camper we bought – to live in.

A year later we are still in our home on wheels living the life of gypsies. We travel where the work takes us then take a couple months off at a time to go where our hearts lead us. Most recently, we returned from two months through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Our friends and family expect it now.

When I come home, they aren’t surprised to see my bloodshot eyes brought on by a SCUBA diving accident. They are even less surprised to hear that it happened in Thailand. “Of course,” they say, almost scoffing. I feel a bit like Owen Wilson’s character in the Focker flicks; always onto a new adventure and coming off just a bit too Zen for anyone’s comfort level.

Although seven months is a little too long for my liking, I will never stop traveling. It’s not a bug; it’s a disease, but in the most positive sense. I return from my time abroad and see my world with new eyes. Minor irritations are just that: Minor. As for those friends and relatives that keep me at a distance so as not to catch my madness, well, I want to hold them closer than ever. I twist their arms to take weeks off from work, and if they aren’t ready for weeks then just days.

I can’t sit for a minute, though I could have laid on a beach for days on Koh Lanta. Sights from my old stomping grounds are both familiar like a baby blanket and different as a foreign country. I wear make-up and curl my hair – a far cry from the woman on the go that I left in Ireland two weeks ago. My two personalities of homebody and road warrior continue to move closer to one another as I morph into the one woman I see before me in the mirror.

I may be home, but home is quite relative these days. Though I miss the comfort of a foundation, it isn’t necessary. Travel takes sacrifice. I have chosen the road less traveled, and in turn, I make the road my home.

Appreciate the process of reaching your goals

Traveling is a passion for me and I’m fortunate to be working on launching my own travel related startup. However, this is only the beginning of the journey and I look forward to the challenges. But what I want to share is not about travel related entrepreneurship; but instead the “process” from where I was to where I am.

In 2000, I graduated college and entered the world of consulting. In 2005, I decided to take a sabbatical to travel. After returning to my job and working for 3 additional years, I moved to Spain for my MBA at IE Business School. But what does all of this have to do with traveling or anything at all? It turns out everything.

When to start traveling is always a hard decision for anyone. There are obvious time advantages in terms of age and family in the decision factor; but leaving a secure job is difficult within the American social norm. I was advancing professionally and had reached my initial goals in making manager at a global firm.

While proud of my accomplishments, the sensation was fleeting. Working diligently and logging long hours, I’d forgotten to take in the process. All I knew for so long was I wanted to make manager.

I also knew I wanted to take some time to travel around the world sometime in my life. Just like my managerial goals, I approached it logically. I wasn’t getting another title change soon, so why not start my journey.

It took me a long time to adjust to the travel life. I felt antsy with the thought that I had to “accomplish” something everyday. If I didn’t, I wasn’t taking full advantage of my time off. I believed I must succeed in a new goal everyday. But as any traveler knows, this is impossible. Through time, I learned that the world does not run at NYC pace, let alone American pace. Through the journey I learned little lessons about my travel style, when to go and when to stay, and who and what to trust. I put little thought and even less appreciation into the fact that I was learning. The transformation from binary thinking to process appreciation wasn’t planned or recognized. I didn’t set out to travel to contemplate, it just happened.

Only by the end of my journey did I begin reflecting on the five previous years as a consultant. I realized why the manager title was fleeting and why saying I traveled around the world meant nothing. What mattered was the little step-by-steps you take to get to where you are. Learning from your mistakes, accepting failure, and picking yourself up again. Goals change, and will constantly change, but how you as an individual reach those goals matter more. Making the conscious decision to appreciate the process becomes valuable in everything you do – be it the initial overpacking for your journey to starting your own company.

Sometimes you don't know what to expect

Re-entering I had a new recognition of my goals. Within a month of returning, I was asked to relocate to India, where I stayed for 7 months. Upon finishing that project, I began working in Munich. I took the opportunities that others feared taking because the role wasn’t in the eyes of the partners or professionally glamorous. I wasn’t successful at every turn; but, with the new approach I realized the failures were no longer black marks. This philosophy encouraged me to attend an MBA outside the US. It also led me to turn down monetarily rewarding job offers around the world to pursue launching my own business.

In travel, from beginning to end, and the re-entry to home and career, think of every moment and the steps you need to take. They will be difficult & frustrating and nothing will go according to plan. But by appreciating the process and understanding that it’s part of the goal, the rewards become evident, leading to your own happiness.

As for this moment, launching my own startup isn’t like what you read in the newspapers or see in movies. Many talk about the benefits of working for yourself in making millions or having more free time; but few talk about the multiple failures before reaching success. But the process of learning and adapting has been amazing. I expect to fail somewhere. I expect to get a rejection on a daily basis. This relates beyond entrepreneurship and into everything – from traveling to even finding that next career. You will get lost. You will have to change your plans. But by appreciating the step-by-step of your journey will make the rewards personally meaningful, which only carries forward socially and professionally.

Rich Yang is a NYC based travel tech entrepreneur who founded Street Mosaic, a social, real-time travel guide. Integrating the social interaction and photography element of travel, Street Mosaic gives users a fun way to share their spontaneous discoveries with other exploration-minded individuals. Users simply log on to discover what’s interesting, nearby, and recent and we help get you there. Simply take a picture, write a caption, and share with the community.

Rich checks his twitter often and loves to hear from you. Find him at @yangwave. Street Mosaic is still in developing and testing and open for product testers. Look for our free app in the iTunes App Store and on twitter @streetmosaic.

How to Write a Book About Your Travels

When travelers hear I’m writing a book about backpacking solo through Africa, they often confess that they, too, have dreamed about telling their travel story. “But I don’t really know how to go about it,” the traveler says. “How should I get started?”

Indeed, a book-length work can be daunting. But if you have a blog – and many travelers do – you’re already ahead of the pack. Blogging gets you in the habit of writing regularly and gives you an outlet for feedback, so you can get a sense for which stories resonate with readers.

So what’s the best way to turn your ideas into a book? Here’s how to get started on your travel memoir:

In between, we checked in with them to see how they were adjusting to life on-the-road and get some travel tips based on their road experience. One of the most exciting aspects of their trip was getting engaged and since their return, have already gotten married and moved to Miami! So we decided it would be a great time to check in.

You obviously survived traveling together for a year – having gotten engaged and married shortly after your return. What insight did you gain about your relationship while traveling?
We figured, if we survived this, we can survive marriage. Which, to us is the long-term commitment of being together and tolerant of each other all the time, while still staying in love. I had planned on proposing during the one year of traveling if we were getting along. And we did get along. Looking back on that journey now, after 7 months of being home, I still feel as though that was our best time together.

What advice would you give to other couples planning a career break?
We suggest not using a travel career break to find out if you are compatible. In our article 5 Tips for Traveling as a Couple we suggest that you each have a clear understanding of your travel preferences. There will always be compromise, but you don’t want to discover one loves hiking and camping while the other is a foodie and sun bather after you just landed in Guatemala.

Aracely – you originally quit your job but your employer asked you if you would be willing to do some consulting work during your travels. How did you juggle traveling and working? And now that you are back working full-time, how has the transition been?
Working on the road was almost the perfect set up. I had established projects I needed to complete and set time lines. This helped because all I needed to do was manage my own time. It also meant that we did have to keep some sort of schedule. Meaning, I needed to have reliable internet and access to “cabinas” to call in for conference calls at designated times during the month.

The biggest challenge was finding a reliable phone line in a quiet, private location. I was never completely disconnected from work, but having the income overruled any frustrations with that sentiment. The transition back was as smooth as it could be. I had the opportunity to ramp things up gradually. However, it is difficult to stay focused sometimes as part of me just wants to get back out there right now.

Jason – what are your career plans now and how did your break influence your decision?
My long-term travel journey absolutely influenced my decision regarding my future career plans. I am working full time on 2 Backpackers. It doesn’t pay enough to live off of right now, but we both feel we can make it work in the long term. After working 15 years I have saved enough money to invest in 2backpackers.com. That investment is mostly my monthly income, since I draw very little from the blog at this time.

I believe in approaching this venture like any other business. I have goals and timelines; if I can’t make it profitable in two years, then I will focus my attention elsewhere. Traveling on our own time has created this eagerness to work on my own time. When I want, where I want. When we traveled, we made our own decisions and hoped for the best. That is how I want my career to operate. I want to be my own boss, making my own decisions, and either suffering or benefitting from them.

What’s next for 2Backpackers – both the site and travel plans?
2Backpackers will continue to grow as a blog, gaining more followers and expanding our coverage beyond Central and South America. Our niche and hopefully our ticket to success will be our travel videos. Unable to produce much from the road, we now look to expand our library of HD travel videos by at least three a month. Aracely and I just returned from a press tour of San Antonio, Texas. We will take those opportunities when available, allowing us to continue to explore new places around the world. Our trips will be short, but exciting. Now living in Miami, we can’t wait to travel down to Key West. Neither of us have ever been.

FOLLOW JASON & ARACELY:
Website: 2Backpackers
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/twobackpackers
Twitter: @2backpackers

Trading in Your Backpack for the Briefcase
Cindy Peterson interviews her husband, Bill, about trading in his backpack for a briefcase again after 14 months of travel.

My husband Bill and I recently returned from fourteen months extended travel. When we stepped out of our corporate jobs in November of 2008, we both wondered what would be in store for us after our planned year of exploring the world. And as tempting as it was to continue our adventure living in a foreign country, or finding enough work to continue to travel like so many of the “career” travelers we envy, in the end we made the decision to re-enter life in the United States.

READ MORE

Reflection: Morgan’s Tale
In August of 2008, the Cooney Family set off on their year-long travels. Together with their three teenage sons, Mike & Catrell wanted their children to have a unique experience. “Our theory was to give our three sons a way to see the world, experience other cultures and appreciate what all of us tend to take for granted before they go to college. That experience, coupled with a good education, will almost assuredly put them on the road to success, regardless of the vocation they choose.”

Were they successful? Ask their son Morgan. READ MORE

Lisa Lubin’s New Business Card
Worried that taking a career break to travel can hurt your career? It can actually help enhance it.

Just look at Lisa Lubin’s new business card. It could literally read: Writer, Producer, Photographer, Editor, Blogger, Publicist, Travel Consultant, Video Consultant, World Traveler.

