I’ve lived out of one backpack or another for many years. As an IT Consultant I had a custom backpack with compartments for laptop, accessories, office equipment, adaptors, chargers, plus overnight necessities, food, water, etc. All waterproof, lightweight, and sturdy. Travelling for pleasure long distance I had a larger capacity bag and a small day bag.
Wherever I was my backpack was my home. Like a human snail. Wherever I stopped for the night or even a few hours, my backpack was my home. You learned to carry only the essentials and nothing else. No luxuries or extras. No backups (that’s what cash and credit cards are for). You have to carry it so you learn to be picky about what you carry. If it can be digitized then do it. A digital copy has zero weight. Books, entertainment, data.
I got homesick a few times. Not just for people I missed but for the familiar. Your own bed, garden, space. It passes though.
These days I still carry backpacks. I have a go-bag for any emergency and a professional backpack for contract work.
Home is where my backpack is.
Tag: travel
The world around and in you
There are many different ways of looking at the world. All come from within. Your perceptions and how you interpret and react to the world around you determines how you view it and your enjoyment of it.
There’s an example I like to use to illustrate this based on two people I met on my travels.
The first was a lady I met in New Zealand. She was on a package holiday whereas I was winging it going in whatever direction I felt next. We ran into each other on a Maori farm on the north island in an area known as the bay of plenty.
She told me that she had broken her (non dominant) wrist in a sporting accident and couldn’t wait to get home. She was going through the motions living each remaining day of her holiday but enjoying none of it. She hated this country, the people, the food, everything. She just wanted to get back home.
This wasn’t how she had felt before the accident, she was having the time of her life. That all changed however since the accident.
The second was a young man I met in a youth hostel in Sydney Australia. He was on the phone to his mum when we met. She was crying. Afterwards he explained how he and his mates came out here, bought a cheap van, surfboards, and the gear they needed and just travelled the coast surfing and partying. Then that very morning someone had stolen the van and all his possessions including his passport. He told me that everyone couldn’t have been more helpful and he has papers to get back home. He was as happy as can be. “I loved every minute dude” he told me. “It’s been a blast, an amazing holiday”. “Ok so all my stuff is gone and all my photos but they can’t take what’s up here” he said pointing to his head. His mum was upset for him but this guy was so chilled.
Both fellow travellers had suffered a major setback, a traumatic event. Yet while the first had chosen to view everything negatively, the second had chosen the opposite, to remember the fun times. After all it’s just stuff and that can be replaced. He did not let life get him down and he was a better person because of it.
Only you can control how the world around you affects you.
Time and Travel
When looking for work I look at the location and have to factor in the time to get there, and back, plus the cost of travelling.
If it’s not too far then I generally travel by car and factor in fuel, insurance, and parking. Further away and I look at trains, which in the UK are very expensive.
If the role is very far away and requires a long train journey, maybe with one or more changes, then I need to factor in both the cost of the tickets and my time spent travelling as this is lost time that must be compensated for. After all, employment is you selling your time to someone, including your time getting to and from the work.
What tends to happen IMO is that the company looking to hire you only factors in the salary as they assume the individual they hire will either live locally or pay to get there themselves. This is fine as long as the salary reflects this, which often it does not.
Companies want to hire from a larger pool of candidates but often do not want to pay the higher cost in bringing in someone from further afield. They either do not want a remote or hybrid worker, or wish to compensate for the commuting costs, either as expenses or within the salary.
Agents have gotten angry with me when I won’t entertain a role that is far away on the grounds that the rate being offered is too low after factoring in the commuting costs and lost time.
When recruiting from the wider market you need to consider both the costs in terms of time and travel.