Count the days

August 1, 2017August 1, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

Eight years ago, yesterday, I launched this blog with a post entitled “Count the days.” At the time, I was already four years deep into my project, one month out from moving from San Francisco to Chicago, so I decided that it was about time I started documenting the journey. Well, sort of.

From the very beginning, my blog posts had a schizophrenic inconsistency, covering a whole litany of topics and themes (my second post, published the same day as my first, was a poem I’d written about two girls merged into one composite character). Truly, it was a blog in the most tedious, cliché sense of the word. Good thing it’s gotten so much better since then, right?

One Month

Last days are never as profound as they appear on TV. People don’t confess their love in airports or spend one final day doing all the things they always dreamed of doing but never did. Goodbye parties, of which I’ve had my fair share, have become increasingly subdued over the years, especially as the thought of waking up hungover before a flight has grown unappealing. I’d rather show up to the airport well rested.

People leave; life goes on.

Some years back, I began a tradition, one of many small affectations-turned-habits I’ve picked up over the years in an attempt to create a faint sense of constancy and purpose in my otherwise pointless life: On the night before I leave a city, I go to a bar by myself, a joint I’ve never been, usually in a neighborhood I hadn’t gotten around to exploring. I sit down, have a few drinks, maybe chat with someone, maybe not. Then, after an hour or so, I pay my bill and leave. No grand affair.

I could justify the tradition with some post factum literary explanation: it signifies how I came to the city alone and will leave alone; it reminds me that no matter how long I spend somewhere, there will always be somewhere I haven’t explored; it’s preparation for my reemergence into solitude.

The real explanation is so much simpler than all that: I’m tired. A lot of work goes into making a move, and a great deal of energy is expended in the gauntlet of goodbyes. I’m grateful for a chance to see people before I take off, but it takes a toll. Holing up someplace where no one knows me or cares if I sit in absolute silence is restful. It’s my Irish Goodbye to the whole city.

Tenth

I will miss New York City, both a final city and a first. It has been my home for longer than all but my birthplace, and its inexorable glow has been my guiding light for as long as I’ve held dreams for the future. From the moment I set foot in Brooklyn, this city has tested and resisted me.

The very first time I found myself running late here, I had a quintessential New York experience: Without explanation, the train I was on shut down and held in the station. After waiting nearly ten minutes in confusion, a man came rushing past the car, not an MTA employee, just a fellow passenger, and bluntly informed the lot of us that there had been a shooting in the next station. A typical welcome, I suppose.

No wonder I love this town, I’ve always been a sucker for a lady who plays hard to get.

I don’t mean to imply life here is always a challenge. There are great pleasures to be had in this city, both cultural and personal. From a sunset rock concert in Central Park to a vibrant, surreal burlesque/musical/fashion show in an unmarked theater in Bushwick, the city has indulged my cravings for new. I’m a boring person in a city that expels boredom.

New York makes a lot of promises; it’s up to you to see them fulfilled.

Home?

When – if – I come back to the US, I don’t know to which city I’d return. New York is the obvious choice, but it is exorbitantly expensive and its capricious social circles will only be harder to pierce with more years on my back. Chicago? Fun and pretty, and friendlier than NYC, sure, but also just a smaller version. Seems like stepping back. Seattle still holds a part of my heart, but who knows if it would be the same nearly a decade on. Of course, there’s always Kans…. haha, nope. Couldn’t even finish the thought.

I’ve had many homes here in the States, but I wonder if they would still feel like my homes if I returned to them. For that matter, will the United States? Granted, there are still massive portions of the US I’ve never seen, so I could always find some new corner, maybe a secluded cabin in the mountains, a babbling brook and towering trees for neighbors.

Who can say?

I’m a man of fleeting desires, though, so all I can speak to is how I feel in this moment, and right now, my heart wants to see the world, to cross borders and time zones and watch sunsets from lost horizons; to not look back.

“I don’t know” is a phrase I’m using a lot lately. I have left behind the realm of long term goals for an open road. With each new endeavor I set out on, there are fewer signposts to provide me guidance. Potential calamity, a constant companion throughout my ten year project, remains reliably by my side, and we’re packing light. Everything else is up in the air.