READ MORE

Career Break Doesn’t Equal Career Suicide
This is one of the topics that came up when the New York City panel for Meet, Plan, Go! got together to brainstorm what we would discuss at our recent event. We wanted to touch on “Why don’t more people take career breaks?” and in our encounters one of those reasons is career related.

See what the panel had to say about career fears. READ MORE

Getting Back in the Game
Prior to her career break, Alonna Scott worked for 6 years as a Computer Engineer at Hewlett-Packard in Boise, Idaho. In July of 2009 she began a one-year Leave of Absence from work to travel around the world with her husband. A few months after returning from the trip, she accepted a new engineering position with Seagate Technology and they moved to Boulder, Colorado.

See how when faced with a tough re-entry, Alonna turned to self-reflection to get her back in the game. READ MORE

In between, we checked in with them as they offered some travel tips they gained on the road as well as sharing frustrations most travelers face on the road but rarely speak about. It has now been several months since they wrapped up their travels and settled in to their new life in Edinburgh. So we decided it would be a great time to check in!

As part of your original career break adventure, you always planned to end in Edinburgh, Scotland. What transpired in the months since moving to Scotland?
Oh, yes, our great adventure was to start in the Cook Islands with a lovely sunset beach wedding, travel for 13 months (talk about an amazing honeymoon), and then end up in Scotland. To our great surprise we quickly found a lovely apartment right in the city. We thought, “wow, this is easy, we will have jobs in no time.”

I (Christine) found a volunteer job right off and we both proceeded to job hunt. Right away, we started hearing gloomy reports about the economy and prospective job cuts for the next couple of years as a way to deal with the deficit. We were still hopeful. We heard many Scots talking about the job market and how difficult it was to secure a job and how many people were already getting laid off in recent days. Seemed like everyone was singing the same song. Never mind, we were determined to make it work in good ol’ Edinburgh. After all, we shipped all of our worldly possessions there—we were committed.

We got involved in meetup.com, met some nice people and enjoyed the city. We even bought bikes and peddled til our heart’s content. Still, we were hopeful and continued to job hunt but as the months wore on, we started to wonder if and when we would actually get a job and how long our savings was going to hold out.

Paul contacted his old employer to see what was going on and to his surprise, he was offered a job with a significant raise. Although we had our hearts set on starting a new life in Edinburgh, we couldn’t pass up the offer and I was a bit homesick so we thought it would be the sensible thing to do. We are excited to get established in Seattle and who knows, when the British economy starts rebounding, we may just find ourselves back in the UK.

What emotions are you both going through facing this move? Nerves? Anticipation?
I think the best way to describe our emotions is bittersweet. We really wanted it to work in Edinburgh but it didn’t work this time. And, it is nice to come back to a lovely city like Seattle for which we are thankful for the opportunity of Paul’s job. We are looking forward to reconnecting with our friends there and enjoying the natural beauty of Seattle. Paul has already started his job and is getting into the swing of things and I’m hopeful and looking forward to starting a new job as well.

What lessons did you learn during your career break travels that will help you with this transition back to the States?

We learned so much through our career break:

• The more we see in the world, the more we realize is out there to see
• Community is more important and fulfilling than money
• We like and work well with structure as well as being spontaneous
• Being together 24/7 is not as easy as we thought it would be
• Long term travel is a lot of work with a lot of benefits
• 13 months of travel goes very fast
• There is a whole community of travel bloggers out there that are pretty darn cool and have great advice

I would encourage people to experience long-term travel. It is a lot easier than you think. It’s like anything else, you just save up for it (which means going without for a while) but the payoff is great—so many rich experiences and memories. You will spend much more than you thought you would but what’s money when you are doing something extraordinary. Go for it!!

An update since this post was written:
We are settling in quite well – really happy to be home. We are excited to buy a condo and car and actually settle down for the first time in our lives.

Paul is loving his job and they are so happy to have him back – no great surprise there as it was a perfect fit. I’m looking for jobs as well and reconnecting with friends.

Life is good.

Since they’ve returned, their career break experience continues to inspire their life choices. And when faced with a tough re-entry, Alonna turned to self-reflection to get her back in the game.

When I left my job in 2009 to travel for a year, I hardly gave a second thought to what it would be like to come home at the end. I was fortunate to get a Leave of Absence from my employer, and I assumed that I’d return to work refreshed and motivated. But what I didn’t realize is that taking a break and traveling would change my attitude and perspective on life.

Returning from a Leave of Absence
Coming home after my round-the-world trip was exciting – it felt great to unpack for the last time, sleep in my own bed, and choose from a huge closet full of clothes every day. But the end of my Leave of Absence loomed before me, and I knew I only had two choices: quit or return to work. Considering my dwindling bank account balance, I chose the latter.

Unfortunately, the transition back to work was much harder than I expected. Although I loved engineering, had a great job and awesome coworkers – I wasn’t ready for the change in daily routine and the stress of long to-do lists. I also felt a loss knowing that my trip-of-a-lifetime was officially over. And most of all, with a lack of direction and purpose I was left feeling completely unmotivated. I even questioned whether my career break had done more harm than good.

Luckily, all it took to get me back in the game was a little time and some self-reflection.

Making a Change
Once I figured out how my career would contribute to my goals in life, my day-to-day activities had meaning, and I started to get excited about my future again. I quickly realized that I needed a change, and after a few months of searching I found a great job in a place that I have always wanted to live. Taking a career break forced me to step back and think about what I wanted in a career and life. This new self-awareness and confidence helped me “sell myself” in interviews and better articulate my skills and interests. In the end, the process of returning from my career break was almost as life-changing as making the decision to do it in the first place.

A New Perspective on Life
Originally I thought of this trip as a fun adventure that would leave me with great photos and memories. But reflecting back on this past year, I’m surprised by how much I’ve changed. It took a while to recognize it, but the more I find myself in conversations on topics like career, life priorities, global issues, different cultures, or politics, the more I realize that my entire perspective on the world and my life has evolved. Traveling outside of the country for an extended period will change your perspective on the world. Similarly, spending a significant amount of time away from your normal life will force you to re-evaluate your priorities. The following are a few insights I’ve gained from my career break:

• We should all strive to spend both our time and money in a way that reflects our priorities in life. My priorities are experience-based: traveling, spending time with friends and family, and doing activities I enjoy like biking and snowboarding.
• I can control the kind of life I want to live. Waiting for opportunities to come to me won’t do it, I need to decide what I want and make it happen.
• My career supports my life, not the other way around.
• Owning too much “stuff” makes my life feel cluttered. Living out of a backpack made me realize how little I really need to get by.
• Learning about different cultures taught me even more about my own.
• As I traveled, I learned to appreciate many things about the United States, and also discovered that there are many things we could do better.

Prior to her career break, Alonna worked for 6 years as a Computer Engineer at Hewlett-Packard in Boise, Idaho.  In July of 2009 she began a one-year Leave of Absence from work to travel around the world with her husband.  A few months after returning from the trip, she accepted a new engineering position with Seagate Technology and they moved to Boulder, Colorado.  For now she is happy to stay put and enjoy all of the incredible scenery and activities that this state has to offer. You can read about their past and future adventures on Ben and Alonna: Living Vicariously Through Ourselves.

And this is one of the topics that came up when the New York City panel for Meet, Plan, Go! got together to brainstorm what we would discuss at our recent event. We wanted to touch on “Why don’t more people take career breaks?” and in our encounters one of those reasons is career related.

So what did our panel have to say about career fears?

Brook Silva-Braga (A Map for Saturday) – More Broadly Educated
First off, there WILL be job openings when you come home and your trip can certainly be positioned as a resume builder (which may or may not be BS) but without doubt the trip will make you a more broadly educated person, someone who can hold an intelligent conversation on more topics. Your geography will be better, your understanding of foreign markets will improve, your ability to relate to people of diverse backgrounds will be developed. In short, you will be a better, more attractive employee in virtually any field.

Jennifer Baggett (The Lost Girls) – Be Strategic
Although New Yorkers tend to have a bit overachieving/workaholic tendencies, many had traveled before or taken huge risks in their life (including moving to the city in the first place), so there was a certain respect level of my decision among my work peers – and a lot of friendly jealousy as most of them fantasized about doing the same thing.

Of course even though my bosses were really supportive (they even said they’d hold my job if I came back after only 3 months and would at least help me look for work if I stayed gone the full year), I still worried that I might be committing career suicide. But I think there were two main factors that ensured that didn’t happen: First, I was strategic about when I chose to leave. I had been in the TV industry long enough to have laid a solid foundation for a successful career/had established a good reputation in the industry and was at a position level where it made it easier to take a bit of time off. And second, I was able to do things on the road that ended up being marketable skills/filled the travel gap on my resume (having an award-winning travel blog, writing articles for magazines, volunteering, etc…).

Michael Bontempi (Briefcase to Backpack) – Return with Confidence
Worrying is not how I would categorize the feeling upon my return. If anything, I was clearer about the path I wanted to take, the role I was looking for and the type of companies I wanted to work for.  My head was clearer which made me more confident in my ability to explain my work experience and qualifications.

Also, for me it depends how you define the word career. For this question I would ask, what is more worrisome – the person who invests time in themselves trying to find the right career, or the person who looks back on their past career and says ” You know what I always wanted to do or be?”

Sadly I know a lot more people in the latter category.

Sherry Ott (OttsWorld) – Real Life MBA
I was in a career that I wasn’t in love with, but timing and good luck put me on the path to IT back when I was 22.  Fourteen years of not loving it, but loving the salary, and climbing the ladder. Then I realized I hated the ladder; and it all changed.

I left my career with no plan of what I would do when I came back, just hoping it all would organically come to me. After breaking free from the confines of the cube and corporate mentality, I was able to finally think, be creative, and open my eyes to different ways of making a living.  Everyone gets their MBA, but I think a hands-on global experience can set you apart from others in the workforce. I’ve NEVER met a person who has taken a career break to travel and not been able to find a job upon returning…NEVER. The great thing about world travel is that you learn how to be flexible, scrappy, patient, and creative…all of this is needed to find a job, it’s not easy…but neither is traveling in the Gobi Desert by camel cart.

Brian Peters (No Debt World Travel) – Don’t Burn Bridges
I was open to anything that would happen to me career-wise. I will say never, ever burn bridges. The same people you work with now will be your best points of contact if you decide to come home and look for work. If they like you and trust you, they will keep their eyes and ears open. Most jobs are found through connections and word of mouth. This is even more the case if you’ve been out the country for an extended period of time.

