Born to run (or at least wander)?

Most of us, those who have the luxury to do so that is, experience times when we question the direction our life is going in. Are we doing the right thing? In the right place? With the right people?

Always out of reach?

These have been things very much on our mind of late. Much of this is down to the fact that we have that aforementioned luxury to ponder about them. 

In other words, owing to our rather simple, independent lifestyle over the last number of years, we've managed to live relatively cheaply and keep a little balance of cash in reserve. 

Enough, that is, to make us feel like we can take the time to discover something in life that we find truly enjoyable/fulfilling, yet not enough, contradictory as it may seem, to allow us take some risks that may provide the key to the former.

One of the things we've discovered we like doing, at this stage of our life in any case, is moving; seeing new places, exploring, observing how people live in different locations. The reality is that since 2008 this is how, more or less, our life has been.

We even put the 20 months we spent working full time in Belfast into this category. This was because the city was new to us, somewhat different from the places in Ireland we were used to, with that novelty taking some time to wear off. 

Also, as our job was poorly paid, trying to put money aside was a challenge, something that we took on with gusto in many ways (well, we had no other choice). 

Despite that, and another reason our Belfast period can go onto the adventure list, we went overseas for holidays on a number of occasions during our stint there – as many times (and for longer) than our 23 years pre-2008.

So, it seems our first global adventure between 2008 and 2009 released the wanderer in us. Before then, an easy(ish) life in an Ireland that appeared awash with opportunities (or so we were told) coupled with decent enough full-time employment at a young age in a professional field that we generally liked, had kept this wanderlust at bay. 

Oh how things change! Now, especially in the absence of a fulfilling, full-time, well-paid job (if there is such a thing for us), there exists an insatiable desire to move after a time in one place.

Yes, it is true we willingly returned to Bogotá, a city we had already lived in, on and off, for over 18 months, after a three month spell back in Ireland last year. 

Yet, at a loose end in our birthplace*, Bogotá still seemed an adventure and, paradoxically in a way, a place where we had built up a good number of professional contacts, somewhere we knew we could find some work, sporadic as it may be. And we were (are) slightly concerned about money – who isn't?

The world is our oyster http://bit.ly/1icklNw?

Now, however, not even three months back, those wanderlust feelings have returned. Yet they are tempered by concerns for the future; our professional progression, our financial well-being. You might call it adventurism constrained by conservatism, an old head on young(ish) shoulders.

Our background has a lot to do with that; the old "settling down" mentality and way of life of which most of us are products. Find a partner, build a house, start a family, and, hopefully, have a steady job. 

The last (and for us, the first also) of those is quite difficult to pin down these days, which makes the others more difficult to achieve (especially so here in Colombia where the link between money and women runs deep**). That is, of course, if we wanted to settle at this moment in time.

In any case, history is full of explorers and adventurers, those who shunned that settling-down life. It's because of such men (and the odd few women) that the world is how we know it today – for good and bad. 

OK, there aren't too many places left to be newly discovered on this planet, in a land context anyway, but that doesn't stop the personal human desire to explore and to see new things.

So if we could just make a living out of a nomadic lifestyle that should assuage our conservative side and allow us wander (and wonder) "worry-free". 

At least for a time anyway; this might be just a phase we're going through. That fanciful million dollar contract might make us stop and think.

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*For more on that somewhat 'restless' state back home see both Any which way but lose... and No country for young men.

**Our début post, Wages of love, touched on this.