If you haven’t already read The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris, I highly recommend you do. Though parts of it can sound unrealistic at times, it will change the way you think about work, play and everything in between. Among other ideas, Tim talks about the highly affordable lifestyle of taking mini-retirements while you’re still young, able and energetic enough to enjoy them (like, right now). No matter what age or background, you don’t need a million dollars to spend a month in Thailand learning muay thai. You can do it for a fraction of what it’s costing you to rent your current apartment in your current city. As long as you’re smart about exchange rates and differences in cost of living, hanging out for a few months in a new country is totally do-able. I know this for a fact.
After I got over the very difficult process of leaving my cushy job and severing ties to things like a lease, a phone plan and a gym membership, the ability to spend 2 months abroad (like in Argentina) became a reality. I’m no millionaire. And yes, income is and will become more and more important as the months stretch on but I know that taking time off now is a much easier thing to pull off compared with a few years from now when I might be married, I might be thinking about kids, I might be committed to another job/business/venture.
Wanna learn to speak Argentinian castellano? Or write kanji in Japan? Or make home made pasta in Italy? Don’t wait your whole life to experience things that you’ve always wondered about doing. Life is a long journey and sometimes saving our dreams for later means they may not come at all, so while that desire is in your heart and while you’ve got the resources to do it, stop making excuses and just go! Go, go, go!
Imagine…
… renting a villa in Tuscany for a three month lazy summer. Take fashion classes, learn art history, speak Italian. On the weekends, take the train to Sienna and eat gelato in the middle of Il Campo, the square where the palio takes place. Wander the streets of Florence and bargain for beautiful Florentine jewelry. Discover wine. Lots of it.
… a solo trip through Bali’s lush, tropical inland villages. Take cooking classes, ride bikes down volcano valleys and spoil yourself with a $5 massage every single day. And if you’re feeling up for it, hang out on the coast for a few days and learn to surf off Kuta’s famous shores.
… winter in New York City. Harsh, beautiful, an urban wild. Ice skate in Rockefeller Centre, explore the Guggenhiem, make snow men in Central Park. Light a fire in an old flat in the East Village and relish the fact that the winter is only playtime for you, not forever. Sometimes a new twist on a familiar season will help you see things in a completely different way.
… December in Brazil. Hot, humid, sexy. Milder than scorching January, it’s a great time to sample a tropical Christmas. Learn forro. Brave a Brazilian bikini wax before hitting the beaches of Rio. And when you’re tired of the street dancing, hire a guide and rough it through the Amazon. Come back a toasty, delicious golden brown.
… a life with no boundaries, with no rules, with endless possibility. No lifestyle has to be forever and sometimes, change is good. It helps us to figure out what’s important and eventually, after all of the running around, we realize that place is just place. What matters is who you’re with, what you’re learning and how you’re changing along the way.
Go! Now! Make it happen.
