Sunset and moonrise over Miami as we set out on an ocean adventure… (photo by the author)
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine
This is a series about constructing, planning, and executing our bucket list and doing the things we’d like to do in this life while we still can. Our belief is that it will be harder to “kick the bucket” if it is full, and we intend to fill it and keep it full.
My wife Nancy and I have both traveled and lived overseas, and we plan to continue to travel as our retirement years approach. Currently we’re about 4–5 years away from “planned” retirement. I say “planned” because nothing is ever set in stone. We’d like to “work” some travel into our remaining work years, and we plan to do more serious travel when the limitations of vacation, etc. are lifted, as we wind-down our full-time professions.
At a very high level, our plan is this:
- Plan to travel
- Travel while we can
- Do what we love while we travel, between trips, and later, as travel becomes more difficult.
- Gather some mementos and lots of memories and stories to help keep our brains young and to provide reflection/touch points as we age.
- Continue to learn every day, along the way.
For travel, here are some of the topics I will cover in this series:
- Where we have been
- Where we are going
- Where we want to go
- Short trips vs. longer journeys
- Visiting vs. living
- Planning, Researching, Preparing
- Funding and financing
- Overcoming challenges
- Preserving memories
- Our stories, experiences, lessons, and treasures
The retirement horizon of the next several years gives us some time to do our research and planning, to improve the experiences we want to have when we finally let-go of our jobs and step out into our dreams. It is also a time for us to take “tactical reconnaissance trips,” or vacations to give us more insight into destinations on our candidate list, or to “test” destinations to see if they hold enough interest for future visits or for more extended stays. I will share our experiences through the entire process and lifecycle of travel from “I want to go there!” to the excitement of arriving at and of exploring a destination, to the reflection and story-creation afterwards.
Though this series is written from the perspective of retiring from a 9–5 job at a traditional age, it’s really for anyone who is interested in traveling, whether for vacation, after an “early” retirement, while taking a break from the daily grind, or even as a Global Nomad. So climb aboard and join us as we start our journey.
Editor’s Note: Bart is a popular writer on Medium.com. You can find many of his stories at bartemanuel.medium.com/, including new episodes of this ongoing series. I’d like to thank him for joining us and sharing his work in the LifeAfterWork.Zone.