Marie Elena Martinez (Marie’s World) – Similar Field, Different Career
[Similar to Brian Peters – Don’t Burn Bridges] It was through a maintenance of my PR contacts and book world contacts that I’m back in media, though on the creative side.  All of my old colleagues have helped me launch a writing career. I’m indebted to them and their support.

Michaela Potter (Briefcase to Backpack) – Career Transition
I’ve planned my career breaks around times when I was ready to change or move onto a new career. So I used the break in between to travel. During my first break in 2001, I already had a consulting gig lined up and they knew that I would be traveling for three months when they offered me the job. In 2006, I was ready to go back to the non-profit world, but first volunteered in Peru for that summer. That experience led me to get a job in the international volunteer industry. And after our break in 2007, I decided to finally pursue a freelance career.

What are your career fears?

As summer rapidly comes to a close, I am reminded that it was four years ago now that I quit my full time job and, in essence, my full-time career in television. Since university, I’d worked in broadcast television, starting after my sophomore year with my first internships, including one at “Late Night with David Letterman.” I graduated college and worked full time ever since, at three different television stations – directing, editing, writing and producing. I built a ‘career.’ I was stable and secure. I was saving my pennies and hard earned money…for ‘something.’ I had a bi-weekly direct deposit check, a really good health insurance package, a retirement plan that I funded generously, and some stock shares in my parent company: Disney.

Then in the summer of 2006, I quit. I gave it all up. And I don’t regret it one bit.

Networking on the Road
I didn’t know what I would do when I ‘returned.’ I wasn’t sure, but I was open to new things and willing to just see what happened. I suppose I’ve always been lucky to feel confident in my resourcefulness and abilities and that I would always find ‘something.’ So I really didn’t worry all that much. I remember back in college learning about something called “networking.” Yuck. It seemed so phony or uncomfortable. Now networking is all I do. But I don’t think of it like that. I love talking to people – learning what they do and how they got there. When I traveled, that’s all I did – meet people and ‘network’ in a sense, which landed me random opportunities from working for Turkey’s largest media conglomerate, the Dogan Group, (I just proofread some presentations, but it was still amazing to just ‘fall’ into that from chatting with people) to doing research at the University of Cologne (through a friend) to landing a year-long freelance gig (which basically funded all my travels from then on, allowing me to break even) doing publicity for an English Immersion program based in Madrid.

Many people asked me, “What about the economy?”

Bottom line, I make much less than I did previously, but it frankly doesn’t matter and hasn’t changed my quality of life at all.

I just thought there couldn’t be a better time for me to be out traveling. In a way, when I returned was perfect because the economy was picking up a bit and there were more jobs available. Don’t get me wrong, I applied for dozens of freelance gigs in New York and Chicago and rarely heard back if at all. But of course, there is that persistence gene I do seem to possess which helps a lot too.

For the most part, I knew these three or so years away would enrich my resume, not subtract from it. I’d heard this before from others and believe wholeheartedly that it is true. The skills I learned – negotiating, planning, organizing, being independent, etc., would absolutely help me in work and life in general.

Finding Work Back Home
So now that I am back – what am I doing? I find this question hard to answer succinctly. While I was gone, I built a blog and a brand and through it have naturally made so many contacts and connections, from which random leads and jobs have come. So before I even returned I was already building a new ‘career.’ I was lucky to already have a background as a writer and photographer, so while my blog was a way to document things and entertain my readers, it also acted as a roadmap or idea generator for larger articles that I could pitch to newspapers, magazines, and other websites.

I managed to get travel articles published in the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the Dallas Morning News among others. I was very fortunate to have a few photo essays bought by Smithsonian Online. And then there were the opportunities that just ‘fell in my lap’ and came to me because someone found my blog. The editor on Encyclopedia Britannica online contacted me to be a weekly travel blogger for them and they also ended up buying about 100 of my photographs. An editor and publisher of English textbooks in Germany found my blog and also contacted me to freelance for them throughout the year writing travel ‘columns’ for their textbooks. And of course, now the blog itself makes a modest amount of money from advertising.

But, while this was all enough to fund more travel, it was not sufficient to pay for rent or bills. Well, it may have been sufficient, but was too ‘risky’ for me. I didn’t think I could handle worrying each month about paying my rent. So I was very lucky to go back to television producing and found a perfect freelance gig a few days a week for WGN-TV’s new food show, Chicago’s Best. I love food. And I love Chicago. And I had been doing similar work at my former job, so it was a no brainer.

Bottom line, I make much less than I did previously, but it frankly doesn’t matter and hasn’t changed my quality of life at all. I make enough. I have freedom to explore new possibilities and also the freedom to still travel. I seem to be cobbling together a new career and adding more titles to my business card.

It could literally read:
Writer, Producer, Photographer, Editor, Blogger, Publicist, Travel Consultant, Video Consultant, World Traveler

I’m happy to report that the term ‘Career Break’ seems to be popping up all over these days! I hope that has a little to do with our upcoming Meet, Plan, Go! event. Regardless of why – we are happy to see people talking, writing, and reporting about them. However, this month’s career break news seems to be a mixed bag of positive and negative! What is a career breaker to believe?!

Let’s start with the disturbing headlines. I woke up and saw this headline in my inbox one day:

Women told to forget about babies if they want to scale career heights
Headhunters’ survey suggests that taking even a few months’ career break for the sake of children will harm prospects of winning a top executive job.
- That’s the message from a new survey, conducted by InterExec, which showed that 53% of those questioned said that women who want a big business post should give up all thoughts of maternity leave – or what they prefer to call a “career break”.

Sure – I know they are talking about a maternity leave career break as opposed to a sabbatical/travel career break – but they are both breaks in your career. If motherhood isn’t an acceptable reason to take a break in your career then it’s going to be darn hard to sell breaking from your career to travel the world. Therefore I put this in the category of disturbing.

However as you consider taking a career break – consider the other point of view – the progressive point of view. Think about how a career break can actually build your skills to find an even better career upon returning. Regardless of why you put your career on pause, the benefits are still the same – you get some time to step away from the rat race and replenish.

Time away from your day to day work and desk duties is necessary. Just take this excerpt from an article about how time away from your cube is the cure for creative blocks.

As Jonah Lehrer writes in a recent Guardian piece, “Several new science papers suggest that getting away – and it doesn’t even matter where you’re going – is an essential habit of effective thinking.” Certainly, we’ve all experienced the feeling that work concerns are just less important the farther away we get from the office. Now there’s proof to back up the classic “out of sight, out of mind” expression.

The article talks about how getting away is essential for effective thinking. But adds more advantages to time away from your cubicle.

“Going even further, another study sparked by the productivity of expats like Nabokov, Hemingway, Yeats, Picasso, Gaugin, and Handel showed that not just traveling but living abroad for an extended period of time can improve our capacities for problem solving and creative thinking.”

Last I checked, employers are looking for great problem solvers and creative thinkers! So don’t hesitate to talk about these enhanced skills in your interview. You were actually expanding your skillsets when you were traveling or living abroad. Believe it. Promote it.

The real key to re-entry back into the workforce is BELIEVING that a career break is a positive career enhancing experience. If you don’t believe that yourself, then you’ll be eaten alive in your interview.

So I challenge you to forget about the first article about maternity ‘career breaks’ and focus on this one…the one that provides you the fuel for your interviews!

Here’s more ammo for your interview as you re-enter the workforce:

“It turns out that being exposed to cultures that function differently from our own – from language to social customs to public transport – awakens the brain, alerting it to a much broader range of possibilities for being, living, and making.”

So while most people are sitting at their cube year after year turning their brains to corporate mush, you can actually awaken yours by traveling!

What other skills do you think you gain from taking a career break and traveling?  Please share them with us!

TERESA:

Teresa in Peru

When life give you lemons, you don’t always have to make lemonade. What if you’re in the mood for iced tea? You envision your life to go one way, and it ends up another. All my life, I envisioned a cookie cutter lifestyle of going to school, starting my career and getting married before the age of 25. As my 24th birthday recently passed, I have yet to complete any of the three.

In early 2008, in my Senior year at St. John’s University, I lacked financial aid, decent credit and the motivation to finish school. For years, I was surrounded by the notion that you had to finish school as soon as possible before the rat race began. After working countless 9-5 jobs, bartending in between, moving in and out of many apartments in New York City, my life battery needed a recharge.

2010 became the year of travel and self-discovery. I spent 5 months traveling through South America getting a taste of the backpacking experience. It left me with a craving for more and the appreciation of people, culture and travel.

At times, I felt guilty for going on a grand adventure with baggage back home. But, I never felt so motivated and spiritually awakened by the sights of new places, the experiences with new people and the new-found adoration for my life sabbatical. It was the right time and just what I needed to get back on track.

As an aspiring writer; uniting my love for travel and writing brought me to Art of Backpacking as a way to channel this experience. Working with my longtime friend Mike, who embarked on his own journey in 2009, became the vibrant equation for a site dedicated to illustrating the Art of what else? Backpacking!

MIKE:

Mike in Bolivia

The greatest ideas can come from the even the most ironic spaces. A few years ago, I was enjoying my normal lifestyle; watching television at home with family. I got caught up watching “A Map for Saturday”; a pivotal documentary for backpackers to get the ideal glimpse of a world that would change my life.

There it was; my inspiration to see the world and travel. It seemed so far fetched as I was not yet a college graduate, but working full time at in the Corporate world of UPS. Stuck in the middle of student loans, car payments, credit card bills and one expensive lifestyle. And what worse way to realize this than in a cubicle; with my boring routine lifestyle that saw neither versatility nor exciting escapes.

Like any normal 20something; I enjoyed the nightlife and having fun. If I knew then what I knew now, I could have been backpacking for years! One small decision led me to quit my job and sell all my possessions, eliminate debt, and save over $10,000 to travel for 11 months.

Fast forward to May 2009 where I took off to Beijing, China to embark on a journey that would change me to my inner core. It became second nature traveling on a whim through Asia, Australia and South America; as if I’ve been doing it all my life. Traveling gave me identity, meaning and focus to give my life value and much needed color. I’m even returning to China this August (2010) to teach English for a year.

Opportunities to travel are possible and not unattainable. When you’re passionate about something; you find ways to make it happen. Sometimes you need a change of pace to truly discover what your life goal is. Mine is to travel and to share that love of travel with the world.

