A little while ago, I saw a post from my nomadic friend Dustin Wong, called “Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (The Real Reason For The Forty-Hour Workweek).” To give you a little background, I have known Dustin since preschool and he recently left his steady engineering job to travel around the US in a van and become a photographer.
The article itself mostly deals with consumerism and how our circular work weeks emphasize wants over needs, but I took it as something greater. Combined with the fact that it came from Dustin, whom I had just had a conversation with earlier in the year, I decided to make a change in course.
As most of you know, I recently made a very tough decision to leave my family’s business and branch out into my own real estate career. I was lucky enough to be immediately welcomed by some good family friends at Marcus & Associates, a very prestigious local real estate company, and set a schedule to get my license and begin working immediately after I finished at ‘IOLANI.
However, thanks to Dustin’s inspiration, and tremendous support from everyone involved (including my current and future bosses), I have decided to postpone my start date with Marcus & Associates and travel around the mainland for two months! Plans are still in the works, but my rough schedule is two and half weeks on the east coast and five on the west coast. There are a few set MānoaDNA dates that I have to work around, but overall, I’m really excited to go!
This will be a HUGE growing experience for me. I will be driving most of the way, (hopefully) taking amazing photos, learning about my country, learning about different cultures, and MOST importantly, learning about myself! I will be documenting the entire trip here and on my Facebook page, and welcome tips and advice along the way. I am trying not to plan too heavily initially (as that is my status quo), so I can really take advantage of this opportunity and GROW!
I also understand there are those of you out there that might not understand why, or question my intentions to do something like this. That’s completely fine. When I first talked to Dustin, I had my doubts about his adventure but understood that he needed to do it for himself. I need to do this for myself. I will still become a real estate agent and work at Marcus & Associates after this is all said and done. But for now, I am very excited, (a little nervous, but mostly excited) and thank you all VERY MUCH for your support and love! ESPECIALLY to my parents and the gang at Marcus & Associates for giving me their blessing!
There is one stipulation though…if I come back a pot-smoking hippie, you can slap me. 🙂
[…] a part of my preparations for my trek up and down the coastal United States, I have to decide how I want to document my […]