Thirty-one. As I have done so many times before, I’m counting the days until my next departure, both overwhelmed by the long list of things I have yet to do (and would like to do), and filled with anxious excitement for the unknown. Thirty-one days is a lifetime; also, merely an instant.

I’ve called many places my home little darlin, but I only come from one

July 18, 2017July 18, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

On the wall next to the pool table in the basement, there was a plate cover that always hung loose. It had been missing the bottom screw for as long as I had memory and, when slid back, would pivot up to reveal an empty black hole behind it, an opening for a non-existent outlet. In the eyes of a child, it wasn’t just a gap in the drywall, it was a secret cave, a limitless expanse; a hiding place.

I used to fold up a dollar bill, even a fiver on the rare occasion I accumulated such a bountiful harvest, and tuck it into the crevice between the wall and a pair of loose wires. My hope was that I would forget about the stash and then some day, a few months later, maybe years, I’d come across it again, and it would be like finding buried treasure. The only problem was, the moment I slid the cash behind that plate, I thought of nothing else. The bill never remained back there long.

As I grew older, the game – and I suppose that’s what it was, a game I played with myself that I lost every time – took on a different objective. Now, instead of hiding the money so that I could stumble upon it at some unknown date, I hoped for enough willpower to resist removing the money at all so that, in some unknown future after my family had left, a different kid from a different family, would find the treasure.

I can’t say when I was first struck by the realization that I would not always live in that house, that my family would not own it forever, but it must have been fairly young. Our home was perpetually in a state of flux. I never had visions of growing up to raise my own family there.

I wish I could say that the last time I stuck money behind the face plate, I left it, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure I did not. I was consistently cash strapped and there was a new Spider-man comic to buy every week. Still, it’s fun to imagine some curious six-year-old playing around in that basement one afternoon and somehow managing to uncover my secret stash. It would be the greatest discovery of her young life.

Following the diaspora of my siblings and my parents’ divorce, my mother and I moved into a two-bedroom, loft apartment in the middle of Lawrence for my senior year of high school. Many different homes would follow. Over the ten years of my project, I lived in thirteen different apartments, some by myself, most with roommates, all of varying degrees of comfort and disorder.

These homes have been, at times, shabby and, at others, luxurious. I’ve had isolated apartments, and I’ve lived in the heart of the city. I’ve gone from having two floors all to myself to sharing one bathroom with six people. Whatever the amenities, wherever I’ve ended up, like a hermit crab making use of a found shell, I’ve made it home in my own way.

After three years in Brooklyn, I’ve yet to fully settle; I still exist in the vapor. No art on my walls, cardboard boxes serving simultaneously as storage and tables. I live like someone with one foot out the door because that’s all I know. In just over a month, I’ll move again.

I tried. When I settled into my first Brooklyn apartment, I purchased a desk and a chair, and a bookshelf. I picked up some cheap pictures from a street vendor and even bought a wall clock for some inexplicable reason. I made an effort to spread out, to accumulate, to slip into the nooks and crannies and feel attached. It didn’t take.

The clock’s batteries have been dead for two months.

Home is a bed

I have this kind of strange habit when I’m traveling, I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. As a child at camp and even now on a trip, I’ll refer to whatever temporary facility I’m staying in as “home.” If we’re out and I’ve forgotten something at the hotel, I’ll say, “I’ll just head home real quick and grab it.” It’s a quirk that occasionally earns an eyebrow raise, but I’ve done it all my life and I don’t think it’s so strange. Home is where I lay my head down to sleep.

I love having my own space, I crave it, but I’m not too picky about what the space should look like. I just need to be able to find my peace.

Living with other people can complicate that, not everybody was meant to be a roommate; or, at least, not my roommate. Sometimes I’ve made a home in an apartment despite living with people with whom I had nothing in common. Other times, it’s the people that have made an apartment home.

Home is a base, a starting point, a fixture to which I latch a tether, however temporarily. Like a climber reaching for the next anchor point, I’m always searching for somewhere new to fasten a hold.

