Why I Quit My Job to Backpack the World
Reading this title, I realize this is the first time I’ve actually asked myself this question. You would think that after twelve months, eleven countries, and 10,000 plus photos and videos I might pause to ask “why?” But I guess that pretty much sums up traveling. Sometimes things move too fast to slow down and process what’s actually happening.
The question remains: why did I quit my job to backpack the world? I mean I was young, full of energy, and quickly advancing in my career. Not only that, but I was also already traveling a lot, albeit in the United States. I got to live in both New York and San Francisco, and had the opportunity to explore California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Colorado to name a few.
All of my family and friends were in the United States, and everything I had grown to know and love was focused in America. And that was the problem.
Once a mind has been stretched to a new dimension of understanding through experience, it can’t go back to its previous state. Put another way, the psychological impact of a prolonged, intense period of free travel is irrevocable. Couple this with equally intense projects while traveling, and you will have a literal new person in every way.
I left to backpack in April 2019, but this story really starts in the sweltering summer of 2013 in North India. Of all the places you could go to shift your paradigm, India is the Mecca. The mechanical hum of an economic giant awakening, the foreign smells flooding your confused nostrils, the queer languages and dialects, some harsh, others soft. The food, oh God the food! The people, the animals, the market, the negotiations, the pushing, the shoving, fighting, peace.
I found myself as a fish out of water that soon grew wings and learned to fly on the winds of the newness of life. But then those wings were clipped.
Fast forward six years and I’m back in the sea of America, only I’ve forgotten how to swim. Drowning, no not in the absence of the world I so briefly experienced but drowning in the mere knowledge that such a world even exists.
So, as I sunk deeper into the abyss, places like LA and New York were only bitter reminders that I wasn’t living out my destiny.
The Beehive: The Modern Black Death
Have you ever watched the sunset over the little village of Chefchaouen from the Spanish Mosque? What about the hike up to Bunker’s lookout at the top of Barcelona? Have you felt the hypnotic pull of current off the coast of Saint Louis? How about the tasty, tangy, sour, and sweet cuisine of Izmir, Turkey?
There are some medicines for the soul that no doctor can prescribe. I was sick and walking to an early grave without even knowing it. That’s the thing about me, I’m too extreme for my own good sometimes. If I’m working, it’s going to be 80-hour weeks minimum. If I’m going to travel, it’s going to be yearlong backpacking adventures from village to desert to jungle to countryside. A blessing and a curse, a destiny and a decision, both a fantasy and a reality.
I haven’t shared this with many people, but I had a health scare while I was working in San Francisco. I never went to the doctor, but to the best of my limited knowledge I was experiencing stroke like symptoms. Numbness and pressure on half of my head and face, sudden headaches, twitchy eye. Working constantly and quickly gaining weight, I was unhappy.
While this situation definitely freaked me out, I started to realize that this is all too common in the United States. Our country has many great aspects, but a calm pace of life and a notable work-life balance isn’t one of them. Pair this with living and working in the heart of Silicon Valley and you can forget about it. Markets like New York and SF are fit to burst with a swarm of worker bees that travel back and forth from hive to home day after day until they are discarded as refuse. The names and faces change, but the system is the same.
At the moment of being discarded it’s often too late that we realize we actually had many other options all along.
Travel: The Original Medicine Man
Sevilla, España in mid-July: sweltering. It was nearing 100 degrees as I dodged in and out of the shadows underneath the buildings of the narrow streets of Alameda de Hércules.
Even if my shirt wasn’t sticking to my body because of the sweat, I would still know it was nearing the hottest part of the day. Nothing was open and people were nowhere to be found. Why was I even outside? I mean, I had a better chance of finding an open restaurant in Casablanca during Ramadan than I did finding one in Sevilla during the siesta.
Like in many parts of Spain, Sevilla observes an unofficial “siesta” from around 2PM to as late as 8PM where everyone closes shop, goes home, and sleeps out the hottest part of the day. True to my American roots, my first week in Spain was filled with defiant, yet futile rebellion against this way of life. As this photo proves, I soon after acquiesced.
Spain is where it finally started to click. Peace, relax, tranquilo, namaste, Zen. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same. It’s all freedom. Freedom is what we’re all after at the end of the day. The freedom to go where you want, when you want, with who you want. The freedom to choose your schedule and what projects to work on. The freedom to pursue the deep, hidden things of the heart you never even knew were there. The freedom to be free. But freedom paradoxically comes at a great cost.
The Musings of a Vagabond
Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Turkey, back to Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, and finally into the North of Senegal all in twelve months. What did I learn? That there’s no such thing as a free ride in life. Or put another way: society doesn’t often reward those who don’t create value for others. I say “often” because of course there are exceptions to the rule. But all in all you have to create value for those around you if you’re going to exist beyond the level of a wandering vagabond.
Before I started my trip, I was creating value and was rewarded accordingly. But that was on a limited scale. What traveling revealed was the unlimited scope of the possibilities that exist in the world to help make other people’s lives better. And deep down, that’s all I ever wanted to do; it’s the reason why I left.
Traveling as intensely as I did for a whole year was like hitting the rest button on my life. It completely upended my belief system and shifted all of my paradigms. I realized that I am capable of way more than I ever dared believe.
But what now? We’re in the midst of a global pandemic and travel has screeched to a sudden halt. I was evacuated from West Africa in April, and sometimes I catch myself thinking “did any of the past year really even happen?”
Much of life can feel like that sometimes. For some, thirty years slip through the tips of their fingers like trying to grasp water. If it’s true then that much of life can feel like a dream, then I’d rather spend my life living out my dreams.
Yes, I will have to give up many of the “conveniences” of a more traditional life, but a traditional lifestyle was never true to who I was in the first place. As a bird in water, so was Weh’yee in corporate America.
But now I’m free. Free to soar the open skies of the world until the day I’m called home to the nest from which I came. The only question left is are you?
If you’re interested in learning more about working remotely, going abroad in general, or living, working, and investing in the African continent follow me @wehyeeba on all major platforms, or drop me a line at wehyee@intern-ally.com