Freedom is sometimes a funny thing. In our former traditional lifestyle, decisions were fairly easy to make. I worked a set number of hours each week, Tigger was in school, I had X amount of vacation time, etc. When trying to make decisions about trips, it often came down to (a) sufficient time and (b) sufficient money. Simple, no?
Now we have tremendous freedom. We could easily change countries tomorrow or be on another continent. We are still limited by a need to have sufficient funds, but once you’re out of the Americas, it’s super easy to find cheap flights or train rides to other places. Doing a search shows me that if I wanted to buy tickets to fly somewhere tomorrow for under $200, I have the following options: Cyprus, Italy, Romania, Belgium, Moldova, Netherlands, Greece, UK, Germany, Sweden, Spain and Poland. Flights to Cyprus, Italy, Belgium, and within Romania are less than $100.
And those are just the direct flights. If I did some maneuvering, I could add some more locations, including Africa.
We can also take the rather comfortable train to at least 5 other countries for under that amount.
Go ahead. Make a decision.
This has been one of my favorite conundrums during our travels. It’s admittedly a wonderful “problem” to have. Having this kind of freedom is really kind of priceless. I can’t imagine going back to a “normal” life after this.
But sometimes having so many choices can lead to decision paralysis.
You probably have had similar experiences. You know how when you go to a restaurant and at least half of the 10-page menu appeals to you. You make a decision, but by the time server appears you’ve already changed your mind 15 times. You might even change it again before they leave the table.
That’s just for a meal. Imagine if that’s your whole life!
I love the freedom of not having a bunch of stuff. I can gather all my belongings within minutes and be out the door on a new adventure. I love it!
It’s a good thing I’m not a major planner, though. I think I would go absolutely nuts with so many options. We generally handle things quite spontaneously. While decision paralysis can still creep in, I’m sure it reduces its effects somewhat by not being a major planner. When I succumbed to the AirAsia sales and ended up having flights planned for the next 6 months, I actually felt physically ill.
Our current conundrum is whether to remain in Brasov or go to a new city/town. Our current place is paid through the 15th. We’re definitely dealing with decision paralysis, though. We both are interested in staying in this town longer, but we’re also interested in checking out another city as a candidate for our base.
Although, we also discovered that once we got out of Asia our need for a base seemed to diminish rapidly. Apparently, we were, as a friend put it so eloquently, just “over Asia.” So we’re no longer in a rush to find a base, though it’s something we’re still interested in. For one thing, it’s nice to be able to take trips with just a carry-on.
Sometimes it’s also a special feeling to come home. The last couple of days we’ve gone on a couple of day trips. By the end of the 2nd trip, I was so happy to see our mountain appear as the train approached the city. Getting off the bus and walking through our medieval neighborhood back to our apartment was a great feeling.
But, I have a limited time to make a decision. I either need to find another place for us to live here in Brasov or plan on heading to the next city.
As frustrating as it can be sometimes, I’ll still take this freedom over anything else. When this is the biggest “problem” in my life, I have it pretty darn good.
Do you ever suffer from decision paralysis? How do you get around it?
As you point out, on the grand scale of problems these are good ones to have, but they’re problems nonetheless, and too much freedom is daunting. That said, I’m bowled over by those air rates. Wow!
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Aren’t those great? Some of the international rates are pretty good, too.
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Our decision strategy is based on reaching out to many people, planting seeds and then see what opportunities present themselves. It seems like you can’t go wrong regardless of what you decide!
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I find there’s hardly ever a wrong decision. Things usually have a way of working themselves out.
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Just about always — I am so indecisive!
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LOL!
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Ah, the paradox of choice. . . we often have the same dilemma. If we’ve liked a particular destination it’s hard to leave, but there are so many fascinating places yet to explore and we’re excited about new discoveries. Plus we take those favorites and put them in a “file” of places we’d like to return to one day, maybe for a longer stint.
If we’re torn between a few options for the next destination we use the local cuisine to help us decide. . . Travels 4 Yum!!!!
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Food is a good decision factor. 😉 That is the other nice part of this type of freedom–You can always go back!
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We too have heard the lure of cheap airfare (for us, when we were based in Southern Europe last winter). We’d intended to just stay put, and do a lot of work, but the siren calls of cheap flights (I’m talking sometimes under 20 Euro each) to Morocco, Greece, Italy and the like were too strong to resist.
That said, I’m definitely glad we did more traveling while we were in Europe. Now that we’re in Canada, the cheapest flights that we can get out of the country are around $300 USD each (and times that by four of us).
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Those airfares sales can sure be a double-edged sword!
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Decision paralysis is the perfect description of this. I can remember my most typical moment of this so clearly – had just split from a boyfriend (we were travelling in Croatia) while living in Germany, found myself in Zagreb bus station in the middle of the night, nobody in the whole world knew where I was or was expecting to hear from me, I looked down that list thinking I could go anywhere. But the list was too long, I couldn’t decide somewhere new, so went back to Germany! Worked out fine though and I remember that moment more as one of total freedom than of frustration.
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Wow! That would be a VERY tough decision.
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I know exactly what you mean. When I got to Mexico, where I’m basing myself out of, I was thinking, this is the first time in my life that I’m actually free. I shouldn’t have a base. I should just travel all of the time, and I was considering doing that. But, then I found a great apartment with a roof that overlooks the city, and I make myself fresh juices everyday, and am making friends. I just booked my three month trip to Europe for March, and I seriously had to consider if I really wanted to be gone that long!! Sometimes, it’s so hard for me to decide!!