Yet, home also remains, stubbornly, Lawrence, Kansas, and a blue, three-story, behemoth of a house ever sliding incrementally down a steep hill, now the residence of a family I’ve never met.

Lawrence: home to the University of Kansas and its rabid basketball fan base; home to the best hillside views in the entire state (maybe the only hillside views); home to artists, writers, and musicians; home to liberal reactionaries and a church on every other block; home (for a time) to William S. Burroughs, Erin Brockovich, and Langston Hughes; and the home of a family of seven, sort of okay.

View from Campus — Pictured: Setting of beloved TV movie, *The Day After*

The weekend before my next leap into the unknown, I’ll fly to Kansas to spend a few days with some of my family that now includes three nephews and a niece.

It used to be, when I’d return home for a short trip, I couldn’t walk downtown without running into a half dozen people I knew, just by chance. Now, when I go back, unless specific plans are made – and even then – I can go the whole visit without seeing anyone I know outside of my family. I’ll walk into an old haunt and anticipate hearing my name called only to be met by the disinterested stares of a whole new generation.

With each passing year, Lawrence, the small town in which I spent 22 years, transforms into something increasingly unfamiliar, even though in structure and physical layout, it remains persistently recognizable.

There was a time when my family name carried some cachet among (the less reputable) establishments in the town (in no part due to me), but those days have mostly passed. I suspect name dropping one of my siblings would only be met with confusion nowadays. As a college town, Lawrence is a constant churn of population turnover. You don’t have to leave a place for it to leave you.

Time will change our relationships with everyone and everywhere. I haven’t lived in Kansas in a very long time, and each visit reminds me of that fact. Yet, I haven’t broken the habit of saying, “I’m heading home” when I talk about returning to Kansas. I will never live there again (and I shake my head in dismay at almost every bit of state politics that makes national news), but it remains for always, my home.

My first home.

I’ve done this silly thing over the years, before leaving some of my apartments: I’ll take one of my original 10 Cities/10 Years stickers and press it directly above the door frame on the inside of my closet. It’s unlikely anyone will ever find them, but who knows. Maybe some curious 26-year-old will be messing around in their room one afternoon and somehow manage to uncover my surreptitious memento.

It will be the stupidest discovery of her young life.

One Hundred Days

May 23, 2017May 23, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton3 Comments

One hundred days from now, if all goes as hoped, I will say my goodbyes to New York City, my home of three years, and board a flight to Spain.

There’s still so much unknown, so little figured out. A place to live, a means of income, even my exact day of arrival, it’s all still up in the air. If past moves are any indication, I’ll likely be working out the details up until the last minute. This is the circular motion by which I achieve momentum.

I have no idea how long I’ll be gone. After living so long with a precise schedule and definitive goalposts, I’ll admit, it’s disorientating to have such a nebulous future ahead of me. It’s an altogether fresh challenge, to take a dive without knowing the depth of the water.

I am someone who likes structure. This might seem counterintuitive considering how tumultuous and unpredictable much of my life has been as a result of 10 Cities/10 Years. But that project, for all its winding roads and uncertainty, still provided me structure, a guide rail.

As I’ve said frequently, the project was created to push me out of my comfort zone. With my natural shyness, my social anxiety, pushing myself towards situations where I had to meet new people and acclimate to new social situations forced me to develop mechanisms for adaptation. Evolve or die, that sort of thing.

I remain fundamentally the same person as I was when I left Kansas: socially awkward, blithely misanthropic, and utterly devoid of charm. But when the situation requires it, I can muster enough energy to seem downright personable, and that’s what a decade of traveling has developed in me. That, and alcoholism.

(I do have a tendency of drawing out fellow misanthropes; we sense each other’s hatred, a kind of Hadar, if you will.)

If 10 Cities/10 Years was about pushing myself to face my social anxiety, then this next journey is about challenging my reliance on structure.

It’s the rare person who actually thrives on total uncertainty in their life, and I am not among their tribe. Even in new surroundings and in the midst of near constant disruption, I seek out patterns, familiar routines that can ground me. A little chaos can be exhilarating, to be sure, but living without any parameters, well, that’s frankly terrifying.

