Why I'm quitting my job to travel
I handed in my notice on a rainy Portland morning. My editor hugged me. Finn tried to eat a stapler. Normal office chaos, except I was walking out of a life I had built carefully since my twenties.
I am not running away. I am running toward something I have been scheduling for years in the margins: long trips, slow mornings, work that does not require a badge to leave the building.
The moment it became real
It was not a sunset or a breakdown in the supply closet. It was a spreadsheet. I mapped freelance income, savings, health insurance, Finn's costs, and a twelve-month travel plan that was ambitious but not fantasy. The numbers were not comfortable. They were sufficient. There is a difference.
I realized I had been treating travel as a reward for exhaustion instead of a structure for living. That felt backwards.
What I am afraid of
Stability is a real loss. Team lunches, predictable paychecks, someone else handling IT when your laptop dies. I will miss being part of a newsroom buzz. I will not miss measuring my worth in office hours.
I am also afraid of being bad at freedom. Of waking up without a plan and turning into a person who refreshes email for sport. So I am building routines before I leave: write first, walk Finn, eat something green, then open maps.
What comes next
More freelance work, this blog, the Camino in autumn, and a year of saying yes to places that used to live in a folder called someday. Finn comes when borders allow. When they do not, we adapt. We always have.
If you are thinking about a similar leap, start with math, not manifesting. Then ask what you are willing to trade, and for how long. Freedom loves a budget.