Working On The Road

August 13, 2015

As I have mentioned before, both Daniel and I are travel consultants. We both worked for Airtreks, an Internet travel company that specializes in around-the-world, multi-stop airfare, for the past 17 years. Our entire work day was spent planning trips for other people (including families), who are doing trips like ours.  Airtreks, was acquired by Bootsnall (a leading provider of RTW content, with its own online reservation system – Indie) almost 2 years ago. Our boss is a big supporter of “the travel dream”, and our fellow employees can and do work for our joint companies from around the globe. If we have the option to live abroad and continue to work for Airtreks, this is an opportunity that we would like to take advantage of, but not for the duration of our planned trip.

It is important to the both of us to really take one year off from the obligations of work, and to focus all our time and energy on our children, their education on the road, and our own exploration of the countries that we are visiting. We are hoping that at the end of our year traveling, we will be able to return refreshed to our jobs, with a true and recent understanding of several world regions and the day-to-day reality of a family trek. As consultants, we think that this would only improve our relevance in the travel industry, and make us prime candidates for re-employment. There is no certainty that we would be re-hired by Airtreks, as there is no guarantee that they would even require any additional employees upon our return, but we cannot let this fear prevent us from taking a trip that will give our family immeasurable benefits. If all goes well, we are hoping that we will find a lovely city somewhere in Central America to settle in for year two, and at least one of us will be able to begin working again.

We have discussed with our employer, ways in which we might be able to contribute travel content, by writing relevant stories about life on the road as a traveling family. Other than that, we do not have the intention to earn an income (nor the established means to do so) over the next year.  We will continue to develop our blog, and hopefully grow readers.  Perhaps, we can even build our site to one that might secure a small revenue stream from ads, and/or relationships with other travel sources, but that is not the goal of our blog.

Change is scary. The fear that we could return to the US jobless is very real. Despite all our considerable concerns, I have the utmost faith that we can take this trip, have a real life-changing experience, and return to a more settled life with the ability to earn income again.  Without a doubt, this trip will have the potential to stir up big changes.  It is an opportunity to reevaluate what we want out of life, our priorities, and what kind of lifestyle will make us most happy. We are both open to any new path that may present itself!

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