As good friends with the love of travel; we can agree that Art of Backpacking is our melting pot of thoughts, ideas and inspiration to provide to others who want to do as we’ve done. As young individuals, we reiterate the idea that it’s okay if you need a break. Don’t feel guilty for opening your eyes to what the world has to offer. There is no better time than right now!

Art of Backpacking will be co-hosting our Meet, Plan, Go! event in Philadelphia.

In August of 2008, the Cooney Family set off on their year-long travels. Together with their three teenage sons, Mike & Catrell wanted their children to have a unique experience. “Our theory was to give our three sons a way to see the world, experience other cultures and appreciate what all of us tend to take for granted before they go to college.  That experience, coupled with a good education, will almost assuredly put them on the road to success, regardless of the vocation they choose.”

Were they successful? Ask their son Morgan.

In the months leading up to the trip that would take our family across six continents and through 23 countries, we could not have imagined the things we would do, the people we would meet, or the places we would see. No book, TV show, movie, or story could have taught us what we would learn in the months of travel through Central and South America, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji.

A textbook would never give you the experience of watching the sunrise a top a Mayan pyramid set deep in a jungle or teach you how to make coconut curry while overlooking the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. There is absolutely no substitute for travel and having those experiences firsthand.

“We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.”  - John Hope Franklin

When my brothers and I were younger, our dad would show us a map and would teach us about other countries. We would always ask if we would ever go to these exotic places in Africa or the Inca ruins in Peru and he would say, “Yes, one day we will go.” When my parents first told me about a trip around the world it was as if my dreams came true. The mysteries of other countries have always held my thoughts.

I have always dreamt of learning about other cultures and new places. Even at a young age, I realized that watching the Travel or Discovery Channels would never fulfill my need to explore. The burning desire to wander to new lands cannot be quenched by anything other than through travel itself.

A day does not go by without me thinking about my family’s yearlong trek around the world. Smells, sights, and sounds bring my mind away from where I am, and back to where I have been; the billabongs of Australia, the bushland in Africa, the beaches of Brazil. The trip I took with my family was the best time of my life, we followed our dreams of travel and I encourage everyone to do the same! In fact, the dream is still alive and kicking inside of us. My twin brother and I are leaving in September for a three month expedition to Costa Rica and perhaps will visit a few adjacent countries as well.

As my mom and dad like to say, “Travel is the ultimate education.”, and my brothers and I are living proof that this statement is true.

Morgan, 19 years old, has now graduated from HS and is attending college in between traveling. His future plans are to work with animals and he has spent years volunteering at the Central Florida Zoo and Gatorland.

You can meet Morgan and the Cooney Family at Meet, Plan, Go! in Orlando on September 14, 2010. Be inspired by their world adventures and learn how you can follow your own dreams.

And as a photographer, I’ve been surprisingly delighted in the transition from film to digital. No longer do I have to lug around dozens of rolls of film, worry about them getting damaged in multiple x-ray machines, having them developed, then scan them in to edit (I was a big fan of shooting chrome [slides] because of the vibrancy in color it offered). And when digital was first introduced, I was a bit slow in making the transition more so because of cost than convenience.

Either way, images are a great way for sharing your travels with others. However, as an artist, I wanted viewers to take away more than just “oh that’s beautiful”. Rather than just showing these images and how I see them, I wanted to find a way for others to have their own contemplative journey of my experiences – and for them to walk away with a little piece of what I felt at that moment. I struggled with how to go about doing that.

Then I reflected back on the time I spent in Nepal during my 2001 career break, where I was introduced to mandalas. Mandala is an ancient word for circle. They represent wholeness and have been used for millennia in cultures worldwide as a tool for self-expression, spiritual transformation and personal growth.

Over a period of time and experiments, I finally figured out a way to create my own mandalas. These digital images are created with photos from my world travels and each one represents the emotional and spiritual essence I experienced on my various trips and invite the viewer to have their own contemplative experience of my journeys.

What creative outlets have you used to share your travel experiences?

Location: Somewhere over the Pacific

Date: February 7

Well, here we go. It’s so hard to imagine that after all this time of planning we are finally on our way to New Zealand and Australia. It’s just unimaginable what adventures we are going to come across. I haven’t even allowed myself to think about it because I know from past experience that it is impossible to do so. I just hope that I will figure out what direction life should take me, at least temporarily. I’m just living for the moment and will make the most out of everything.

Year? 1995

This was my first journal entry at the beginning of my gap half-year, but it could easily have been an entry from the career break I took in 2001, the one in 2006, or even the one in 2007. And reflecting back on that time and experience, I am grateful that I was exposed to the wonders of extended travel early in my life (in fact, what led to this 6-month adventure was a summer of backpacking in Europe in 1992 followed by a study abroad program in London).

I’m grateful because it cemented in me a love for travel and the need to incorporate it into my life – not treat it as a one-time experience.

And because of that a-ha moment, I’ve always looked at jobs and careers as more of a way to fuel my wanderlust. I wasn’t worried about climbing the corporate ladder – I was focused on earning money to climb the Inca Trail. Instead of saving for expensive heels that would give me blisters walking the cobblestone streets of Manhattan, I shopped for hiking boots that hopefully would keep blisters at bay as I hiked the Annapurna Circuit. And rather than acquire all of the latest labels, I am much prouder over the number of patches acquired on my backpack.

It’s been exactly 15 years since I returned from that trip and I’ve been making my way around the globe ever since, with breaks to fuel my funds as well as my need for a sense of home. Unlike many RTW travelers today, I don’t feel a need to trek around the world in one trip. Yes I want to see as much as possible, but I also like having a place to come home to. I like plotting my next adventure from my couch and the anticipation that builds up to that moment of departure.

For me extended travel isn’t a one time experience – it is one that lasts a lifetime. And I believe that those just discovering it for themselves will experience that as well.

HOW I TRAVELED IN 1995 vs. 2010

Planning Resources:
Travel Agent vs. Internet

Communication:
Pay Phones vs. Cell Phones

Correspondence:
Post Cards vs. Emails

Sharing the Experience:
Waited until we got home vs. Blogs

Money:
Travelers Checks vs. ATMs

Music:
Mixed Tapes (yes, tapes) vs. iPods

Photography:
35mm vs. Digital

How we got around without the Internet, cell phones, emails, blogs, ATMs, iPods and Digital cameras? Just fine, if you can believe it.

The three things that are still the same?
My backpack – my travel journals – and my sense of adventure

For many career breakers, it would be a dream to continue to travel. But most do return to work, whether it’s a new career or back to the briefcase. Mario Schulzke, Creator of CareerSparx, shares with us “How to Make Your Travels Part of Your Career Brand”.

Your career brand is much more than the sum of your past work experience.  It is the aggregate of both who you are as an individual and why someone would want to work with you.  It is about taking various life experiences and showing how they have—or will—contribute to your career.

If you are contemplating taking some time off to travel or if you are returning to work from extended travel, be confident that it likely did not or will not hinder your long-term career goals.

Wherever travel comes into your life, it is there for a purpose; it satisfies a need and brings clarity to our often-convoluted worlds.  You experience new things, learn about new cultures and often return with a wisdom that informs how you see the world.

When it comes time to return to the workplace, you can communicate the value of your travel experience as part of your career brand.  Here’s how:

Understand how your travels contribute to who you are.
This may take some careful retrospection unless you keep a blog or journal—which is a great idea that I go into more detail about below—but it is important to understand what you learned and experienced while traveling.  Reflect on your time abroad and the qualities you developed as a result of your experiences.  Take the time to write this down and contribute to the list as more things come to mind.

Here are some questions for thought:

• What spurred my travel ambitions in the first place?
• What was the most memorable experience and why?
• What were my most important revelations?
• Did I think back on my life before travel in any particular way?  Was there anything negative I hoped to change?

Translate these experiences and qualities to work-related skills.
Now that you understand the positive ways in which travel affected your life, you need to communicate how this will help you professionally.  Again, write this down, using concrete examples from your travel to tell a story and make a point.  You can weave this information into your resume or use it during interviews.  Here are some questions to get started:

• Have my life-long goals changed? Have my career goals changed? How?
• What qualities have I strengthened that would make me an effective team player?
• What have I learned from my interactions with strangers around the world that will help me be a better leader?

Demonstrate a better understanding of who you are and what you want.
After traveling, you will be returning with a much better idea of the type of job and workplace that is right for you.  This brings confidence to future employers because if you truly know what you want, what you can provide and how you fit into their company, you will be a reliable and motivated part of their team.  Communicate this.

Document your travels and experiences.
Listen, the Web is here to stay and it’s going to affect your professional career in some sort of way.  An interesting blog, for example, is something that you can do to set you apart from other job applicants.  Usually the hardest challenge about creating a blog is having something worthy to write about.  Well, guess what?  Unless your travels consisted of being holed up in a hotel room in Cincinnati, I bet you have some interesting stories to tell.  So, tell them.

Check out WordPress.com, Tumblr.com or Posterous.com for easy ways to set up your own blog.

Wherever your career brand manifests itself—through a blog, resume, cover letter or your persona—know that your travel experience can be as valuable to a potential employer as it is to you.

ABOUT MARIO
Mario Schulzke was born and raised in Germany, and lived in France, Spain and England before coming to the U.S. as a high school exchange student.  He has traveled across China and has backpacked many of America’s national parks.  He is the creator of CareerSparx.com, an online course that teaches recent graduates how to start their careers.  For more information, download their free 61-page guide on how to start your career or check out the CareerSparx blog.

My husband Bill and I recently returned from fourteen months extended travel. When we stepped out of our corporate jobs in November of 2008, we both wondered what would be in store for us after our planned year of exploring the world. And as tempting as it was to continue our adventure living in a foreign country, or finding enough work to continue to travel like so many of the “career” travelers we envy, in the end we made the decision to re-enter life in the United States.

While I embarked on some new business adventures and am keeping our travels alive through continued travel writing, Bill headed back to the Semiconductor industry that we had both walked away from to live our long-term travel dreams. In truth he never completely left – he kept up on industry news and worked to keep his network alive – a key to him finding work in the field only a short two months after we returned to the US.

Bill’s path back to the corporate world seems to be the exception, not the norm, when it comes to long-term travelers. Our friends at Briefcase to Backpack, along with many of our fellow travelers, friends, and family, were curious as to the motives behind Bill’s decision and how his perspectives toward work have changed with the experiences he gained while traveling.