I grew up in Kansas. If you mention that state name to almost anyone in the United States – hell, in the world – they’ll have one reaction: “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Ask any random person to name five images they associate with Kansas, four of them will be Wizard of Oz related, and the fourth would either be a Bible or a basketball (in Lawrence, arguably the same thing).

At the core of the state’s association with flighty redheads and yippie dogs is perhaps the most feared singular image in all of nature, the tornado.

I’ve shook in California earthquakes, witnessed the immediate impact of a hurricane in New Orleans, and soldiered through my share of blizzards. Yet, whenever the subject gets broached among people from any region of the United States, they all agree: tornadoes are the scariest.

I was always confused when people who grew up in the paths of hurricanes claimed to be more afraid of tornadoes.

“You realize hurricanes are just massive tornadoes, right?” I’d counter.

“Yeah, but you don’t know where a tornado’s going to be.”

And that’s the crux of it. Although most natural disasters will cause far more death and destruction than the average tornado, the unpredictability of a twister, the inescapable chaos that it represents, is far more potent as a symbol of terror. We watch forecasts for hurricanes and blizzards, we know where fault lines exist. But tornadoes, well those sons of bitches just come and go as they please.

I get asked from time to time, usually with a faint glimmer of horror in the inquisitor’s eyes, “Have you ever seen a tornado in person?”

Yes, yes, I have. More than a couple of times. Although, in truth, most of the time when a tornado warning blared from the sirens, I was nowhere near it and only ever saw the resultant damage a day later if we intentionally drove by to view it. A tree was probably dislodged, a fence knocked down. If it were a particularly bad storm, we might see a branch thrust through the window of some stranger’s house. For most people, life went on as normal.

I’ve never lost anything or anyone to a tornado, which probably explains why I don’t fear them and, in fact, why I love cyclone weather. First, the sky turns a gnarly shade of green or purple. As the atmosphere begins to tingle, the air gets warmer, but steady cool breezes whip through neighborhoods, the narrow passageways between houses focusing the wind like rushing rivers. A mix of rain and hail usually – but not always – pours down as the sky turns black as midnight, the clouds swirling in acrobatic maneuvers fit for the Olympics.

Then, somewhere, maybe near, maybe far, something fearsome touches down, twirling wisps of air sharper than any knife. It’ll cut through your car or home, chop down a hundred-year old tree or fling a piece of flimsy paper into stone. Few things in life actually warrant being called “awesome.” This is one of them.

Pure, unbridled chaos is a thing of beauty, stunningly so. The way you felt when your sixth grade crush would talk to you, that’s approximately the same sensation as the shaken nerves that burble in your gut when you and your college roommates stand atop Mount Oread watching a tornado slide up 15^th Avenue and raze an apartment complex you’d been at only the previous weekend.

Pray all you want, it’s never stopped a tornado. Is it any wonder it’s called Mother Nature? She’s in control.

In a little over three months, I will begin the next major journey of my life, aimless, no control. No project, no guard rails, no final destination in mind (except, you know, for the big one they made all those documentaries about). Circumstances and chance will determine where I end up and how long I’ll be there.

What comes next will be the greatest challenge of my life. Major changes should always strain us. If I ever reach a place in my life at which I no longer feel any anxiety in my gut, I know I’ve grown too comfortable, too complacent. There could come a day when I’m ready to feel that sort of calm, but I’m not there yet. I’m still chasing storms.

Have you ever seen a tornado in real life? Keep reading, you will.

Wondering what 10 Cities/10 Years is all about? Read the full story.

Who We Are

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton

My apologies ahead of time if this post is not what you come here to read. It won’t be very funny (not that they ever are).

When I decided to bring this blog back from hibernation, I did so with the intention of writing exclusively about travel and directly related topics. Long time readers of this page know I’ve never been shy about getting into politics and writing passionately about social issues. Going forward, though, I wanted this page to eschew those topics as much as possible, to be a positive page buoyed by the joy of travel.

