Career or travel? Help me decide please :)

[lux7]

Hi guys,

Below is my latest travail and I am submitting it to this forum as your previous suggestions have always been much much appreciated.


BACKGROUND
I started less than 20 months ago in this company as a trainee, moved to junior and then removed the junior a few months ago.

Now I am doing very good on my job. There was a round of firing (team halved) and I was left the only one doing biz dev.

With all the customers and the pipeline being managed by myself, I thought I had a very strong hand so I basically said "hey, I have a few more options pressing me right now, so I need to have this talk, I want to stay here, and I need your help to make my decision of staying here easier. Can you make me head of".
The MD said yes but proposed a longer timeline, and I said "I need to know by the end of the month". As my probation period is about to end, it was clear I was lightly threatening to quit from one day to the next (before you think that was a vile move, what emboldened me to do it is how the company fired point blank people coming here from other countries at 7pm on a Friday and kept me because I was the better option, not because they liked me. Might be normal in US, but not in my book .

The current MD, righteously, didn't like the move but really seemed about to yield.
The MD joining in August though strongly opposed so my plead has been turned down.

COUNTER PROPOSAL
They said the future hires will all be junior to me, so that I will be effectively managing the team and in 6 months' time we will reassess the situation (this unless they sac me in the very next days after the failed coup .

WHAT I WANTED TO DO
I was dreaming about leaving for 2-3 months on a small world trip and I was thinking about leaving the coming November.
I am in my young 30s, so I won't always be able to just pack a small bag and go, and I often saw this or next winter as the "last" best option.


YOUR SUGGESTIONS: STAY FOR CAREER OR GO?
Of course a logical answer would be "you are the only one with an answer", but I'd really appreciate some fresh and different view on the situation.

 

[Howell]

Lux,

I recommend a compromise, and you transition into a new job somewhere in a region that fascinates and stimulates you. When you get there, set up a new home base, and take smaller trips periodically around the region, like on the weekends.

Unless you think you'd be hard pressed to get hired anywhere else as good as your current gig, I see no reason to not try this strategy. There are many ways to organize your life to accommodate a more international lifestyle.

Some people save up and then take long breaks from the work world (mini retirements), while others oscillate from employed to unemployed throughout the year. And still more make their income digitally, so they can do it from anywhere with an internet connection.

If you're going to travel, I recommend having a good reason to do so. In my experience, going somewhere just to go there is the worst reason to go there. My best experiences have come when I had a good excuse to integrate more deeply into the local culture, like I was taking language courses at the uni (also usually the easiest way to get a visa, if you need one) or working at a business there.

If you need some sort of transitory affair to get you over where you want to be, teach English or get some other low barrier to entry job (this is what Chase did), or even volunteer for an international organization you respect for a while. Once you enter your new community, you can network and find more suitable work, if you couldn't find anything online or by phone or through friends or other connections.

Happy planning,
Howell

P.S. Be careful using traveling as an alternative to maintaining a secure job, because you may jump from the frying pan in the fryer with this attitude. Once you run out of money, you may then have to settle for an even worse position, and at that point you'll be kicking yourself, unless of course you feel the trip was worth the decrease in job quality. Think of it like wrestling -- you don't let go of the guys leg until you've got a better hold somewhere else.

 

[lux7]

wThe compromise, something I hadn't thought about there, good one!

If you're going to travel, I recommend having a good reason to do so. In my experience, going somewhere just to go there is the worst reason to go there. .

How so..

P.S. Be careful using traveling as an alternative to maintaining a secure job, because you may jump from the frying pan in the fryer with this attitude. Once you run out of money, you may then have to settle for an even worse position, and at that point you'll be kicking yourself, unless of course you feel the trip was worth the decrease in job quality. Think of it like wrestling -- you don't let go of the guys leg until you've got a better hold somewhere else.

For 2-3 months money should not be an issue, might actually be a good way to finally kick out the limiting stingy attitude towards saving .


Thanks man!

