People usually do not make decisions from one moment to the next. I didn’t wake up on April 1st, on Fool’s Day, in the middle of the Covid restrictions, that today is the ideal day to start my new life. You have to go back years to the roots of the whys. To be exact, until 2015, when I had surgery and got a second chance at life to live.
The first two years of rehabilitation practically passed quickly. I had to go to controls every three months to check if there is a metastasis somewhere in my body. Thank God there weren’t, but the feeling of standing alone in the hospital hallway with an envelope in my hand hoping that the words metastasis and suspicion aren’t even written down feel very bad still today. In the meantime, I returned to work, I started working as a communication manager for a larger company. It felt good to have a rhythm again in everyday life, there’s a fixed goal worth getting up for every day. I enjoyed living “almost” the same life as I did before the surgery. It was good to be a full-fledged man again, a useful member of society.
I had a job, I earned better than the average, I could travel abroad several times a year and not least, I had friends and loved ones around me who supported me in starting over. After all, anyone who goes through such trauma, and loses the opportunity to have a child forever, really deserves a quiet life and a peaceful old age. At least that’s what I thought, and I still think so to this day.
There’s a way I can compare life to cooking. When all the ingredients are on the kitchen counter and it’s up to you how the prepared food looks like and tastes. Salty, tasteless, raw, overcooked or perfect the way you like. In my shopping basket, like a big weekend shopping spree, I bought everything up to go for a new life. I wanted to get back to normal. However, even though all the ingredients were on my counter, the dishes I prepared were becoming less and less tasty. Ordinary things like the successful conduct of a work project have only given pleasure for a long time. Nevertheless, I continued to do my things mechanically with the thoroughness and quality that I was expected to do. But the heart with which a real chef cooks masterpieces was no longer inside me.
Then my own “child” was born in form of the Traveladdict travel site, based on a brand-new recipe. I was never an extrovert type nor the center of the company, so in the beginning, the purpose of the blog was merely to save my own memories. I intended to document my own travel experiences, share them with my friends and family, making them part of all the wonders I have seen above and below the surface of the world. After that surgery, it became clear to me that for me, that traveling is my therapy. Because when I travel, that’s when I feel most alive and living is a very good thing.
The child began to grow, took the first steps of its life and made small friends. I remember how pleased I was that the first readers came to my Facebook page. That after I started my Instagram page (here you can follow me) I had 1,000 followers after a few months. That Index – the biggest Hungarian online site – shared headlines of my articles, of which the record-breaker since then is the Water Reservoir (you can read it here) with 170,000 clicks. Then I got the opportunity to write to National Geographic and Egy.hu pages as a journalist and travel blogger. And since then, there have been further requests from newspapers.
In order to achieve such “success” in two years, it took hard work. I did my work duties eight hours a day, and when I returned home, I sat down in front of the laptop again. I worked not just only on weekdays but also on weekends when I wasn’t traveling. I set a strained pace for myself, which made me feel like I was running out more and more.
Based on my previous life experience (read here), I knew this wasn’t going to end well. And I didn’t want another disease to stop burning at both ends of the candle. After months of inner fighting, I’ve decided to give up that gives me less joy. I quit my job on April 1st, and after 15 years as an employee, I stepped out into the unknown. I felt like if I didn’t try now, I’d never know if it works or not.
By making a difficult decision, it didn’t just mean getting a stack of exit papers and going to see the world from now on. This also meant that I believed and trusted myself. That I can create the conditions for a new life as a writer, as a freelancer. That I dare to go into the world. What if there’s any trouble, I’ll be able to handle it. That even if I don’t make it, I’m not going to live it as a failure. I mean, we never regret what we tried in life, but what we don’t.
I know that during the coronavirus, the world is not for travellers. I assessed and accepted that when I held out for the decision I made earlier to quit my job. Life has already taught me to wait patiently when months have gone by for me to recover and live again. Now I’m waiting for months for the world to recover so we can live free again. I look forward to getting a clean slate from the world for a fresh start. To travel and to live the world.
