Kirsty
Tue 17 Jul 2007
Well I’ve done it.
I’ve bit the bullet and booked a plane ticket which means my last day of work will be December 13th. My plane ticket isn’t for Asia though, it’s for Canada. The plan is to spend three weeks at home doing the visiting thing and Xmas thing before I wander off for who knows how long. I’m also going to use the time when everyone else is at work to try to work a lot on my sites and see if I can get into some sort of routine and see how well I’m able to motivate myself. Sort of a 3 week WN test period before the real deal starts.
I get back to London on January 7th and I suppose that’s when the adventure really begins! I don’t really have any set plans at the moment. The easy route would be to buy a ticket to Southeast Asia somewhere, kick back on a beach for awhile and slowly work my way up to Beijing where I plan to get an apartment for 6 months starting anywhere from March to May.
The dream plan would be to do the journey overland working down through Eastern Europe, across to Egypt somehow then up through Jordan and Syria to Turkey. Then that’s where things get a bit dicey and I’m not sure if I have the guts to take on the trip from Turkey to China overland but we’ll see what happens. I’m open to buying plane tickets enroute to jump over the scary places but I’m also up for a mad adventure so we’ll see what happens.
I’m encouraged because my earnings are creeping up from all sources. Slowly but steadily. Plus I just went back to read some of Webby’s early earnings reports to find that he earned about $700US his first month away. That’s about what I’m making at the moment so it’ll be interesting to see if my sites and earnings grow the same way his has once I can work on them full time.
That’s all for now. I know some of you are planning trips at the end of the year. Anyone else got any plans yet?
July 19th, 2007 at 8:39 am
Congratulations! Feels great, doesn’t it?
When planning your travels, remember that needing to work regularly controls where you go and what you do to a great extent. Webby did his ‘full time’ stints by settling in one place for a while. ‘Full time’ on web sites and long trips on chicken buses really don’t mesh well! I guess I’m suggesting that you really think about combining ambitious travel plans with your first WN year. They might be better left until after Beijing.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:51 am
It sounds like what I did last year. I went home for Christmas and spent time working on some stuff on my sites that I had been putting off for a while. It was a fantastic feeling quitting my job. I have been thinking lately that I would like to settle down somewhere and have some ideas for next year.
July 20th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I am sure if you will be earning more by next Jan anyway. Good luck K.
July 21st, 2007 at 11:12 am
Ya stilloutthere I’m leaning towards just flying to Singapore and travelling up to Beijing slowly with working stops in between. If I did the massive overlanding thing I wouldn’t intend on working much but I think my sites are at the stage where the more work I do now the better.
Mike I was reading your travel blog and it looks like I’m copying your plans but a year behind! I’m meeting friends in SE Asia around this time, heading to Laos and all tha stuff too. I think I’ll be able to get a lot of work done at home so here’s hoping I do!
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm
It is probably a good idea now to start making a list of all the things you need to do on your sites.
I had sites on all different hosting accounts and I moved them all to dreamhost, upgrading them all and giving them a facelift with a new template at the same time.
I am pretty sure you won’t feel like doing any work on your London site when you are in Asia! I think you start off really motivated, then you relax a little and then finally you find a kind of balance between having fun/traveling/working.
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Congrats Kirsty you have a come a long way since this time last year
July 24th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Good advice Mike, that’s my intention. I remember you saying awhile ago to make sure everything is set up because it’s better to be maintaining things on the road that to be working on annoying behind the scene things or fixing stuff up.
I’ve got one more site to move over to Dreamhost and a few domains to transfer to GoDaddy just to keep everything in one place. I’ve also paid everything up for the next 2 years so I won’t have to worry about that for awhile. Most of my behind the scenes stuff is done and now I just want to get my sites up to scratch.
July 24th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Mike is right about enthusiasm waning. So at first, when you are all gung ho, get as much done as possible, plan some serious work breaks, and build your income so that when the travel part starts to take over, you’ll have less to fuss with. And while settling in Beijing sounds like a perfect opportunity to work, you are going to be studying, and that will become your focus.