 

[Howell]

wThe compromise, something I hadn't thought about there, good one!

If you're going to travel, I recommend having a good reason to do so. In my experience, going somewhere just to go there is the worst reason to go there. .

How so..

Having a good reason to be somewhere is a way to separate yourself from the herds of people who travel because they want to seem cosmopolitan or cultured or get away from parts of themselves, yet really have no interest in the culture they're going to.

There is so much to learn from moving to a new place, like about its culture and, even more usefully, your own. It's unfortunate that travel is so typically experienced like a long stint "on the town" with breaks visiting some museums so you can quell the guilt of being a mindless tourist, consuming the prepackaged, prearranged experiences the advert sold you on (not you Lux, I don't know your motives particularly clearly -- this is more just a trend I've noticed).

Usually when you travel "just to travel", your social rank upon entry is that of a non-entity. People who are successful in that culture will naturally keep clear of you for the most part. Yet if you have a good reason to be there (and it's not a position obviously at the bottom of the totem pole, like being an English teacher in South Korea -- which makes people generally assume you are a social reject from your own culture) you'll have a much better reputation, will be accepted as more than a mere token, and thus you will be more likely to have a propitious time.

“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
― G.K. Chesterton

TL;dr: Don't be a tourist. What can you do to disassociate yourself from the tourist brand? Have a better reason for being there than because you wanted "adventure" or to "experience the world". You'd be better off staying at home reading a book if that's what you're looking for.

-Howell

P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMnPpuEbwbA

P.P.S. I just looked through my notes, and here are two aphorisms of mine that are also relevant:

1) You don't get off the grid, you go down into it; in between the lines of the net. In the same way, you don't get off the map, you find a hole in it.

2) The only way to find the ideal place is to be it.


[Edited: Added P.P.S.]

 

[lux7]

We'll go a bit off topic now, but anyway: that's an interesting point of view, I like it, and it's probably true for some travelers, but I don't agree at all with it.

There's a beauty in going places by yourself, without trying or forcing a submersion in the "local" culture.
How is this for a different approach: I have absolutely no interest in fitting in with the local cultures, wouldn't dare entering a boring museum -stories are always the same:someone waged war on someone, some artists sculpted something- and don't want to learn shit about the local language.

There are enough social customs in the place you come from, and one of the main beauty of the "shallow" travel lays in the "beauty of the bubble": you don't understand what people around you even talk about, so you don't care, you're in your own bubble, outside of any hierarchy and rat race. You came out of your cultural buggages and perspectives and you are not going to take the local ones: you are naked, and you now look at life and people from a purely neutral perspective. And sometimes you bring someone deserving in that bubble for a ride, and that's beautiful.
Also, at the core, human beings are similar all over the place, so what's the point in wallowing in the shallow differences?
(incidentally this view sets me aside from many tourists going from one tourist attraction to another as if they were in a race)

PERSONAL EXAMPLE
I lived in 2 different countries without learning a local word, caring about silly local politics and had zero local friends (except for the girls of course who actually prefer you're not fitting the mold... Until the point where they wanna get serious, but that's another topic .
I live now in a third Country where I learned the local language, work alongside the "locals" and have "local" friends. I don't see myself any better in any way now, I like it, yet it it's not better than the more shallow foreigner, it's just different and probably it was funnier before as the integration makes you feel more "grounded" and serious (yet, on an important note, I share your same feelings: once you live in a country you feel somewhat "superior" to the English speaking tourists going to Starbucks .

So, yeah, I wouldn't agree on having a reason to travel, traveling for traveling's sake can be good fun and still provide great enriching experiences (I feel it did it more times than not for me).

We can keep it going on PM as well .

 

[lux7]

Oh, also, there's a reason to go: need and want to see and be in more places, go through more and different things in life to grow and need (to moveon from this yellow fever and want to have sex with more local girls who are harder to come by around here (ie Indonesians, vietnamese etc).

As shallow as a reason they may sound, they're still very real.


Any more feedback/ideas... ?