Bill always left the majority of the travel blogging and writing to me, and this is no exception – so I’m here to interview my own husband, the other half of the Blondewanderer travel team on his career break and re-entry. At least this is one interview that I could do in my pajamas over coffee!

What made you decide to take a career break?
It had been a lifelong dream for me to travel the world. I lived in Belgium for six years for work, and had the opportunity to explore much of Europe, which only made my desire to travel stronger. During the winter before my wife and I were married we started talking about “What if we could take a year off to travel”, and over time it became clear that it was more than a dream. Our momentum towards the idea kept growing, until it was a question not of IF we would do it but WHEN. I think we both felt that if we DIDN’T take this opportunity, we would regret it for the rest of our lives.

What were some of the ways you prepared for this new experience? Were you able to apply your skills from the Corporate world in the planning process?
Well, at first we both made separate lists of places we wanted to visit – using Excel, of course! (Side note: Both Bill and I have engineering backgrounds, so planning a year of our life without Excel would have been impossible!) We discussed our lists and made a plan of what countries would travel to by combining our lists. Then we created a budget – again, using Excel! Creating budgets and planning expenses were a key part of our corporate life, and that skill really helped make our dreams a reality. Also, both Cindy and I traveled for work, so international travel wasn’t a big, scary leap for us. Plus we had LOTS of airline miles to use for our trip – that really helped out with our travel budget. So our work turned out to be a big enabler for us to live our dream of traveling full-time.

What surprised you the most about yourself during your travels?
When you travel long-term, you learn that things will just work out and you learn to let go of what you think should be your “plans”. Early on in our travels, when we didn’t understand how we were going to get from point A to point B, or how we were going to find that bus we needed to be on, the ambiguity would often stress me out. We were used to having our precious vacation time – one or two weeks – planned out completely. Long-term travel is very different, and for Americans letting go of the minute-by-minute travel planning can be hard. But by the end of our trip, I had a different level of acceptance of those situations and an attitude that no matter what, things would work themselves out. It was all part of the adventure!

How was your experience returning home? Did you struggle with reverse culture shock?
I don’t think I struggled with reverse culture shock coming home – in fact in the couple of months before I started working I really enjoyed reconnecting with friends and family. But the first few weeks back in a corporate environment were particularly challenging. I no longer thought of myself as a “cubicle” person. I particularly missed my time on the road and interacting with new people. You interact with people differently in a work environment – even though I work with a variety of cultures, everyone is conforming to the Corporate work environment. It was a difficult transition.

Reflecting on your career break, what insight have you gained?
I feel I understand other cultures better – at my current company there are people from many different cultures – and I feel that my understanding of their countries and backgrounds and my cultural experiences have helped me better connect to people at work. When people hear that I have visited their home country – something many of them don’t expect – there is a different level of camaraderie.

What was it like trading in your backpack for your briefcase again?
I had a lot of mixed emotions. On one hand I was starting to miss the mental stimulation that I feel work provides, and I was starting to miss the idea of having a home base somewhere that truly felt like home. On the other hand, I wanted to continue traveling – seeing new places and experiencing different cultures. Once a traveler, always a traveler!

How are you going to apply lessons learned from your experience to your life now?
Looking back at our planning before we left on our trip – we booked our camper van for New Zealand (our first destination) a full six months in advance, along with our plane tickets – we didn’t need to do that and didn’t save any money over just finding a good deal when we arrived. We have learned how to travel on the cheap – and how often it pays to wait until you are in a country to make a plan, because likely it will change once you get there, learn more about the country and talk to other travelers. Plus you have more adventures along the way and see places you didn’t plan on, all because you kept your travel plans flexible. I plan to travel more spontaneously than have before – even on shorter trips.

Secondly, I want to maintain my involvement with charitable foundations, both ones we interacted with during our travels and also ones closer to home. I was having lunch with a colleague the other day, who happens to be of Indian descent. He asked me “What do you think the biggest problem in the world is moving forward?” and I answered “Access to clean water”. I would never have had that perspective if we hadn’t traveled extensively. Even seeing what I’ve seen with my own eyes, watching people wash their clothes in the same water they drink – while we, because we could afford to, drank bottled water – there are things that you never think about if you don’t travel to many countries. Being involved in projects and charities that improve living conditions for those less fortunate and with fewer resources than we have is now a priority than me.

What advice would you give to someone thinking of making a career break?
I would say, “Go for it!” unequivocally. You will never regret your time away from the work world. But make sure your finances are in order first. Have a budget and be sure to plan to have money in reserve for “re-entry” so you have time and funds to settle back into life – whatever you choose that to be!

Barbara Pagano of YourSABBATICAL answers the question:

I’ve realized I no longer want to go back to my old career. In a market with high unemployment, how can I make myself noticed or create opportunities in a new field or industry?

Congratulations on being a risk-taker! Staying in a career that no longer fits your needs can be one of the most debilitating moves away from future happiness. Plus it robs your potential. Here are three ideas to break into a new field or industry during a sabbatical, even in these trying times:

1. Immerse yourself in the industry. While you might not have experience in this new field, you can start building a firm base of knowledge by connecting with someone who’s successful in the industry and give you information such as the trade magazines to read, the well-respected associations that lead the way, and the best internet resources where you can learn what’s going on. Perhaps there’s a book and a couple of industry gurus to become acquainted with, too. Read, research, and attend association events. Learn the industry jargon, current challenges, and trends to make your entrance a stunner.

2. Take the “career journey” approach. Successful business people who are asked for “10 minutes” by someone (even a stranger) who is “on a journey to discover whether this is a career for me” often say “yes.” Honor their time by keeping to the time frame and asking smart questions. You’ll have the opportunity to not only gather valuable information but also to make a connection with someone at the top of the field. And who knows, maybe that person knows of a job or company that’s a good fit for you.

3. Utilize your present skills. An internship or volunteer opportunity to showcase your present skills allows you to show enthusiasm for learning about a new industry. Companies in the industry you are pursuing, particularly if they are growing and entrepreneurial, might be open to offering an internship to you, especially if you can help them solve a pressing challenge or obtain new ideas. Keep your ears open for opportunities at industry networking events where you can say, “I can help you with that.”

While skills and experience are important as you transition to a new industry or career, always remember that people are hired for their enthusiasm and passion, too. And if you use your sabbatical to research the industry or experience an internship, be sure to leverage that on your resume. Good luck!

Have a career related question? Join our LinkedIn Group and post it in the “Ask a Coach” discussion.

Taking a traveling career break or sabbatical is not a new concept. But more than 20 years ago Stuart Tom drew up the nerve to ask for a year leave of absence from his advertising job (something unheard of at the time) to venture off and explore the world. He shares with us how that experience still lives on.

When I was 6 or so, I spent hours flying my battery-operated TWA DC-9 around my living room. I was in love with its smiling tin stewardess and retractable stairs. It wasn’t long before I graduated to collecting travel brochures from chain hotel lobbies. I read them over and over, memorizing every hyperbolic detail. Thinking back, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t preoccupied with the thought of going someplace new, someplace else.

So it was without much trepidation, after 6 years of employment, that I walked into my boss’s office and asked for a 12-month leave of absence. O.K., I didn’t so much ask as make a declaration. It helped that I was prepared to leave my job if the answer was no. But it wasn’t. The economy was in the crapper, and maybe my boss figured I wouldn’t want to come back after a year. So his agreeing didn’t surprise me. What did was the revelation that I was the first person at my ad agency to ask for a leave of absence. My first thought was, you’ve got to be kidding. Then I secretly congratulated myself for being such a trailblazer. In the end, I got to keep my health insurance for the year (a definite advantage of taking a sabbatical over quitting), and my job was waiting for me when I got back, which was a good thing because after 12 months of not working, I was flat broke.

Six years of living in New York had worn me down. I was ready for a break. As a junior in college, I’d studied in Vienna. That whetted my appetite for traveling abroad. It also gave me the confidence to negotiate non-English speaking terrain. But 6 months of Gemütlichkeit didn’t exactly prepare me for the shock and awe, not to mention God knows how many strains of new bacteria, thrust upon me by the developing world. (There’s no faster ice-breaker than sharing a bathroom with fellow travelers going through the same intestinal reorganization).

Years later, there are memories so vivid, they still bring goosebumps…My sabbatical was a humbling, exhausting, thrilling, transformative experience.

I had a budget of ten thousand dollars and a good idea of the places I wanted to see in my travels, but there were only 2 things I arranged for in advance: an around-the-world plane ticket (through a reputable broker found in the New York Times), and a 6 week overland safari across Tanzania and Rwanda. The around-the-world fare (multiple carriers and all open tickets) saved me a fortune. I added other, inexpensive legs along the way. And the organized trip in Africa eased my entry into the developing world. Apart from those commitments, everything else was wide open, the only potential obstacles being political unrest (a coup in Fiji knocked that destination off my itinerary) or illness (which, apart from Giardia, I managed to avoid).

Years later, there are memories so vivid, they still bring goosebumps: watching a full moon as wide as the horizon rise over the savannah in equatorial Africa, sitting on a train to Mombassa as the man across from me offered up his daughter in exchange for a night with one of my companions, hearing the giggles of school kids in northern Thailand as they ran their fingers through the blond hair on my arms, receiving the hospitality of a Rwandan man whose son had fallen into a well and drowned not two days before, bringing used books to a young Brit in a Katmandu jail, sentenced for shipping opium to himself in England. And of course, there were the countless friendships forged, most fleeting, but all indelible.

My sabbatical was a humbling, exhausting, thrilling, transformative experience. And cheap. The whole trip cost less than ten grand. This is probably an appropriate time to disclose my sojourn was taken nearly two decades ago. But a recent look at round-the-world fares online suggests my same itinerary could be taken today for just a few hundred dollars more than what I paid. The world may feel a little more unbalanced than it did when I took off from JFK twenty years ago, but no less alluring. Or generous.

THINGS TO AVOID:

• Getting sucked in to watching too much TV. For about 3 years I barely watched TV. I did not miss it at all. It can be enjoyable at times, but there are so many better things we can be doing.
• Feeling the ‘need’ to follow too much media about senseless issues (ie Jon & Kate? Who are these people and why do I care?). Being aware of world events and news is good; surmising if Jennifer and Brad will ever get back together is ridiculous.
• Eating too much – We eat so much more in this country than we need to AND so much of that is barely real food. Strive to continue to eat as fresh and local as when you were traveling.
• I went for years without a cell phone. I still sometimes forget mine at home now and ONLY have a prepaid phone – no bill, no contracts, just pay-as-you-go and I like it. I don’t NEED to chat endlessly on the phone just because everyone around me is. I don’t want or need to be reachable 24/7.

