How to Quit Your Job to Travel

Blame it on the holidays, the cold weather or the government (for forcing more of us to get passports!) but it seems that a growing number of readers are writing to tell us they're planning to quit their jobs to take extended trips overseas. One of the biggest challenges? How to give notice at work without burning those proverbial bridges. We assure you, it can be done. Shockingly, it was a lot easier getting jobs upon returning home from our year away than it was screwing up the nerve to quit!

Since its almost the New Year--and it's well worth resolving to the the heck out of Dodge for a few months in 2008--we're re-posting this popular entry. Drop us a line with any questions and we'll try to post the responses in our "Lost in the Mail" section next week.

How We: Quit our Jobs to Travel
ADP: Initially, Jen, Holly and I worried that it would appear a little flakey to take a working hiatus after only five years on the job—would leaving be occupational suicide in fast-paced, career-centric NYC? To our great relief and surprise, our bosses seemed to recognize, as we did, this it’s not everyday you find two friends willing to travel around the world with you. They were sad to see us go, but supported our decision to leave.

In the end, it’s actually pretty simple put the old grind behind you (just two little words will do the trick), but telling your boss that you’re giving up a steady paycheck to backpack across the globe can require a certain level of finesse. So, based on our own experiences with bosses, HR and exit-interviews, here’s how to quit with a little panache—and perhaps, one day, to get your old position back.

1. Give Plenty of Notice: Nearly everyone advised us to give the standard two-weeks notice, as it could be uncomfortable sticking around the office longer. While it can feel a little awkward to be the lame duck employee, your superiors will likely be grateful if you give them four full weeks to prepare the department and start interviewing candidates for your position. If your job is technical and fairly hard to staff, you may want to consider offering even greater lead time. Give your boss a little courtesy now and she’ll remember you when it comes time to write a reference or recommendation later.

2. Find the Positive Spin: Whether you’re taking off for three months or three years, present your adventure as an opportunity too incredible to pass up. Explain how the experiences you’ll have abroad—learning foreign languages, immersing yourself in new cultures, volunteering in developing nations, etc—can increase your skill set and make you a more valuable employee upon your return.

3. Negotiate long-term leave: When Jen told her boss that she’d be hitting the road with us, he surprised her by offering to hold her position—provided she return within three months. While she couldn’t take the offer (she had her heart set on a year abroad), it taught us that anything job-related is up for discussion—even quitting. If you’ve got a good relationship with your boss, consider asking for 6-12 weeks of unpaid leave. That way, you can have your extended vacation and keep your position, too.

4. Finish with Style: Once you’ve officially given notice, it can be incredibly tempting act as if you’re already a free agent, but few things put a damper on years of hard work and dedication quite like slacking off at the very end. Make your boss’s life easier by creating a “cheat sheet” to your workspace and paperwork. Include any computer log-ins and passwords, a status report of your pending projects and instructions for locating digital files and their hard copies. It may take a little time to get the document together, but you’ll probably save yourself a few emails from your frazzled replacement.

5. Be grateful: You probably sent a thank you note to your boss after she interviewed you, so don’t forget to show your appreciation that she actually gave you the job. It’s not necessary to make your departure a Hallmark moment—a simple, heartfelt “thank you” will suffice.

6. Keep in touch: When you’re finally living the backpacker life in Argentina or Thailand or New Zealand, take a few minutes to send a postcard or email to your former boss and co-workers. It’s a great way to ensure that you’re gone—but not forgotten.

The Lost Girls: They’re Baaaack!

We’re still here! And by “here” we mean New York City. We just wanted to give a shout out to let y’all know that we’ve reunited in the Big Apple and temporarily retired our backpacks (and our vagabond ways) to restock our bank accounts and (re)join the rest of the working world. Here’s a quick update to let you know what’s been happening since we’ve landed in the good ol’ U.S.A.:

Amanda: Upon returning home, Amanda struggled to find both an apartment she could afford and enough writing assignments to cover the rent. So, when her old boss offered her a senior-level editing job at double her pre-trip salary, she wavered, torn between the flexibility of a freelance writing career and the stability of a steady paycheck. In the end, she took the position, but only after negotiating four weeks paid leave per year. Now no matter, what assignment lands on her desk at 5:00 p.m. she’s out the door by 6:00.