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Such a great feeling when you’re in a place you aren’t sure about leaving!
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I am laughing at the Eat Cupcakes. I’ll go for that!
Meanwhile, how lovely to be able to make choices. That’s definitely a benefit of your choices! 🙂
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Most definitely!
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Yep, I’ve definitely experienced this, and quite often! Andy and I are currently in Berlin, and as I mentioned to you on Twitter last night, our apartment isn’t great. We’ve been looking for something new, thought we had a great one, and then it fell through. So we started searching again. But in order to find something better we’ve had to go up in price, so now all of our choices are 250-300 euros more per month than the place we’re in. The biggest problem with our current apartment is that it gets almost no sunlight, so it’s pretty depressing. Well, the kitchen really sucks too. But we’ve realized we’re ok if we go out and do stuff. So we might stay and just push ourselves to go out way more often than we’re used to. But it’s a tough call when there are nicer places out there.
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That is definitely a tough choice!
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I find having so many options to be both terrifying and liberating! When I first moved to Spain and had three or four day weekends every week, I started making a list of my Top Fives in both Spain and Europe. Every time I crossed one off the list, I would add another. Granted, I am based here and have a job here, but weighing the pros and cons and having some sort of guidelines helped!
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Sometimes I resort the good old-fashioned pros and cons list. It can be VERY helpful. I’ve also seen where it can be helpful to make a decision and force yourself to stick with it for a day or 2. Often it immediately becomes clear what decision I truly want to make.
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Lord yes!!! I’m really struggling with too many choices at the moment and totally unable to make a decision. Everything is getting left until the very last minute but that seems to be ok. I’ve learnt I need to just go with my gut on these things.
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One of the joys of not being a planner is I’m totally okay with last-minute decisions. 😉
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Having all your options open in nice in theory – but I find I’m not good at making big decisions unless something pushes me. Otherwise I tend to chose option ‘do nothing, go nowhere, eat cupcakes,’ which is relaxing but not so useful.
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Eat cupcakes is an interesting plan. LOL
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I’m beginning to wonder if you are getting your article inspiration from my wal posts ;).
Since coming to Europe and then stopping to work in Turkey, I’ve found thos has been a huge issue and it has caused me a lot of stress. I ended up not making a decision to travel (and find teaching jobs …I’d love to find new kinds of revenue) and am now stuck with a big box of my belongings at one friends house while I change houses every few weeks while looking for work and trying to figure out where to go next.
I’ve been in turkey for 2 yrs now and am so ready to explore again that it’s driving me crazy! The issue for me now is that the paralysis caused me to miss the golden opportunity to obtain a teaching and work permit in europe because few schools are hiring now.
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I think 2 years would be too long for me in Turkey.
I don’t envy you on changing housing often. We’ve done it a lot, and it gets to be a major drag.
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I find that we tend to stay where we are if it’s a great place, as that easier then making a decision to move. Sometimes we’ve only moved on because our visa time was up. But we travel slowly and aren’t in any real hurry to discover the next place. I know what you mean though. We’re planning to travel to Europe next year, and it’s so big that we have no real idea where to go. Made lots of lists, but keep changing it. If it was just me I’d turn up and work it put as I went along, but with Miu being Thai it means visa issues to consider, which means deciding which countries to visit initially and which to fly home from. Visas are a major hassle sometimes. Need one for UK, one for Schengen and possibly others for non-Schengen countries. So lots of decision paralysis going on.
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Definitely one of the benefits of having a US passport. I don’t have to deal with all those pesky visas!
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Yeah I had that when I was travelling for a long time. Too many decisions in one time, I think. Hopefully it gets better 🙂
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The nice thing is that most of the time there is no “wrong” decision.
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Oh I have this feeling so often. Too many choices and I want to do it all. It is a good problem to have. 🙂 Without a doubt, we almost always listen to our gut rather than our minds to make that final decision. Good luck.
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The gut check is definitely the best. Sometimes, though, the gut just says “Whatever,” and that makes it tough. LOL
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I’ve definitely experienced decision paralysis as you describe it. Once we threw our original itinerary our the window, we started to simply base our next stop on 1 of 2 things: where we could get to overland, or where we could get a cheap flight to. Sometimes there were so many cheap options, I found myself completely incapable of committing to anything. I also started to realize that simply going places because they were cheap to get to wasn’t a great strategy, it just allowed us to sidestep the soul-searching required to decide where we actually wanted to go. Sometimes it’s liberating to know that you can go anywhere you want, but then the hard work begins: actually figuring out what that means!
And I can completely understand how getting out of Asia might have kickstarted you guys again.There have been a few times when I have so desperately yearned to leave Asia because I feel like I’m in a rut. I have found that coming to Nepal has been really great for us because it’s different enough from everywhere else we’ve been so far that it feels exotic and exciting but still has many of Asia’s perks. I am looking forward to Europe too, but not it’s prices!
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Yeah, I wouldn’t go somewhere just because it was cheap to get there. I need a reason or a desire to go there.
Thankfully, much of central Europe and most, if not all, of Eastern Europe is very reasonable. Western Europe is the real ouch.
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