THINGS TO DO:

• Stay in touch with new friends from travels. With email and Facebook this is so easy and fun.
• Keep the ‘learning’ going…if you loved salsa dancing in Latin America – find a salsa class at home. Miss the tasty spring rolls in Vietnam? Seek out a cooking class. Have an international dinner party. Organize a monthly outing to a different ethnic restaurant. If you miss the challenge of chatting with locals in another language…take a language class. Go to museums, check local magazines and newspapers for other cultural meeting and groups.
• Meet new friends back home. In larger cities there are expat groups or other travel groups (meetup.com and Couchsurfing.com) with which you can get together for a drink or coffee with like-minded people.
• Couchsurfing – Sign up to be a host. You can meet and show others from abroad around your town. Return the favor for the hospitality you received while traveling.
• Volunteer with travelers/tourists: Contact your local tourism department to see what’s going on. Free services like Chicago Greeter and Big Apple Greeter are always looking for volunteers to give visitors a taste of your city from a local’s perspective.
• Volunteer at your local Youth Hostel.
• Let yourself feel sad or different. It’s okay. Time will ease the sadness, but you don’t want to forget.
• Reminisce – look at your photos, think about your trip, organize your blog and your photos.
• Share – You’ve learned so much while traveling. Hold on to this. Share it with others. Maybe your experiences will teach and/or inspire others to get out and see the world…or, maybe not to travel, but just to be more aware of the world around them.
• FINAL POINT: start planning you next trip!

Lisa Lubin is a three-time Emmy-award-winning Television writer/producer/editor. After 15 years in Television she decided to take a sabbatical of sorts, which turned into 2+ years traveling and working her way around the world. She has written about the (mis)adventures that ensued as she traipsed around the globe on her travel blog, LL World Tour. She shares with us her experience with Reverse Culture Shock during her re-entry.

I handed over my stamp-laden, well-worn passport. The white, stocky immigration officer stamped it without much more than a precursory glance, looked up at me and said, “Welcome home.”

That was it?? I’d been out of the country for fifteen months, been to about 35 countries and that’s all I got? No red, flashing lights went off on his computer. No hour-long interrogations? There was no ‘what were your dealings in the Middle East?’ ‘Why were you in Turkey so long?’ Not even a ‘Wow, gosh, gee, 15 months is a really long time!’ Oh well. Very soon it would be like I had never even left.

We often hear about the post partum depression for women who’ve just given birth, well what if you’ve given birth to this huge trip and turned your world (pun intended) upside down by seeing the world?

You go off seeking adventure and that’s just what you get. Your daily life involves hiking mountains, trying new foods, being challenged to be understood in a world of foreign languages and turning strangers into almost immediate friends. It can be tiring and yet invigorating, but always consistently rewarding. It’s a natural high thanks to the constant newness that completely contrasts the routine drudgery of what constitutes our ‘normal life’ back home in today’s society.

There are so many, too many choices for everything. I mean it’s nice to live in a land where things are plentiful, but sometimes it seems a bit ridiculous.

I made my way to the train and into the heart of Manhattan. I was in a bit of a daze and overwhelmed. Lights flashed, diverse masses scurried about in a semi-orderly fashion on the sidewalk, and noise was all around me, noise I couldn’t drown out, because I understood it all – the ‘noise’ of English being spoken. I was home.

I was back in the land between the two shining seas, the United States. Many had warned me about the very tough re-entry after an around the world trip like I just had and that returning back to the U.S. could be the biggest culture shock of all. I think like a good (or bad) movie, I had heard so much about this ‘reverse culture shock’ that the hype was a bit more than the real deal. But I also realized that flying from London to New York made things so much easier. It was quite a seamless transition to go in between possibly the world’s two greatest, most diverse cities.

As you can presume, I had never been away this long. So I wanted to try and see things differently here in the ‘US of A.’ You can see, do, and experience just about anything and everything in London, but nevertheless, New York City was still a bit of sensory overload. There are just so many things for your brain to absorb—no wonder people are stressed. A multitude of signs are everywhere you look, telling you something: ‘Stop!’ ‘Sale, ‘Hot Pizza’, ‘Cold Drinks’, ‘Buy this’, ‘Eat here,’ ‘Walk,’ ‘Don’t Walk,’ ‘Don’t Shoot!’, ‘Run for your life,’ etc.

There are so many, too many choices for everything. I mean it’s nice to live in a land where things are plentiful, but sometimes it seems a bit ridiculous. I realized how simple my life had been for the last fifteen months. I only had a few pairs of pants to choose from each day, I had no bills to pay, and my only worries were finding a new place to stay every few weeks, booking some form of transport, and avoiding most insects. I had avoided most media while I was away. It was a really nice break from being force fed lots of information, most of which is not 100% true, and a lot of which I frankly just don’t need to know.

And then there are the stores. I went in to a drugstore (of which there are a multitude—practically one on every corner—just like the now, omnipresent Starbucks) just to buy a simple tube of toothpaste. It was intense. First I had to sort through all the brands on offer. Once I settled on one name, I had to study each package for the various differences—gel, paste, tartar control, whitening, whitening with baking soda, all natural, all chemical, 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it, with fluoride, with crystals, for sensitive gums, for gums of steel, plaque control, with scope mouthwash, minty fresh, orangey goodness, or a swirly combination of everything. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh…my brain hurt. Do we really need all this? It was so much easier in Vietnam when I’d go into a tiny shop and buy Colgate toothpaste – because that was the only choice. No unnecessary decisions. No extra brain power wasted. And clean teeth to boot.

I was also confronted with a plethora of unguents, emollients, moisturizers, creams and lotions that claimed to firm, tighten, buff, polish, darken, shine, and improve my life, or at least the life of my skin. For more than one year I had done without nearly all of this and thanks to good marketing—now I just had to have some. It was too easy to get sucked in–in fact I think they have a lotion for that–so I just had to avoid going in these stores at all.

So what happens when you return? How do you downshift back to reality? Or do you downshift at all?

They say the hardest part is returning – it’s the biggest culture shock of all – coming back home to this other reality, to boredom, to being on auto-pilot just coasting through life, to constant marketing and materialism. Don’t get me wrong, I have things and like some things, but even before traveling I never got caught up in this blitz. And, now more than ever, I see how much we are bombarded with advertising and how wasteful we are as a society in general. We buy and throw away without a second thought. From paper towels to computers…we consume and throw away, fill up our landfills, rinse and repeat.

I had felt all these aspects of the reverse culture shock – perhaps not all at once because I tried to ‘stay away’ or kept ‘going away’ even when I returned. In fact I am still living out of a bag, what’s left of my belongings are still in storage pods, and I have not completely settled down yet. Perhaps this is my way of slowly coming back to reality or never really coming back to the same reality ever again. And I am just fine with that. Life is too short to do the same thing and then die. No thanks.

Next Steps: Lisa shares tips on how to ease into the re-entry process.

BRIEFCASE TO BACKPACK – MICHAELA POTTER
I’m embarrassed to admit that my passport has collected a fair amount of dust and not enough stamps over the past couple of years. After returning from my career break travels with Michael at the end of 2007, the only other overseas trip for me was volunteering on an educational production to South Africa in February of 2008. And I haven’t stepped foot out of the country since then.

To be fair, life “got in the way”. During 2008 Michael and I focused on new careers, buying an apartment, planning a wedding, and building Briefcase to Backpack. And in early 2009 we launched the site and I have spent a great deal of the year focused on inspiring others to travel abroad. But “life” also brought up many weddings and family vacations – most of which involved domestic travel. So I did get to travel to Florida, Washington State, California, Las Vegas, and the Jersey Shore.

So in 2010 I resolve to dust off my passport and travel to at least one new country. And chances are looking pretty good so far! We have a trip to Italy planned with Michael’s family (which I’ve been to twice) and plan to add on Croatia afterwards.

Career-wise, I want to continue building Briefcase to Backpack and we have set several goals for ourselves, including:

• Building site traffic
• Marketing more to the career community (including to people who don’t even know they may need a career break)
• Attract sponsors to help bring in some income
• and get more American’s talking about and searching for career breaks and sabbaticals!

And with my design work, I’d like to refocus on an idea I had to create a line of Destination Wedding Save the Dates, similar to what I created for my own wedding.

Website: Wanderlust Productions | Twitter: @CareerBreakHQs (Briefcase to Backpack) | Twitter:@wanderlustprod (Wanderlust Productions)

BRIEFCASE TO BACKPACK/OTTS WORLD – SHERRY OTT
I’m finding it challenging to form resolutions when I don’t have any plan nor a place to live!  But here goes…Travel:  I have my eye on South America (specifically Bolivia) or potentially Eastern Europe.  I’d like to find a place that I could do some volunteer work for a month or two and then travel around the area if possible.  My travel plans are always based on feel – they typically evolve with my mood and a glass of wine.  In addition, I’ve been known to travel to places just based on a photo I saw (which is how I ended up in Fez Morocco a few years back).  So, we’ll see what calls me; suffice it to say that I’ll know it when I see it – and it will be off the beaten path for sure!  As for an actual resolution – pack less.

Work:  My resolution for work is to stop worrying about it!  In 2010 I want to focus on my websites which means making them better so that more people will read them.  I’d also like to make a resolution to submit an article a month to a magazine or website (that actually pays money for stories!) to try to increase my travel writing portfolio.  Finally, I have a resolution to put Briefcase to Backpack and the concept of career breaks into American’s vocabulary!  I want to start a revolution!  Don’t you want to be a part of it too?!

Blog: OttsWorld | Twitter: @ottsworld

HOLE IN THE DONUT – BARBARA WEIBEL
After three years of devotion, my blog has finally started to take off. I even had to move to a virtual private server with a dedicated IP address because my previous host could no longer handle the traffic. When I first deserted corporate life to recreate myself as a travel writer and photographer, my plan was to write a book (a best-seller, of course) and break into traditional travel magazine and newspaper travel markets. The universe had other plans, however, and I am thankful that I was open to the path that was laid out before me. Instead of magazines and newspapers, I found opportunities for online travel writing, which provided exposure for my blog through backlinks and bylines. I am happy to report that my blog, along with my other contract online writing, has become my new career, and I couldn’t be more delighted.

