Initial Motivation

Walden Pond, Massachusetts

I watched a Steve Jobs graduation speech awhile back, and something he said stuck with me: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

He was basically saying, find something you believe is important and do it.  So my simple answer when someone asks me 'why' is that I think it is important to see new places, meet new people, expose yourself to new and oftentimes fear-inducing and uncomfortable circumstances.  It allows you to grow.

I also find the freedom appealing, and exploring the world for an extended period of time is true freedom. There are no alarm clocks, no deadlines, no strict schedules, you can literally do whatever you want whenever you want.  The concept of a weekend becomes meaningless because everyday is a weekend.  This of course can be dangerous for the unmotivated.  Without a boss dictating the time on your alarm clock, you are left to make your own schedule, to do your own planning, design your own life for awhile.

Perhaps Thoreau expressed this point the best:   "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if f I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

I think I had reached a time when I just needed to stop, reflect, and slow down for awhile. Ever since college started I really never stopped working, whether it be school or career. I was always going 100 mph and its true what they say, you get out exactly what you put into the things you do. I got two degrees and a job where I worked myself into a great position. I worked hard, and I was actually very happy during the entire period, all the way up to the end. I did however want a new type of challenge though and  I certainly don't need ‘go find myself’ or something pathetic like that.

To teach myself to live deliberately, to face my fears, to explore the unknown, to combat the sedentary comforts which make people lazy, to satisfy an inner curiosity, to feel true freedom, to have a really really ridiculously fun time, these are the reasons I want to go.