I’m never sure where to start for these posts but mentioning that I got married might be a good place! Whoohoo! I was so worried that there would be some terrible calamity or that I’d fumble during the ceremony but our wedding couldn’t have gone better. It was frigidly cold, but aside from that and a few minor details that didn’t go as planned the day was perfect. I got to marry my best friend, so I’ve got nothing to complain about!
And I guess thats brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk about.
Back in 2011 I had started making plans to solo travel to Japan for a vacation. My favorite TV show, (Departures,) had filled me with travel bugs and I was ready to get out and start exploring. I was sooooo excited and almost ready to start booking but as I’m sure everyone remembers - there was a massive tsunami disaster and my plans never came to fruition. I moved on to other things but I never felt good about leaving those plans behind me and I never lost that desire to go travelling.
Departures ran for 3 seasons and ended in 2011, (shortly before I moved out of my Mom and Dad’s house.) I got the DVDs, I bought the official Departures tee-shirt and I also bought their patch for my camera bag. Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of the show, but one thing I never did do was watch the last episode. Between moving out and not being able to save much money I knew that travelling wasn’t going to be an option any time soon but I told myself that I’d watch the last episode of Departures on the flight to wherever I actually go in the future, whenever that happens to be.
Now skip forward to 2015. I’m on the verge of a telecom induced mental breakdown. Although I was happy with my personal relationships, I had never been less happy with a job in my entire life. I loved where Charlie and I lived and I loved my cash-flow... but working for Rogers was the most soul-sucking experience of my life. I don’t remember if the day I cracked was a particularly bad one, but I cracked all the same. I told Charlie just how unhappy I was with where I felt my life was going, I loved her, our house and our friends but the job was so terrible that it tainted everything else in life. I was waxing sentimental about how I’d give up everything we have just go to on an actual adventure. I’d sell all my clothes, all my books, my computer, my xbox, everything I owned just to see the world and do some travelling.
If I recall correctly, it took charlie about 15 minutes to do some number crunching and by the end of it, she had a basic budget for how we could save enough money to travel for 6 months in 2018. We’d quit/pause our jobs, go see the world, then come back and find me a new job. Shortly after that we bought this map of the world, and we’ve been pinning all the places we’ve been.
Not many plans survive contact with reality so we’ve trimmed our trip in half and changed some of the countries we were planning to visit, but in 4 weeks we leave for our world tour. We’re starting with a Caribbean cruise to see some of our friends get married and then we’re off to Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, England and Iceland. I’ve got the last episode of Departures queued up and ready to go.
I’m terrible with keeping up with writing so this is mostly just going to be a photo dump, but welcome to Charlie and Matt vs the world.
