Why I Bought a One-Way Flight to Europe

Reading time: 4 mins

It was late summer of 2021 and I woke up numbly spinning on a seemingly never-ending carousel of dull life. One I’d been riding since moving back into my parent’s home almost a year prior. You could say I was feeling the burnout of WFHT (work from hometown) or WFCB (work from childhood bedroom).

I cannot complain that I have a loving family with a place to stay when the unexpected shakes this world (*cough* COVID), but I realized, very slowly I might admit, that things were just not right. They were not right, and I was struggling to make any changes at all, emotionally paralyzed from forward-thinking and decision-making. My anxiety was at a high and making friends with an internal buddy called depression. My hopes that things would get better diminished hour by hour as I watched the calendar change into another month yet again and requests for further professional development in my company boil on the backburner.

Just before the coronavirus changed the world as we knew it, I had taken on a new professional role along my international education career path. I was offered a bright promise of helping others begin adventures abroad as an International Teacher Recruiter. However, handling all recruitment, visa, and travel details for hopeful adults looking to begin their new lives in China took a dramatically negative turn only two months into my new role. Over the next two years, COVID continued to not only make it hard for teachers to arrive at their new homes and jobs in China, but also made it hard for my company to grow and offer development for its corporate employees.

I was an adventure-loving people enthusiast waking each day to the same hometown views and stagnant job development, altogether lost in a pandemic world that somehow glued me to the last place I’d imagined being at this point in my life. 

Until the motivation to make change finally grabbed my hand and made a plan.

The plan put simply: I would leave my current role and put myself back out in the world.

It all unfolded in the normal order of transition. A two-week notice period, last-minute doctor visits, and a celebratory week-long international holiday plan. I said goodbye to a team and company who’d taught me as much as they could in my early international education career, scheduled COVID tests, and booked my first international flights since 2019.

Iceland became the kick-off travel destination, a country not as physically distant or culturally different from the Western society of the U.S. so that my soul could ease back into our global atmosphere. Plus, flights were discounted for the month of September, and I couldn’t tame the excitement of affording to visit somewhere I’d dreamt of for a long time.

The high of simply planning a trip to a place that was brand new to my senses had my heart re-awakened. I had left my previous job without another role lined up, wanting to take an intentional break and heal from the burnout I was experiencing. The adrenaline from pressing the purchase button on flights to Iceland informed me that I knew in my gut exactly what this break needed to entail – travel.

Not feeling ready to give in to these impulses right away, Iceland became my trial run.

Things went smoothly from the get-go. Although the weather in Iceland itself wasn’t always agreeable, the actual act of getting there was easier and safer than I expected. Within the first few days of the trip, I had texted my sister, “Hey. I think we should go to Italy for my birthday.” Shortly afterward she excitedly agreed to go, and I had also decided my flight to Italy two months from now would be one-way.

I was going to backpack Internationally for the first time in my life.

Without an end date in mind.

The gut feeling for a travel sabbatical was one that couldn’t be ignored. Naturally, there were a few hesitations, but overall, my heart continued to point my head in the direction of Europe. With so many continents I had yet to touch and exotic destinations high on my bucket list, why on Earth did I choose to return to places I’ve already been?

Well, COVID had a major way of shifting priorities. Instead of checking places off of a bucket list, my priorities for this traveling sabbatical were the following: reconnection, reunion, and re-ignition.

I wanted to reconnect with myself. I wanted to return to people I’d missed. I wanted to reunite with the very places that ignited my love for culture, language, and adventure.

I wanted fire back in my life.

So, in my mind it was simple. Get back to the time zones in which a love for traveling had planted roots in my soul. 

Since my flight to Europe in late November, I’ve traveled to 15 different nations, made countless new connections I’ll cherish for life, crossed off bucket list experiences I hadn’t fulfilled as a study abroad student so many years ago, and re-connected with friends and loved ones I had missed for too long.

A fire for exploring and connecting with this world continues to burn as I find myself dancing into the flames of 160 days of long-term travel. Each day I’m presented with a new life challenge and questions about my purpose here on this Earth. Wherever I end up next, I’ll look back on the decision to leave it all behind and book a one-way flight with pure gratitude.