To ignore what is going on in my country right now, though, would be a disservice. To write some random entry about a failed trip I once took would be a lie, because that isn’t where my mind is right now.

This is not a political post. I want to write about who we are.

Put simply, this Travel Ban – the Muslim Ban, the Refugee Ban, whatever you would call it – is not who we are. I refuse to accept this as a Conservative versus Liberal issue. Shame on us if we allow it to become so.

Since World War II, when America was forced to reconcile with the tragic results of banning refugees in the 1930s, we have been a nation that said we were a home for the outcast. It has been our identity in the world; it has been our beacon, a figurative idea made literal by Lady Liberty who stands roughly 5 miles from where I type this.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

This has been the spirit of this nation for over 100 years. That is not to gloss over our numerous failings as a nation, especially as it relates to foreign policy. Our actions have rarely lived up to our ideals. But we have had those ideals, and they have been what united us as a nation, even if we couldn’t agree how best to achieve them.

For eight years, dyspeptic voices warned us that President Obama was fundamentally changing the character of this nation. Well, in eight days, Donald Trump truly did it.

You can be fiscally conservative and see this is wrong. You can be socially conservative and see this is wrong. You can love your children and want to protect them and not turn your backs on others – that isn’t love, that’s fear. This isn’t Right versus Left, this is a basic question of our humanity. To shut our doors on those in need under the guise – the lie – that it will keep us safe is to fail on every level to be the nation we have claimed to be for a century.

I won’t post pictures of the children caught in the Syrian war because I don’t want to be accused of using emotional manipulation or propaganda. But you have seen them. You have seen these children, these mothers, these fathers; you have seen their suffering. They are no less human because the God they pray to answers to a different name than yours.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I have been told often that we are a Christian nation. When will we act as such? How can we be a nation that professes that it is in God we trust, yet we have no faith that we will be protected if we do what is right?

I don’t know what motivates you. I don’t know which truth you hold most dear to your heart. I don’t know which belief guides your choices.

Here is mine: Humanity is flawed; it is capable of great evil and depravity, motivated by selfishness, greed, hatred, and, more often than anything else, fear. But within humanity is also the capacity for tremendous acts of love and sacrifice, resilience and hope. I believe that humanity at its best surpasses humanity at its worst. And I believe that there is no Judgment Day awaiting, no eternal reward or punishment; just the beating rhythm of our own conscience too often drowned out by the frightened bellows within us.

To those living elsewhere in the world: Know that the actions of these particular leaders are not the will of much of the people. It is not my will. I became a traveler because I do not believe in walls. I travel because my humanity is awakened when I open myself up to new experiences and new perspectives.

To those of you living in the US: Now, we must resist this spreading evil, just as generations passed resisted tyranny in Europe and elsewhere. We must not grow complacent or irresolute in the face of this onslaught of cruelty. This is not who we are as a nation. This is not who we are as people.

This is how we resist:
ACLU = https://www.aclu.org/
CAIR = https://www.cair.com/
IRC = http://www.rescue.org
Southern Poverty Law Center = https://www.splcenter.org/
Planned Parenthood = https://www.plannedparenthood.org/

We are different; we are not separate.

Travel Living

January 17, 2017May 17, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

Yesterday, my online course with the International TEFL Academy officially began. This is the first step in my long term plan to live and work abroad indefinitely. Over the next ten weeks, I will be reading lessons, taking quizzes, and completing assignments, the first time I’ve had to do any of this since I graduated college back in 2005. Never too late to try a new path, right?

I don’t know what type of teacher I’ll be; it’s never been something I seriously considered. Not that I’ve ever given serious consideration to any sort of career – other than writing, of course. One of the major forces behind 10 Cities/10 Years was my aversion to chaining myself into a job and settling for a traditional career plan. Eleven years later, can’t say I’ve changed much in that regard.

It’s why teaching English as a second language interests me, and why I’m willing to put down a sizeable investment for this certification. I’m learning a skill, developing a marketable tool that can take me anywhere – anywhere. If it weren’t for the lousy weather, I’d spend a year in the South Pole teaching penguins the indicative mood.