Jen: Returning to New York with renewed vigor, Jen suddenly saw the city with different eyes. She realized that she could find fulfillment here—or anywhere in the world—as long as she made the time and effort to have a well-balanced life. No matter what lay in her future, the trip had given Jen the confidence to take risks and make bold decisions. Two weeks after coming home, she landed a dream job at the Sundance Channel, fulfilling a lifelong dream of working in the independent film industry.

Holly: A few months after returning to the apartment she left behind in Brooklyn (and calling it quits with her long-term BF), Holly began the long road to recovery—both financially and emotionally. The trip sparked her decision to pursue freelance writing and strengthened her resolve to accept only the assignments that truly aligned with her passions. Discovering that she actually enjoyed being a single girl again, Holly filled her social calendar with happy hours, dinners with friends…and even a few great dates.

The next big adventure: We’ve already got a few trips planned! Jen and Amanda have tickets to Ecuador at the end of February (Holly may join them there!). And Holly scored a plum assignment that’s helping her fulfill a lifelong dream: To touch upon all seven continents. So she’ll be traveling to Antarctica on a press trip at the end of February (though she won’t actually believe her dream is coming true until she sets foot on this final frontier). So stayed tuned for lots of pictures of her hugging penguins.

And, while we’ve only been back in Manhattan for a few months and our lives are still uncertain, we do know one thing: No matter what the future holds, our lives are forever changed by this incredible journey. Here’s to many more adventures to come!

Dispatches from the Road: The Surreal Life in Beijing

Does traveling make you feel like you're floating around on another planet--or more grounded on Earth than ever? That's the question raised by this week's Dispatches writer, Maria Colina.

She's been keeping her blog at www.lavacheespagnole.com since 2005 and used it as a way to record her adventures studying abroad in Seville, Spain. Since then she's graduated from university and started teaching middle schoolers English in Shenzhen, China. She's been in the country about five months months.

Maria's not exactly a travel novice; she's "been bouncing around the globe since I was a little tyke visiting family in Spain and being carted around, quite happily, to new homes in far off countries because of my father's job." She's 23 now and hasn't stopped yet.

Check out her Dispatch from the Road, below, then let us know if traveling makes you feel more connected--or out of this world.

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Sensational Overload

"Does anybody get the feeling sometimes that you've died and this is the afterlife?"

Six of us were sitting at a table in a restaurant that we had to ourselves. It was a restaurant that looked out into the glaringly-lit mall that was, at the time, strangely empty. Jess's question was interesting. Our surroundings had a surreal quality to them and they could be seen as a reflection of our entire experience in China thus far. Our isolation and separateness. How unaccustomed we are to all the ways here. The strange situations we find ourselves in every day, whether because we don't speak the language or simply because our faces brand us as different from the very start.

There was a slight pause after her question and then I admitted that I actually felt the opposite. That being in China has almost reaffirmed the fact that I am alive. It was a notion that I had been mulling over for a while.

China is so very different from all that I know, that suddenly everything acquires a weightier significance. What you took for granted back home – and I took most of it for granted – becomes profoundly important. You order the beef noodles and actually get beef noodles, it's a big deal. You buy vegetables at the local grocery store, it's an amazing accomplishment. You get on a bus that takes you exactly where you wanted to go, that's huge!

Every mundane sensation is felt with a more acute perception. Sleeping is so much more intense. You actually taste the food you are eating because half the time you have no idea what you are putting in your mouth. You are suddenly incredibly aware of how you walk down the street because people are staring at you as though they've never seen a westerner in real life. And who knows? Maybe they haven't. The streets are full of strange and unusual smells and every day in this country is a feast for the eyes.

I have come to China and all of a sudden my senses have been besieged by the wondrous and new. Yes, my life here does seem surreal at times, but what I feel every day is so very real that there is no way that this the afterlife and I am most definitely alive.

--Marina Colina

(Photo: Maria Colina at the Forbidden City in Beijing)

Call me shallow: my favorite new reason to dive

Yes the schools of fishies are pretty and there's no faster way to find an instant community of adventurous new friends, but on my first liveaboard experience, I found another great reason to take the plunge: scuba diving burns insane amounts of calories!

I'd heard that rumor long before my overnight dive experience, but never really believed it...after all, how can an activity where you're gliding along peacefully just under the surface of the ocean be strenuous enough to qualify as a workout?

