What am I paying me for!
Pretty soon(alot sooner when this gets posted) I’m going to be leaving the relative comfort of my girlfriend in Bulgaria and heading off to the wider world(again). Without an external guiding force keeping me on any one track, it’s left to me to make sure my time isn’t wasted, that something productive comes of it.
When I first left the states, I had had the overriding idea that I was quitting my job to become a traveller. Out of my savings I would pay myself a salary, with which I would support myself abroad. “I’m going to become professional full-time traveller” I would say. The main reason for this was the realization that I could fly from country to country and pay rent for a month or two, for about the same or less than I could live on my own in Phoenix.
I neglected an important aspect of having a job though, while I had decided I would spend 8 hours a day “doing travelly stuff”, like exploring and attempting to learn the language and not eating american food, it didn’t really work out that way(it was more like 2-4 hours) Since I was focussed on the living cheaply to make it last as long as possible aspect, I generally considered it more important than the doing impressive travelly stuff aspect.
Now that I’ve been travelling for 7 months, I have alot better idea of how much travelling costs. As a general rule, your cheapest accomodation should be expected to be about half to a third of your daily expenses. Though it is of course entirely possible to spend more. While staying in Istanbul, Kusadasi, and Athens on my own over 14 weeks, I averaged about 250USD a week total, with 70-105 going to hostels.
Now, I’m paying myself 250$ a week to have this experience. I am getting 35$ a day from my self of the past, just to continue to exist. Some days I might get by with only 15 or 20, but it still leaves the question, what am I getting for this money? When you work at a job, you get paid to provide something of value with your time to your company. They don’t care what you do with that money, so long as you continue to give them your 8-20 hours a day(depending on if you’re salaried or not). But they do care about what you do with your time. They want to make sure the money they’re giving to you is providing them with value. Preferably a lot more value than what they’re giving to you.
However, once that exchange has taken place, the money is now yours. For everything you spend money on, you are paying yourself, to get value added to the part(hopefully majority) of your life that isn’t your job. An artist from Texas once told me that you need to work 16 hours a day to make anything of life. 8 hours a day to get your money, and the other 8 hours to build yourself. I’ve never considered myself the sort of person that can work 16 hours a day, but that doesn’t necessarily negate the idea.
Which brings me to my point. For that period of your life that isn’t taken up by work, in everything you do and everything you spend, you are your boss. You are the one paying yourself to live the life you’re living, each and every day. So what am I paying me for?