Spain is just the first stop for me. And yes, yes, I hear you asking: The first of 10? In 10 years?

10×10

The goal going forward is not to bind myself to yet another schedule. At 22, I needed the structure and form of 10 Cities/10 Years because I was a traveling rube. I had only ever lived in small town Kansas – other than a summer in Washington D.C. – before I moved to Charlotte. Having a rigid plan kept me on track and gave me a finish line to reach for so that I kept striving, especially when the bottom fell out, which it did often.

By the time I had reached the final few cities, though, 10 Cities/10 Years had become a career in its own right. It wasn’t like any career you’ve had, to be sure, but as I swung through many of the same touchstones each year, it grew just as confining and limiting as if I had saddled up to a desk and filled out TPS reports. It’s not something I want to lock myself into again.

All the same, I’ll be forever grateful for those experiences I had through the decade, and more importantly, the skills I gained. I ended the project an infinitely more adaptable person. Traveling was an abstract idea when I set off on my decade tour, but now it’s a fundamental part of who I am. 10 Cities/10 Years was the scaffolding upon which I built my life; now I can stand without it.

One of the most vital adaptations I gained throughout those 10 cities was the ability to compartmentalize time. Everything was temporary – everything is temporary – which was a good reminder to enjoy what I had while I had it. Even more important for my mental survival, though, was the knowledge that if I had landed myself in an untenable situation – a crappy job, a messy living arrangement – there was a finite amount of time with which I would have to put up with it. All things would pass.

The whole endeavor made me profoundly aware of how long and how short a year really is. We divide our lives into years, both in terms of the calendar and our birthdays, but they’re largely arbitrary distinctions, the difference from December of 2016 to January of 2017 being negligible at best. Unless some major life change occurred in a particular period of time, months blur together, and then years.

From my 20s to my early 30s, my memories and associations have distinct time and place markers. There’s no blurring together of Chicago and Nashville, or Seattle and New Orleans. Even when engaged in similar activities in each city, the different backdrops and new companions shaded each year in its own, unique hue. Considering my affinity for whiskey, it’s helpful to have the memory aids.

Travel Living

If I’m not launching a second round of 10 Cities or, more ambitiously, 10 Countries in 10 Years, why keep the name? Because it’s who I am now. Everything that I went through and everything I overcame during that decade of itinerancy not only developed me personally, but shaped my understanding of what it is to live.

As I pursue my dream of prolonged expatriatism, my intention is for this website to be more than just another travel blog, more than tourism porn to make people jealous of all the cool things I’ve seen. (I mean, yeah, hopefully it’ll be at least a little of that, but I want it to be more.) Ideally, it can illustrate travel as a way of life.

Over the years, as I’ve read travel blogs, I’ve felt deep jealousy towards those people who just hop from country to country – probably you have, too. Every blogger inevitably writes a post about “How I Do It” and once you get past most of the boilerplate “Just do it” aphorisms, the answer generally boils down to a mix of having lucrative employment (and/or a trust fund) and some form of company sponsorship. I always leave those posts feeling defeated, not inspired.

There’s a great deal of implicit privilege built into the whole travel blogging sphere. Even though I had neither reliable income or sponsorship, I still recognize that without my own privilege as a white male, 10 Cities/10 Years – an already arduous endeavor – would have been so much harder.

With that in mind, here are my goals for this website as I embark on my next chapter of travel:

Provide useful tips on how to travel, not as a sentient billboard but as a real person
Offer more than postcards; experiencing cultures has greater value than taking the quintillionth picture of the Eiffel Tower (you better believe I’ll take a picture of the Eiffel Tower when I get the chance)
Inspire through practical and actionable information; no vague platitudes
Acknowledge where my privilege benefits me and use it positively
Be more than a travel blog; exemplify Travel Living
Enjoy the journey

The next eight months are going to rush by, especially once the summer arrives and plans start to firm up. I hope you’ll follow along with the process. Perhaps it will give you the inspiration and guidance to finally take that trip or make a needed career change.

Here we go.

