How to Quit Your Job, Travel, and Do Whatever You Want

Introduction

This is part travel guide, part how-to manual, part secret tips, part real world advice, and part madness.

I spent around two years traveling1, being technically homeless, and not having to answer to anybody2. Totals: 18 months, 5 countries, 17 cities, over 20 flights, and it all ended up mostly painless.

You can do it too.

This book/guide/rambling was drafted in Houston (August 2013), continued in Boston (September 2013), then abandoned. It is very much still in draft form with inline notes to myself, terse thoughts to be expanded later, irregular formatting, no pictures or illustrations, nonsensical sections, and no clear flow between some ideas. Read at your own risk.

The chapters below are about 14,000 words total but the content is fairly skimmable. Estimated reading time: 30–60 minutes.

So, here, in 2016, I leave you with my draft from 2013.


_another familiar accident changes where I call home
the thing that I needed the most was to simply be alone


How to Quit Your Job, Travel, and Do Whatever You Want


right now it feels like killing time
i’m running from the shadow of my former shadow’s life
and sometimes i wonder if i was ever really there


  1. Directional superlatives: North — Dublin, Ireland; South — Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica; East — Barcelona, Spain; West — San Francisco, California.

  2. Except the normal contingent of airport security agents, people you’re sharing housing with, credit card companies, and the tax man.