Well, let me just say that after three day dives and one night dive, I was more than a little hungry. I was ravenous. Like, put-salt-on-anything-not-nailed-down-and-devour-it-whole ravenous. I couldn't understand what the heck was wrong with me until an instructor confirmed that scuba diving burns anywhere from 300 to 400 calories per hour. He explained that the body has to work like crazy to process the strange mix of gases that you're introducing into it every time you breathe from an air tank at depth. Even if you're not fighting current along the reef or kicking hard to get back to the boat, your systems are busy trying to keep stable in a strange aqueous environment. All of that speeds up your metabollism--and torches calories.



It still sounded like a lot of bunk, but I was powerless to argue with my newly stoked appetite. Fortunately for the divers and crew, the Kangaroo Explorer served four meals a day and always had snacks on hand.

I have to say, my days on the boat (which started with a 6:30am pre-dawn dive!) quickly became a cycle of dive, eat, dive, snack, dive, eat, dive, sleep, repeat, I loved the camaraderie between the crazy crew, instructors and passengers. I bonded with Jen, a British girl who might as well have been Bridget Jones in a wetsuit, and Joost, a Dutch guy with a great sense of humor (he took this photo of himself when I wasn't looking) a litany of wacky stories. I had secret crushes on all of my beautiful male dive instructors and dug the attention they provided both underwater and above it.

As for the diving itself? Well, it wasn't quite the Great Barrier Reef splendor I'd been hoping for, and I realized that I'd probably have to pay more, and stray even farther from Cairns in order to see some truly remarkable underwater wildlife.

The day we got back to shore, I signed up for the next trip. Here's a few pix from our post-liveaboard cocktail hour.

Learning to Live-Aboard

I first heard about live-aboard dive trips about four year ago, when I got my SCUBA certification in Grand Cayman, and almost immediately decided that it was something I’d never do. The idea of stranding myself at sea on a tiny boat for several days sounded pretty unappealing (claustrophobic, even) and I couldn’t imagine that some people were actually willing to pay beacoup bucks for the privilege of seeing some better fish. Really?

Fast forward to last summer…and yes, that’s me shelling out nearly a grand for not one, but two live-aboard dive trips in the Great Barrier Reef. After dives in Thailand, India and Kenya that ranged from disappointing to downright depressing (from the underside, Goa’s waters reminded me of a decaying fish tank), I was determined that my next marine adventure would be nothing short of mind-blowing.

Getting to the good stuff would be no simple feat. Decades of irresponsible tourism had already destroyed parts of the reef and efforts to resuscitate the world’s largest living organism were only now getting underway. The only way to really experience the GBR, I'd been told, was on a live-aboard dive boat. These operators could take passengers to way out on the reef, far beyond the reach of the day boats to sites relatively undisturbed by humans.


Doing a little independent research, I learned that the Cairns Dive Centre, one of the largest dive shops in town, ran three-day, two-night trips out to the reef. Signing up would be an opportunity to get my feet wet (sorry, had to!) and check out the live-aboard scene without a huge financial commitment. The trip I selected cost AU$451, but the haggler/regulator that I am, I asked for and got the “locals only” price of AU$361 (a 20 percent savings!).

The two and a half hour powerboat ride out to the M.V. Kangaroo Explorer was nothing short of nauseating. Our not-so-tiny ship tossed on enormous swells that are a constant feature of the ocean between the mainland and the reef. When we’d boarded the boat, and the crew gave a lecture on how to properly barf over the sides of the boat or downwind into a small sack provided, I figured that this was just another twisted version of Aussie humor. Once the chorus of vomiting began, and grown men started turning chartreuse and whimpering like babies, I realized that the crew had been entirely serious. Thanks to a childhood of long car rides, I no longer suffered from motion sickness, but the surround-sound barfing was almost too much to bear.


As the powerboat eventually approached the reef, the waves began to flatten out, and we all stumbled aboard the Explorer to get settled. I was thrilled to discover that instead of a tiny, claustrophobically small boat, we would be staying on massive, 82-foot catamaran with 16 cabins (some bigger then friend’s bedrooms back home in New York), a sun deck, dining room and lounging area and a library.

More impressive than the ship? The seriously hot crew of dive instructors and photographers hailing from all part of the world. Suddenly, the idea of being trapped on a watercraft miles and mile s from shore might not be the worst thing I could imagine.

