I went to see the new movie Eat, Pray, Love a couple of weeks ago. The movie wasn’t fabulous, it wasn’t even as good as the book, but it threw me into reminiscing. Nearly four years ago, like the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, I too made the decision to abandon my existing life and job to travel around the world for six months in pursuit of my true passions of travel, photography, and writing. The book had just been released at that time and I read it from cover to cover during the 36 hours and three layovers required to get to Vietnam. I remember being intrigued by the fact that I had previously visited India and would be going to Italy and Bali on that trip, meaning I would be retracing the steps of the author.

My situation wasn’t exactly the same as Gilbert’s. I wasn’t coming out of a divorce or a bad relationship. But I was spiritually bereft. I had built numerous successful careers in corporate environments, only to abandon them to search for something that would make me happy. I knew deep down that corporate life, with its appurtenant stress and soul-sucking politics was not for me, but I kept returning to it because it paid the bills. By the time I’d turned 50 I was a lost soul. I didn’t know who I was, but I knew I had to find a way to make myself happy, to escape from the endlessness of it all.

At the conclusion of my six months on the road I decided to recreate myself as a travel writer and photographer which, frankly, were the only things I’d ever really wanted to do. Now, four years later, I’ve accomplished that goal. I travel 9-10 months per year and have no permanent home. Although I do not suggest that this life is for everyone, one part of my process – the six month career break – was a valuable tool that can benefit anyone. It is not uncommon for Europeans and Australians to take mid-career breaks; employers in these countries seem to understand that employees return to the workplace renewed and brimming with new ideas following such a hiatus. Unfortunately, in the U.S. the mid-career break is not an accepted part of our culture, but there is now a movement afoot to change all that.

Join us and find out how to take a mid-career break

Two weeks from today, on September 14th, the developers of the website Briefcase to Backpack will hold a FREE series of events in major cities across the U.S.and in Canada, titled “Meet, Plan, Go!” With the goal of Read the rest of this entry »

El Chepe - the train that runs through Mexico's Copper Canyon.

It’s time to reveal my tentative travel itinerary. I say tentative because I never really know what my route will be. Some places, I definitely want to visit; others are potential destinations and still others are only “if I have time.” I generally have a hotel or hostel reserved for the first few nights, but after that I just  go where the wind blows me and figure out travel arrangements as I go.

Sites that are high on my priority list this time around are taking the train through Copper Canyon (Barranca del Cobre) to spend time among the Tarahumara Indians and visiting the Yucatan capital of Merida, both in Mexico, as well as hiking the Inca Trail to Macchu Pichu in Peru, and visiting the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador.

Several of my fellow digital nomads will also be traveling through Central and South America simultaneously and I hope to cross paths with some of them along the way; there’s even talk of a meet-up at Macchu Pichu. Since my plans are fluid, I’m open to any suggestions you may have for places along the way that are worth investigating or should not be missed, or any comments with regard to my schedule (if, for instance, a particular plan to go from one place to Read the rest of this entry »

I let my shadow lug around my backpack while I relaxed on the beach in Byron Bay, Australia

Some people have itchy fingers. I have itchy travel feet. Since returning from my six-month round-the-world (RTW) trip in 2007 I’ve continued to travel in the U.S., staying on the road more than 50% of the time. I’ve been longing to strap on my backpack and head back out for another round of international travel but the timing just didn’t seem right. Last year was especially difficult; I finally had to tell the bank to take back a property I still owned in North Carolina, because I could no longer pay the mortgage. It was a gut-wrenching decision, fraught with irrational fears. After a lifetime of building up sterling credit, how would I live once it was ruined? Could I ever obtain another credit card or qualify for a car loan? Would bad credit keep a potential employer from hiring me? What if I settled down in one place – would I be able to rent an apartment? Even worse, I felt like a bad person, a lowlife, a loser. I had never even paid a bill late, much less default on a loan contract.

Things got worse. The bank decided to sue me rather than foreclose on the property. I won’t bore you with the gory details, other than to say my attorney is still battling this in court, but the whole experience has elicited yet another shift in my ever-evolving view of life. It all began in December of 2006, when I walked away from a successful career. For the previous ten years I had been selling real estate. I had no passion for the job, quite the opposite: even though I was a very talented Broker, I hated going to work every day. Deep down I knew I was selling my soul, yet I plodded along because it paid the bills and gave me the resources to travel a month each year. I never considered that it took every last day of those month-long vacations to regain my sanity, and that with each ensuing year my Read the rest of this entry »

Michaela Potter in the Galapagos. Photo courtesy of BriefcaseToBackpack.com.

A while back I wrote that Hole In The Donut was featured on the Briefcase to Backpack website.  The founders of the site, Michaela Potter and Sherry Ott, both took a mid-career break to travel around the world and in so doing discovered an interesting fact: although Brits, Aussies and many other cultures accept the value of such a break, the concept is virtually unknown in the U.S. Having benefited in many ways from their travels, the duo wanted to “inspire others to take a cultural career break and gain insightful lessons on life.” Thus Briefcase To Backpack was born, and my around the world trip was one of the first to be featured on their site.

Sherry Ott in India. Photo courtesy of BriefcaseToBackpack.com.

After my initial phone interview with Michaela, she asked if I would be willing to have a follow-up conversation where she would record my comments for a future podcast. Although I had no idea how they intended to use the audio, I was delighted when, just a few days ago, I discovered Michaela and Sherry had incorporated my comments into a podcast now appearing on the immensely popular Indie Travel Podcast. The site is run by Craig and Linda, full-time travelers who bring you tips and topics from the world of independent travel. They provide regular travel advice, review products and services they have found useful, or bring you an interview from someone they’ve met along the way.