The Next Road: My plans for 2017.

January 3, 2017January 3, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton6 Comments

The finish line was crossed; the journey complete, the mountain conquered.

And with the conclusion reached, I could only ask, “Now what?”

After ten years of travel, I took a job (two, actually), ostensibly as an editor of marketing materials and business proposals, but more generally as a catch all for anything that needs to be done that other employees with more defined roles shouldn’t or won’t do. Now, I sit at an office desk from 9 to 5. My mind wanders.

Last winter, depressed and listless, I impulsively booked a weekend trip to England to visit a friend. It was my first time leaving the country. I flew out Friday morning and returned Monday afternoon, missing a couple days of work to tour York with my friend, with Saturday devoted to sightseeing London. Except, I woke up Saturday morning with a severe case of food poisoning and spent most of the day crawling between the bed and the toilet instead of seeing Big Ben or the Thames.

I returned to New York, still depressed. My first trip abroad had been a flop; now returned the grind.

A couple months passed in a fog. I went on some dates just to occupy my time but otherwise I was living in isolation. I didn’t talk at work, didn’t acknowledge my roommates. I existed, just barely. In April, realizing this form of living was unsustainable, I sat on my bed and Googled, “Cheap ways to travel Europe.” A blog post directed me to Diverbo’s Pueblo Ingles.

I’ve already written about my experience of the program in Spain. Unlike my previous European jaunt, I returned from this September trip re-energized and motivated. Over the next few weeks, I researched teaching English abroad. The week at Pueblo Ingles had reminded me how much I enjoyed talking language, how exhilarating it can be to help someone communicate.

I found the International TEFL Academy. There are numerous outlets for TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification, both online and in physical classrooms. I chose ITA because it fits around my schedule. Their website and alumni pages are also a fount of useful information for people looking to teach abroad.

My two and a half months of online classes will begin in a couple weeks. By April, I will be trained and certified to teach English, and then the search for a job begins. I haven’t made a firm decision on which city I’ll move to, as that will depend largely on where I can find work, but Madrid seems the frontrunner at the moment. I’m happy to live in uncertainty for the time being; it’s familiar.

There is no shortage of people around the world looking to learn English. I could go to a new country every year for the rest of my life – I won’t, but I could (well, I probably won’t…).

I don’t know why it took so long for me to saddle up to this plan. I’ve had friends teach English abroad. I’ve heard about these opportunities for years. I have a Bachelor’s in English for chrissake, I’m pretty much already trained to do the job. But that’s why I initially resisted the idea: It was a job, and I didn’t want to conform my life’s direction to an occupation. When I was doing 10 Cities/10 Years, the travel was always the first concern, with work always secondary.

Pueblo Ingles helped change my perception. For that week when we Anglos were helping the Spaniards develop their conversational English, it never felt like work. It could be tiring, for sure, and some conversations came more naturally than others, but it was always about genuine human interaction first and foremost. As the week progressed, seeing the transformation of the Spaniards’ English ability, from tentative and uncertain to confident and relaxed, was a revelation.

I know teaching in a classroom won’t be the same experience. It will be a job, and there will be days where it will feel like it. I have no illusions that the experience won’t be trying. I expect it. I relish it.

For a decade, my life was a constant challenge. Now, it’s not. Living a simple life is hard.

I’m returning to a life on the road because I crave the struggle, the roadblocks and detours. I love not knowing what will happen next year, and the year after that. I miss uncertainty. There are a thousand ways to live a life. This is mine.

Having a purpose to augment my travels is also highly motivating. To provide a service, to be able to help someone learn, I think that could be fulfilling in a way few things are for me. In a world that is increasingly focusing on walls, both literal and figurative, to separate us, it’s a nice thought that I can help build ladders.

These are my plans for 2017. Beyond that, who knows? Maybe I’ll spend a year in Spain, maybe two, or three. Perhaps I’ll follow it up with travels in Asia, South America, Africa. Maybe I’ll never set foot in the United States again; just as plausible, I could return to New York in a couple years. I know only one thing at this moment: I want a life up in the air and out on the road.