Is there anything on the interweb you CAN'T find? =)

I love the interweb. Look what I found:

http://briefcasetobackpack.com/

It's perfect for what I'm going to do in June next year. I'm in the midst of going through my TEFL notes now too. Well, I've been at it for about an hour this morning but Facebook and Solitaire keep getting in the way.

It's great that people are recognising the need to go beyond the mundane and see what else is out there. I don't know how often I will find myself in the situation where I can do this, so I'm going to take the opportunity to do it while I can. I'm nearly 30 (sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!) and before you know it, I'll be 40 and then what? A lot of people let 10 years of their life go by always thinking "I should do this" and "I wish I had done that". Who wants to live like that? I want to get to 40 with life experience and an open mind and a willingness to keep on learning and exploring.

I found an article on the New York Times website (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/jobs/11gapyear.html?_r=2) and yes, alright it was published in early 2009 but it's still relevant. I mean, a lot of the people in the article were 20 years my senior and pretty well established in their careers when they took time off, but it's really good to see that people of all ages are embracing this. I'm not even going for long but I still consider it a little bit of a break for me. I'm going to get to the point where I can go for as long as I want.

I caught up with a friend of mine yesterday. A hardworking, successful, highly-paid friend. We were talking about this trip to Peru I'll be doing and she said "I'd like to do that one day". She is in more of a position to do it that I am (finance and career-wise, she could drop everything, be gone for 6 months, and still find her feet with a job and money when she returned) but she still thinks of this as a "perhaps one day" goal. Maybe she has too much at stake with her high-paying job and mortgage. But it would take a bit of a shuffle and she'd be alright, surely?

Have I also mentioned how fugging annoyed I get at people who say they want to do certain things "before they're thirty". Like "I'd like to go running with the bulls, it's definitely something to do before I turn 30". What the hell happens after 30? Are you dead after 30? Like the NY Times article says, people in their 40s, 50s and 60s have lived a hell of a lot of life and seen so much, why would anyone think that you're supposed to have seen it and done it all by the time you're thirty?!?!?!? It really bugs me that people can be so narrow-minded.