After getting our first briefing from Sam, an overly randy Aussie who flirted shamelessly with every single woman on the boat, I learned that I could tack on an Advanced Open Water dive certification for less than a hundred bucks. At this point, I was dipping to the last reserves of my saving account, but I fed myself the same line I’d been using since arriving in Oz.


When am I ever going to be in this part of the world again?

I slapped down the plastic and paid for the course, plus another $30 for an underwater digital camera. Totally a bargain!

With those minor details settled, it was time to shimmy into my wetsuit and get to diving. Instructor Sam, taking his role as teacher a little to seriously, showed me how to close zipper running up the front by doing it himself.

Such a gentleman!

The Lost Girls on Peter Greenberg's Radio Show

The Lost Girls almost fainted when we received an email from a producer at The Peter Greenberg Show, asking whether we'd like to be guests on his weekly program. Um, hell's yeah! As the Today Show's travel correspondant and vagabonding guru, Peter is one of our travel idols and we couldn't be more psyched to chat with him (briefly!) by phone about our trip. As you'll hear, Amanda and Jen hogged most of the 4 minute radio airtime, but Holly confirmed the most important part: yes, we're planning to write a book about our adventures. More on that in posts to come.

Here's an audio clip from the show:

Mixpo - Video for Business

My no-laptop diet

ADP: So, I’ve been wrestling with whether or not to go back and share some of the more interesting/scary/annoying/joyous aspects of my last two and a half weeks of solo travel in Australia. Since I feel like I can’t “return home” online without sharing what happened at the very end, total disclosure has won out.

Okay, rewind to June 2007. By that point, very nearly a full year into the journey designed to help me “unplug” from the world, I finally felt brave enough to send The Lost Girls laptop home (with Jen, who’d left at the very end of May). As I journeyed south down the coast from Cairns to Sydney on Greyhound Australia (practically a luxury liner compared to the American version) I found myself compelled to crack open my long neglected journal and start writing. I decided not to hold anything back, and I have to admit, some of the stuff that flowed out from my pen wasn’t pretty. Kind of scary, even.

My final month in Oz was shrouded in grey, mostly because it stormed, drizzled and misted for 29 days straight (never a mood lifter) but partially because I was finally facing the fears and apprehensions that I’d been able to shelve—or at least commiserate with the girls about—for an entire year. I appreciated the solitude, the freedom to feel surly and contrary without having to apologize to anyone for being a royal bitch, which I’m sure I’d been at times during the trip (thanks, J and H, for not killing me).

I sat in my window seat on the ‘hound and just scratched my thoughts out, working through feelings of loneliness, worries about getting older, the nagging fear that I might not have gotten as much out of the trip as I should have. Journals can be the best therapy if you can get over the Anne Frank syndrome (the fear that someone, one day, might actually read what you’ve written) and just be unabashedly honest. I was, or tried to be. For some reason, maybe because I’d shared the laptop, I’d never felt as comfortable typing out my feelings. And until recently, not really on this blog, either.

Going solo proved an interesting exercise, not only because I had to deal with new people and places every single day on the road, but because I was actually forced to deal with myself. Rather than relying upon my girlfriends to calm me down, to talk me off the ledge, I had to tackle problems and uncomfortable feelings all on my own. Writing about them felt awesome, not because I’d necessarily fixed anything, but because my thorniest thoughts were duly noted.

And once recorded, I could actually set them aside and get back to the business of travel—and enjoying myself—once again.

Lost, but not forgotten...we hope!

Okay, so all three Lost Girls realize that we haven't properly blogged in weeks (um, months?), but we have a pretty darn good excuse: we finally wrapped up our Lost Girls round-the-world marathon and have re-entered NYC! Actually, the move home happened over the summer, and we can personally attest that whole "reverse culture shock" thing is a very, very real phenomenon. Its disorienting. Disheartening. Exhausting. But every traveler must go through the agony and the ecstacy of coming full circle, and we did our best to keep heads above water and spirits elevated while it was happening.

If you're still with us (anyone? anyone?) and interested, we're going to be posting entries about our transition back to "real life"--jobs, apartments, boyfriends--in New York City. And, of course, we'll still be blogging about our favorite topic, travel, as the occasion warrents.

We may be home--but we're already planning the next adventure.

Stay tuned.