by Kristina Yager
I was in my BMW convertible on the 101, sitting in bumper to bumper traffic during my daily hour-and-a-half one way commute home to San Francisco, when I decided, fuck this. I said it aloud, too.
We’ve all had these moments, where we decide enough is enough — we’re going to quit our jobs, maybe tell our boss what we really think of them, sell all of our worldly possessions and embark on a trip of a lifetime, maybe to find ourselves, or maybe just to escape from the mundane monotony of daily life. But, for most of us, this moment of insanity is met with reality and practicality, and we return home and pour ourselves a glass of wine instead, and then proceed to embark on our commute back to the office the next morning. Well, on this particular day, as I sat on the 101 in rush hour traffic, muttering fuck this to myself, I actually made a decision to take action this time.
It was mid-May, and over the next two weeks, I broke up with my boyfriend, put in my notice at work and gave my landlord my 30 day notice. I began calculating how long I could travel and to where I could go based on my savings. I began researching backpacks and countries I wanted to visit. I sold some of my nicer things on ebay, and posted my car on Craigslist. It was all happening.
Two months later, I was effectively homeless and almost completely possessionless, but I was sitting on a beach in Corfu, Greece, blissfully happy in the liquid sunshine, drinking a mojito and reading a good book. I was happier than I had been in a very, very long time. Maybe even happier than I had ever been.
What ensued over the course of that 7-month backpacking trip are some of the best memories of my life. The food, the drinks, the friends I met along the way, the beautiful landscapes. It was all amazing. But more importantly, I learned more on my backpacking trip than I ever did in school or at work. I was meeting people, shifting perspectives, challenging myself.
I took that trip five years ago and I look back on it often. What I’ve come to realize is that this trip fundamentally changed the way I see the world, and myself within the world. I had been staying safe in my little bubbles of work and home, spending time with the same friends and family, in a familiar locale. Essentially, I wasn’t challenging myself, and because of that I hadn’t really evolved. I hadn’t grown in the ways I had hoped. Sure, there were projects at work that had been challenging, I had navigated conflicts, and I had moved across the nation alone when I was 20. But all of these challenges occurred within the safety of my neat, sheltered, secure bubble.
There’s something really different and special about facing challenges with no safety net: no car, not a whole lot of money, no home, no family to call for help. Being alone in a foreign country, without a plane ticket home, or even a home to go back to, offers a whole new set of challenges. Yes, it’s scary.
And I almost didn’t take the opportunity to encounter all these new challenges. Prior to embarking on my “world-wide traveling trip” as I like to call it, I was scared of everything. I was scared of the usual things – walking down a dark alley at night, spiders and blood, maniac drivers on the freeway. But I was also scared of everyday interactions. I was scared of using words that would offend the barista at Starbucks. I was scared to speak up during meetings at work, fearful I’d say something with which others didn’t agree.I was scared to tell the guy that kept coming onto me that I wasn’t interested because I didn’t want him to be upset with me. See, I was scared of literally everything!
But I knew to encounter challenges outside my bubble, without a safety net, would be just the thing I needed to evolve into the person I wanted to become. I knew I’d discover things about myself I had never known. And, I knew the challenges I faced on the road would teach me the things I so desperately needed to learn: bravery, courage, and resilience.
Before the trip, I had never given myself an opportunity to fail. I was obsessed with controlling the world around me and coordinated my entire life around a script I learned would work for me within my bubble. But this just didn’t work while I was traveling. Like when I was in France and I needed to catch a train to Nice. I didn’t speak a lick of French, but I needed to ask someone for help, to figure out the correct train. I pissed off three people with my English before I found someone willing to help me out. But while it stung a bit to be ignored or cursed at in French, life without a script got me to where I needed to go.
If I wanted to live a life where I was truly free, I had to let go of all my fear. Because at the root of my fear was this belief that I could control the world around me. When I was living in a bubble, the landscape never changed, the people didn’t change much. It was all pretty predictable so of course I felt like I could control everything. When I decided to leave that bubble everything was unpredictable and out of my control. I had no choice but to accept it and learn new ways to navigate through the world without a script.
When I returned home to the States, I decided to continue breaking down the walls of my bubble. I moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. I got a job in HR, and did that for a while, and then decided to quit and become a flight attendant instead. I got laid off from flight attendant training 5 weeks in due to COVID-19. Now I am pursuing a writing career.
All of this definitely wasn’t “on script”, but I like it that way now. Traveling the world gave me the richness of experience, but more importantly, it enriched my internal world in a way I never thought would be possible. I remember coming back to the States, landing at SFO after months of traveling, and I felt like I was floating through customs. I didn’t worry about what I’d tell the customs agent or what the people in line thought of me. I felt solid in who I was, and experienced a lightness within my reality—I finally felt free.
True freedom emerged when I took action and chose to leave my bubble.
I didn’t know what was going to happen, but that was the point. And this uncertainty didn’t disappoint. In fact, it was beautiful: it opened my eyes to something a lot bigger than me and my insular little world. Everything I knew took on a different color and hue because I was able to zoom out, to see things from a place beyond my own headspace. We live on a planet that is spinning in the middle of the Milky Way, in the middle of a massive, uncertain Universe.
Everything is out of our control. It took me seven months and twelve countries to realize this, but when I did, I let go of fear and gained freedom in its place. And then I was finally able to let go of the need to control my role in life and instead I sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed it all.
Kristina Yager is a writer based in San Francisco, CA. She is writing her first novel while in quarantine. When Kristina isn’t writing on her sunny balcony, you can find her cooking, making candles, or running the hills of San Francisco. Say hello to her at kmvyager@gmail.com
P.S. Another story about finding yourself and expanding upon what you believe is possible for your life.