I have been so busy building my new business that I have not been able to travel as much as I would have liked since returning from my R-T-W trip in 2007. However, I hope that will change in 2010. At the moment, I have tentative plans to go to Mexico in February and just keep going south. The countries on my radar include Guatemala, Belize, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru. A few travel bloggers are informally discussing a possible meet up at Machu Picchu in April or May. Then it will be back to the States for 3 or 4 months before heading for China, ending up at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Afterward I hope to continue to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Macao, Myanmar, and spend a month in Laos before heading for a Yoga retreat in Thailand. If possible, I’d love to do side trips to Borneo and perhaps the Philippines. But, as with all travel plans, this is all fluid, but at least it’s a beginning plan.

Blog: Hole in The Donut | Twitter: @holeinthedonut

NOMADIC MATT – MATT KEPNES
I’m planning a big year in 2010. It’s only fitting since it is the start of a new decade. Career wise, I plan to launch a contest right after the New Year giving away a free trip to Costa Rica. I’d also like to increase my Google rankings. I plan to travel through Australia, Asia, Europe, and drive across America in 2010. I’m going to live in NYC for the summer learning French and Swedish as well as improving my Spanish.

Blog: Nomadic Matt | Twitter: @nomadicmatt

AMATEUR TRAVELER – CHRIS CHRISTENSEN
My goal is to travel more by creating a travel centered business around the Amateur Traveler and social media / new media consulting.

Oh and I would like to be able to pay those pesky college tuition bills for my kids as well.

Blog: Amateur Traveler | Twitter: @chris2x

FOX NOMAD – ANIL POLAT
I’m planning on spending the first two months of 2010 in Europe working on my travel websites to increase the amount of passive income I generate. From there I’m looking forward to a bus trip from somewhere around Ecuador (stopping for weeks at a time along the way) up to the US to see both my sister graduate from college and then attend TBEX 2010 in New York City. After the summer I’m planning on moving to Northern Cyprus and settling there for a year while I plan my next set of travels, likely to be in central and eastern Asia.

My plans are always flexible and I can’t wait to see what other unexpected travel and work opportunities come across my way as well. One thing though that I’ve completely set my mind on is volunteering and giving back to the places I travel. It’s something I haven’t done really and want to incorporate into my travels, and 2010 is when I’ll begin to make it a regular part of my adventures.

Blog: Fox Nomad | Twitter: @foxnomad

STAY ADVENTUROUS – CRAIG ZABRANSKY

• Start my new website and personal travel blog in 2010 – stayadventurous
• Travel to 1 new continent; 2 new countries; and at least 1 new US state
• Get published in print for a major travel mag, before they all disappear
• Have a novel I write or ghost write published in 2010
• Expand my photography portfolio and publish a photo for $ (not just credit)
• And of course, encourage others to ‘stay adventurous’ in mind, body and spirit. To inspire them to take and make adventure in their life

BLOG: Stay Adventures (coming soon!) | Twitter: @stayadventurous

MARRIED WITH LUGGAGE – BETSY & WARREN TALBOT
Betsy and Warren Talbot will be starting their round-the-world adventures in Fall 2010. Here are some goals they have set before they take off.

• Sell our house. Know anyone looking for a great townhouse in a funky neighborhood?
• Get interviews, guest blog posts, articles, and reviews of our ebook on How We Saved Enough Money to Change Our Lives (and How You Can, Too!). Know anyone who could help?
• A steady stream of side jobs for both of us so we can maintain a small income as we begin our travels in October. Warren is developing WordPress sites for small business, and I am still doing some business consulting for solo entrepreneurs.

Blog: Married with Luggage | Twitter: @betsytalbot

THE PROFESSIONAL HOBO – NORA DUNN
In 2009 I was relatively stationary (for a variety of reasons) and it led to putting full-time hours into my writing. This worked well with the release of my first book: 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget, and allowed me to achieve some big career goals. But as a lifestyle, this is not what I intended. I want to write part-time and continue to earn enough money to sustain my location independent full-time travel lifestyle. (Because really – what’s the point of traveling if you’re stuck in a room 60 hours/week working for it?!)

2010 is the year to kick things into second gear; to ease up on effort expended and stop spending time on unnecessary things. This goal will be tangibly achieved when I can comfortably fit my work into 20 hours per week or less and maintain a similar or increased income. Wish me luck!

Blog: The Professional Hobo | Twitter: @hobonora

GO BACKPACKING – DAVID LEE

• Double the daily content on Go Backpacking through an ever-growing network of contributors
• Update the design of Medellin Living and proactively seek new contributors
• Launch my first digital product
• Attend the 2010 Travel Blog Exchange conference in NYC

Blog: Go Backpacking | Blog: Medellin Living | Twitter: @rtwdave

INDIE TRAVEL PODCAST – CRAIG MARTIN
2009 was a very quiet travel year for us; only three countries under our belts as we focused on re-discovering our home, New Zealand. In 2010 however, we have 15-20 countries in view, spanning five continents. The year is literally going to fly by. Over the next year, we have some big goals for Indie Travel Podcast: we’ve launched a new product every year since we started and in 2010 we’re going to push our publishing arm and produce more ebooks and travel guides, both free and paid. 2010 is the first year when Indie Travel Media Ltd is expected to pay for all of our travel and living expenses, so there’s a serious focus on the bottom line as we try to stay fed and clothed while we travel.

Blog: Indie Travel Podcast | subscribe on iTunes | Twitter: @indietravel

BROOKLYN NOMAD – ANDREW HICKEY
My travel goals and career goals typically intertwine due to my career. In addition to being a freelance travel writer, I am also the Social Media Manager for CheapOair (http://blog.cheapoair.com). So with those two careers I have to set goals on succeeding in the workplace and make sure I visit new and interesting destinations in my spare time. A good travel writer should travel right?

I just started working again in a full-time position after nearly two years of freelancing, so the current career goal is to make CheapOair’s blog popular and bring in daily traffic to the site. I do this by writing strong content, hiring and managing good writers that contribute to the blog, make sure we always have some sort of promotion going on or in the works (people like contests) and make proper use of social media sites like twitter and facebook.

When I have free time, which is very rare these days, my travel goals are usually being mapped out. I try to visit at least two new destinations each year. Whether it is planning a big adventure overseas or booking a last-minute long weekend nearby, I am always trying to keep my schedule booked with trips. The travel junkie side of me definitely assists the work side of me and keeps me from going crazy in my new 9-5 world.

Some places I plan to check out for the first time this year include New Orleans, Quebec City, Portland Or., and Glasgow, Scotland. I am actually booked already for a week-long trip to both London and Glasgow, so I am pretty excited to check out both cities and write about them for both my personal blog and the CheapOair blog.

Remember that life is too short to put off that vacation to a particular locale you always wanted to visit. Make sure to put aside some travel time to explore this interesting little planet. There is just so much to see! Remember, we have a very short amount of time here, make the most of it both your career goals and travel goals.

Blog: The Brooklyn Nomad | Twitter: @BrooklynNomad | CheapoAir Blog

VOLUNTEER GLOBAL – SARAH VAN AUKEN

• Travel to, and work and report on, one international volunteer trip this year.
• Recruit at least one person for DC Young Professionals Kiwanis or for Greater DC Cares.
• Post 52 volunteer stories (pictures are a plus!) on Volunteering Global.
• Pay off at least half of one of my student loans.

Blog: Volunteering Global | Twitter: VolunteerGlobal

Hi, we’re Jorrit and Nicky. Today we produce and sell classic, sustainable travel bags and outdoor gear but it was a long journey to get here. Here’s our story of how we went from backpack to briefcase, then back to travelling, and finally re-designed our lives to bring our work and our love of adventure together.

We hope that our story will inspire you to take some time out to travel – and to draw on your travels to reinvigorate your life on returning to the workplace. Having married and later set up our own business as a result of travelling, we passionately believe in mixing the worlds of work and adventure!

OUR FIRST TRAVEL ADVENTURE

Jorrit - In Europe, many teenagers go travelling in a Gap Year between school and university. However, despite the fact that we’re both European, that actually wasn’t our story. After our school studies, neither of us took the option of a traditional Gap Year. Instead, we headed to university and, on completing our degrees, immediately entered the world via work and military service. Nicky joined the management programme of United Distillers, part of the Guinness Group, while I did military service in Holland (my homeland) as an officer in the Strategy Department. And it was for very different reasons that we each ended up travelling after that.

Nicky – For me, I came to a point where I felt that I needed to review my career plans. I’d been working for United Distillers for a couple of years. But, within a short space of time, my Grandfather died, my Dad fell ill, a four-year relationship ended, and I found myself in two car crashes. Chatting with a girlfriend at work, I decided to plan to head to South America for a year and see where to go from there. My key motivations were:

• Realising that life can be short and alter quickly – it’s important to grab chances while we can.
• To feel the freedom of making my own choices day by day.
• To experience the excitement of exploring unknown countries.
• To test my ability to deal with whatever happened while travelling and hopefully grow in confidence.

Jorrit - My reasons for travelling were rather different. Having completed my military service, I wanted to travel and end up in Australia. My plan was to apply for residency there. I’d studied in Queensland and fallen in love with the country – its landscape, weather and lifestyle. Now I wanted to return to Australia while whetting my taste for adventure on the way. My plan was to take a circuitous route via South America, North America and Asia before ending up in Oz again. To that end, I worked as a hotel porter by night and a taxi driver by day to fund the trip. And then I bought my one-way ticket.

Nicky - I left work in Britain in December 1992 and flew to Venezuela with two girlfriends. We spent Christmas in Caracas where there had just been a military coup. Then we started travelling by road, opting for air in the more dangerous areas of Colombia. In some ways, we were taking real risks but we didn’t want to opt for an organised trip. We wanted to be self-sufficient and plan our own route.

This is fine in principle but tricky when all three people prove to have different needs and wishes! After a month together, we decided to go our separate ways and I set off alone for the small village of Vilcabamba in Ecuador – a town with a reputation for the longevity of its inhabitants. There I met my future husband, Jorrit.

Jorrit – I’d been travelling in Ecuador with an English woman and Australian guy. When I met Nicky in Vilcabamba and love struck, we carried on travelling as a group of four. Before we knew it, we’d found our way through South America, Asia and North America, spending almost two years away from home and having the experience of a lifetime.

