Why I Quit My Jobs & Moved Across the World

It’s not that I hated my 9-5, in fact it was an awesome job in e-commerce fashion working with some really great people. But after three years working over 60 hours a week at my office job plus waitressing at night, I realized that I was working so that I could travel. Every bit of money I saved, I was using to travel somewhere new. Every vacation day I had was like gold to me. I wasn’t living my life the way I wanted to.

It was in the winter of 2015 that I came across an article about getting a working holiday visa for Australia. It was then that I decided when my apartment lease was up that following September, I would hit the road for the adventure of a lifetime.

It’s been over seven months since moving away from home, and although of course I miss my friends and family back in the States, I am living out my dream of traveling and living around the world. Since moving to Australia, I’ve made incredible friends, landed a great job at a well known cocktail bar in Melbourne, and will have visited all eight territories by the time I leave.

I’ve been to an Australian rules footie game, countless restaurants, cafes, bars, festivals, concerts and art exhibits in Melbourne, driven the Great Ocean Road twice, saw the Penguin Parade on Phillip Island, observed the beautiful coastline and tasted the wines of the Mornington Peninsula all in Victoria. I’ve road-tripped to Adelaide for the Fringe Festival in South Australia and have driven from Perth to Fremantle to Dunsborough to the Margaret River to Peaceful Bay and even took a ferry to Rottnest Island in Western Australia. I’ve scuba dived the Great Barrier Reef, sky dived over it, driven through the Daintree Rainforest, sailed around the Whitsunday Islands, and explored Fraser Island via 4wd in Queensland. I went to an opera at the Sydney Opera House, surfed at Manly Beach, and relaxed at Bondi Beach in New South Wales. I drove on the left side of the road for the first time, played with kangaroos, saw a Tasmanian Devil, soaked in the sun at Wineglass Bay and explored Bruny Island in Tasmania. And most recently I’ve road-tripped from Sydney to Cairns, driving over 3,000km up the east coast of Australia with my best friend. It has been a beautiful seven months.

After living in Melbourne for six months and road-tripping up the east coast for a month, I have just one last Australian adventure in the Outback, and then I am headed for a two month solo backpacking trip through Southeast Asia. Stay tuned for stories on my past seven months in Australia as well as updates on my next epic adventure!