I must admit to being somewhat surprised by the sound of my own voice – do I really sound like that???? But I was otherwise blown away when I listened to it. Perhaps half of the 21-minute podcast was devoted to my phone interview. I sounded articulate, humorous, engaged, energized…all I can say is, somebody must have some mighty fine editing skills! I subsequently realized that the Read the rest of this entry »

I am sitting at the airport in Lisbon, Portugal, waiting to board my plane. This trip has been a wonderful adventure for me over the past six months. I don’t know why I was so driven to do it; I only know that it was extremely important for me. Perhaps I was feeling my mortality and wanted to make this trip while I thought I still was capable of doing so. Perhaps I just needed to go look for my true path in life. I can’t say that I’ve found my path along the way – yet. But I feel I am close.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I never made it back into Lisbon, nor did I get to the UNESCO World Heritage town of Sintra, just 30 minutes from where I was staying. Frankly, I needed a rest, so I gave myself permission to just lie on the beach for nine days instead of playing tourist right up to the last possible moment and wearing myself to a frazzle. I did, however, have an amazing experience in Portugal. Several days ago Read the rest of this entry »

It may be unfair of me to pick three words that define all of Portugal, since I only visited a tiny part of the northern coast, so I’ll say that the following three words define the coastal resort areas of Portugal:

Sunny: Practically perfect weather, mid-eighties during the day with gentle breezes and in the 70′s at night. Sleeping with the doors and windows flung open. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got packing down to an exact science. For this six month trip I carried only a small backpack and a carry-on size (22″) rolling suitcase. So I had to choose every article with great care. One of the most difficult decisions when traveling light is what shoes to pack, simply because they take up so much room. I opted for two pair – one a really good (and really expensive) pair of Mephisto sandals that can even be worn into the water as well as my good old reliable tennis shoes. And when I say old, I mean really decrepit. These tennis shoes have seen better days – the laces are frayed and the soles were already cracked when I started this trip. With the amount of walking I’ve been doing, well, you can just imagine the condition they were in. But the plain and simple fact is that they are comfortable. They are well broken-in. They fit my feet like they were molded around them. For all those reasons I have been fighting the idea of new shoes but when I got to Pisa, Italy a week ago and it started to rain, I discovered that the seams between the soles and the upper fabric had come unglued and by the end of the day, my feet were soaking wet.

Still, I figured they would last to the end of this trip. And they would have, if not for the SMELL that erupted from them after they got thoroughly soaked, inside and out.

Dos Condes De Castro Guimares Museum and Library

At first I figured it was more the socks than the shoes, so I washed all my socks and continued to wear the shoes. By the time I got to Portugal I could smell them when they were on my feet. I was certain that people standing near me were wrinkling up their noses in disgust and looking around, trying to identify Read the rest of this entry »

My incredible luck has not failed me as I near the end of my six month around-the-world journey. For my last ten days I have chosen Portugal because I have long wanted to come here, and Cascais specifically for its beaches. Somehow, I just knew I would be tired at this point and badly in need of a rest. And I was. Any one of a hundred beach destinations around Portugal would have provided me with the rest I needed before plunging headlong back into life in the States, but in Cascais I was fortunate to locate a family that has a studio apartment attached to their home, which they gladly rented to me, even though the family was out-of-town when I was scheduled to arrive, had never met me, and knew next to nothing about me. On the evening of my arrival, a family friend met me at the house, handed me a key, gave me a brief tour, and told me to make myself welcome.

Houses and cobblestone streets of Cascais

I slept until 10 AM the next morning (a luxury I have not allowed myself on this trip very often because there was always so much to see and do that I didn’t want to waste even ten minutes of daylight) and woke to delicious sunlight streaming into the courtyard between the main house and my apartment. I jumped into a bathing suit, shorts, and a top and headed out to explore. The street in front of the house leading down to the town square and beach was paved in chunks of white marble about three inches square, flat on top and rough on the sides, each piece laboriously hand-placed and butted up against its neighbor to create a relatively flat road surface. Thousands of cars and pedestrians over the years have polished Read the rest of this entry »

I arrived in Portugal following a nightmare 13 hour travel day where everything that could go wrong did go wrong, including nearly being throw off an Italian train over a seat assignment, a flight that was an hour late, and getting lost at night between the airport and the rail station in Lisbon because the woman at the information desk at the airport told me to take the wrong bus. But hey, my luggage made it though; gotta be grateful for the little things.

Anyway, I took a day and a half to regroup – get money from the ATM, get my laundry done (really, I was beginning to smell), shop for groceries (I am renting a studio apartment in Cascais, a suburb of Lisbon with a series of great little beaches), and write, write, write. I didn’t even go out to see Cascais the first day because I had to get the Cinque Terre, Italy stories out of my head before I saw a new place. So now I’m all caught up and have even uploaded all my Italy photos to the photo library. I hope you’ll want to look at them because I think they are incredible (especially the Venice and Cinque Terre photos). Just click on the above button labeled “Photos” and follow the directions on the resulting page.

My trip is winding down now – only 9 more days. I am sad (I really think I could stay on the road pretty much full time) but I’m also looking forward to getting home to the good old USA where everything is so familiar. There were times during this trip that were very stressful – never knowing what I was going to find from day to day, or even where I was going to be the next day was a constant challenge. In the beginning, I was often “mired in the muck” and had to MAKE myself Read the rest of this entry »