Thanks for joining me!

So here’s the background story as to how I got here:

Hi! I’m Lauren, I’m 29 and I am making it my mission to go travelling for 6 months to a year. I’ve always loved holidays and travel, but these have mostly been family holidays. After university I really wanted to go travelling and explore our world, but unfortunately none of my friends had caught the travel bug and at the time I wasn’t confident to go on my own… neither did I have the funds. I decided to just get a job in marketing, which I am still in and a few years later my dream car was released and I had to have it. For those that know cars, this was the mk3 Ford Focus RS. So, I was happy, I had my dream car, I was making loads of new friends through it and life was good. Six months later I met the love of my life, who had the same car as me! We had the most amazing connection and… he wanted to travel! And so my love for travel ignited again. We got planning what was going to be our first, but epic trip, which was to be an American road trip. We were bursting with excitement, but knew this would be expensive. At the same time we were discussing future travel plans for after we completed the road trip. We were going to go to Vietnam next and the big one would be to save enough to quit our jobs and go travelling. As you can probably guess from the past tense… we didn’t work out. The pressures of saving for the road trip got too much because we sacrificed too much as a couple. Anyway, I got dumped. I decided to work on me and during that time I decided that I would go to Bali through Gap 360 and do their 12 day intro tour (end of May 2019 I’ll be going). When my ex and I met up for one final time we discussed our future plans, I felt good that I had Bali to say about. Well, my ex well and truly trumped me when he said that in February 2020 he is going to be quitting his job and is going to go travelling with his friend. This killed me, he’s going to be living the dream we had, while I’m still stuck working the 9-5. This triggered something in me. I decided this is it, I’m going to make it my aim to go, get out and live the dream that I have spent years procrastinating about. Time to take action! I don’t want to get years down the line wishing I had gone travelling… The age old saying ‘regret the things you do, not the things you don’t do’.

I have a few of challenges in my way and are the major parts of my plan to achieve my travels:

• One – I have to pay for the car. Now, potentially selling the car is an option, but it really is the last option for me as I will come back from travelling and I really want to come back to that car I love so much. For those that don’t understand the not wanting to sell the car, it’s my hobby and how I’ve made so many lovely friends. It’s the majority of my social life and something I had wanted for a very, very long time.
• Two – That I’m just not paid enough. That’s not enough to cover the car, rent, food, still being able to slightly live life and to save money.
• Three – I have rheumatoid arthritis, which means I am on medication. I have an injection once a week that has to remain refrigerated and I have blood tests every three months.

I will go into my figures in the next post as I think it is helpful to anyone thinking of doing the same thing and you can see where my plan is coming from.

But for now, this is my condensed story as to how I am in this position. I hope you enjoy reading My Road To Travel and I hope you eventually get to read about my travels.