BACK TO WORK

Jorrit and Nicky – We were both concerned when we returned from travelling to re-enter the job market. Would we be viewed as a pair of freeloaders? Far from it. We only received positive feedback from employers. This is what we realised as we digested the impact of our two years of travel. A backpacking trip can:

• Build your confidence in dealing with unexpected events.
• Increase your communication skills and ability to create speedy rapport with people.
• Teach you how to assess people and circumstances very quickly.
• Broaden your perspective of life, giving you a new sense of proportion. Often it’s the people who have very little in terms of possessions who prove to be the richest in their welcome, wisdom, generosity and insight.

On the flip side, the bug for travel and freedom never leaves you! Today, we still hanker for travel and adventure at times. You can sense this when you find yourself comparing prices for cars, sofas and presents with the air fares that you could buy for flights to dreamed-of destinations!

HITTING THE ROAD AGAIN

Nicky - It was work-life stress which eventually sent us travelling again, this time in a different style as we now had an eight-year old daughter, Kiah. Jorrit had been working as a Managing Director of Kangol, based in West Cumbria, but travelling constantly to New York, Europe and Asia. At the height of his work, he could be away two to three weeks every month. Living in a remote rural community, we found family life suffering because of Jorrit’s work, exciting and stimulating though it was.

And when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, it was another reality check. We decided to commit to making changes in our lives to regain a healthier work-life balance.

Jorrit – Around my fortieth birthday, as a result of the stresses that Nicky has outlined, I left my job and took a year out to review where I wanted to go next. A Dutch uncle gave me some wise words which persistently echoed in my ears – “The first forty years are about quantity, the second forty are about quality”. I started to work out the real values that were important to me and my family. I walked in the fells of the Lake District, learned to kite surf, and started travelling again with Nicky and Kiah.

This time we stayed closer to home, swapping Great Britain for South America and Asia, and ditching backpacking for a camper van with wetsuits and boogie boards on the roof. We toured Britain, living simply as we were wage-less but feeling happier and more fulfilled than we had for ages. Gradually, we decided that it was time to take a bold step – to bring the fruits of our travels and our working life together and establish our own business.

Three elements went into the mix of our thinking:

• A desire to inspire people to make simple decisions that can improve the way that we all live and protect the planet’s resources at the same time.
• My lifelong passion for bags, vintage items and travel memorabilia.
• Reading a great book on an insurance clerk turned adventurer, Millican Dalton, who lived wild in the Lake District in the early twentieth-century, pioneering a life of simplicity and adventure.

With these three thoughts in mind, we decided to launch our own bag brand, naming it Millican after local legend, Millican Dalton.

JOINING OUR WORK AND OUR TRAVELS

Jorrit and Nicky - Of course, after travelling for a year without a salary, we had little in the way of a lump sum to start a business. However, inspired by our travels, we set off with an idea and a business plan and were lucky enough to find local investors who loved the concept of Millican. They wanted to support a grass-roots business inspired by and created in the heart of Lake District. With a strong vision and financial support, Millican the company was born.

Today, the biggest challenge for us now that our business is up and running is constantly reminding ourselves of the really important elements in our lives. And taking time to enjoy them and each other. There is always work to be done, especially when it’s based in your home. But work-life balance was the prime motivation for starting the business. We would be untrue to ourselves if we let that balance slide.

For us, it’s about taking the lessons and wisdom we’ve gained from our travels and feeding that back into our everyday lives. Why set up a sustainable business if it isn’t sustainable for us as a family? The choices aren’t always easy and sometimes we make mistakes. But it feels like a great adventure to be on – and we’re learning and growing, not stagnating.

So, go on – take time out if you need to review your life. Distance, travel and new variety brings invaluable perspective. And there is always life on your return, whatever your fears. In our experience, life after travelling has proved to be far better than the life we had before.

Check out Millican’s beautiful products at www.homeofmillican.com

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CAREER BREAKS PRESENT

Sherry Ott – Otts World
I’m thankful for taking a traveling career break because…

• it opened my eyes to a world and cultures beyond my imagination.
• it unleashed a creative side of me that I didn’t know existed any longer.
• it helped me understand the definition of patience.
• it provided me options for new careers.
• it provided me a new friend support network all around the world.
• it taught me how to give back through hands on volunteering.

I am no longer doing something that made me miserable wondering what lie outside my cubicle walls.

Jason Castellani & Aracely Santos – Two Backpackers
Jason: I am thankful that I have the ability to financially enjoy a trip like this. My parents ensured that I received a good education and I have worked for many years earning a good living. Now, more than ever, I realize the world has much to offer and we should all get out and see it!

Aracely: I am thankful to my mother for all her hard work everyday of my life. She gave up everything she knew in Ecuador and took a huge risk to immigrate to U.S hoping for the best. Because of her courage, I have enjoyed great opportunities and been able to experience really amazing things.

Cindy & Bill Peterson – The Blonde Wanderer
We are thankful for all the amazing local people we have met along the way that have helped to make our career break so memorable and such an amazing experience. From them we have learned to appreciate each day for the joy that it brings, no matter how little or how much a person has. We have relied on the kindness of strangers from asking them for directions in the street to families and individuals who have welcomed us into their homes and their lives. We are thankful to each and every one of them for helping to get us from point A to point B, and for teaching us about their cultures, their views and their lives along the way. Our views on what we have to be thankful for will never be the same.

We are also thankful for our family and friends who have been supportive of our decision to take a career break and have been patient and supportive through our long-distance relationships over the past twelve months. And, of course, we’re thankful for having each other to cherish all of the wonderful experiences together!

Ben & Alonna Scott – Ben and Alonna
Alonna: I’m thankful that Ben and I decided together to make this change in our lives. It’s great that we both came to the same conclusion – that we wanted to do something different with our lives and there was no reason to wait any longer. Although traveling can be stressful at times, it’s been amazing to share these experiences with each other.

Ben: I’m thankful we never got sick! Several times on our trip we traveled to new cities without accommodations planned out in advance. I often found myself envisioning nightmare scenarios of us stumbling around some cobble-stoned medieval town at night with our massive backpacks dead sick with the flu and trying to find someplace to stay.

Manali Patel & Terry Bettendorf – Manali and Terry
We are thankful that we are traveling because we get to meet wonderful people, experience unique customs and cultures and grow as people. We can’t wait to come back to the States to share our adventures with everyone and share the knowledge!

CAREER BREAKERS PAST

Marc Hoffmeister – 4Suitcases
We’re very thankful to be spending this Thanksgiving back at home, surrounded by family, friends, and the proper food! Even though it caused me to miss out on those things last year, I still owe my career break a huge debt of gratitude.

So thank you, career break:

• for helping me build a stronger relationship with the most important people in my life;
• for shattering my misconceptions and stereotypes about other countries & cultures;
• for teaching me to appreciate the good things about my own country & culture, and putting the bad stuff into perspective;
• for introducing me to so many wonderful people all over the world, who continue to help and inspire me every day;
• for showing me so much beauty;
• for showing me how silly most of my fears are;
• and most of all, for giving me time to evaluate my priorities and lifestyle choices – and for presenting me with lots of other options that never would have occurred to me otherwise. I can’t wait to try some more of them out!

David Lee – Go Backpacking
I’m thankful for having taken a career break because it allowed me to fulfill a personal dream of mine to travel for an extended period of time. I felt completely free and it was everything I hoped for and more.

In addition to the travel itself, I learned a lot of practical lessons before leaving home which I will be able to apply for the rest of my life. For example, how setting short-term financial goals can make achieving a big, long term goal more realistic of an endeavor.

I’m also thankful that I had the guts to go through with the whole plan! It was incredibly fulfilling, and I returned home a more self-assured person.

Barbara Weibel – Hole in the Donut
I am thankful for having taken a career break because it totally ruined me…at least, that’s what my family would tell you. Prior to backpacking around the world for six-months, my existence was one of corporate meetings, politics, gossip, unbelievable stress, and a mindset where the almighty dollar is the only measure by which success is judged. By that standard I was successful; I was also miserably unhappy. I hated every day of my life and detested my job.

Taking a break helped me to reconnect with what is truly important in life, made me realize that I was not being true to myself. Upon returning, I was determined to pursue my passions, regardless of what others thought or the possibility that I would lose everything I had worked for. Rather than getting another “regular” job, I recreated myself as a travel writer and photographer. It has been nearly three years since I made this decision. I no longer live in the lap of luxury. My life is simple; my material possessions are few. But I am happier and more grateful than I have ever been. I can’t wait to get up every day and I love what I do. If this is the definition of ruination, please let us all be ruined.

Brian Peters – No Debt World Travel
I am thankful to be able to pursue the ideas that have been percolating at the back of mind for years. I am thankful for being laid off from my job to pursue something new, travel around the world and meet all kinds of amazing new people. A job loss can be the most liberating thing in the world. Years ago I would never say that, but I can say that now.

Lastly I’m thankful for a career break to be able to talk about my passion for travel and sharing that with the world. Nothing feels better than aiding people reach their own goals and ambitions.

Rebecca Zanatta – The Plan B Adventure
I am thankful to have taken a career break for so many reasons, here are my top 3: Adaptability, Resourcefulness and Perspective.

Travel forces (strongly encourages) you to be adaptable. You miss the flight you need, your hotel isn’t what you expected, your bus driver decides to take food break at the most inconvenient time, you can’t find an ATM…all of these situations force you to be adaptable. Plan A often turns into Plan H, and that is okay, because somewhere between A and H you learn something new about yourself you wouldn’t have learned otherwise.

I learned to be very resourceful during my career break. How do you get from Pakistan to China with only one open mountain pass? What is the best way to see Istanbul in three days? The answer to both of these questions is resourcefulness! You have to have faith in yourself and your travel partner (in my case, my husband) to be creative and ask the right questions (maybe more than once). It isn’t easy to have to think through every situation from every angle, but I am thankful to have developed this skill during my career break.

I am most thankful for the perspective I gained during my career break. Perspective is hard to get without putting yourself in difficult and challenging situations. If you play life safe and calculated all the time your perspective will be different than if you accept opportunities to grow through change and risk. Visiting 25 countries on 4 continents definitely challenged me to view my life differently and changed my perspective. I believe it is important to spend time doing the things you love with the people you love the most. A career break can change your life and open you to thoughts, opinions and perspective you never believed possible…for this I am thankful.