Off the Beaten Path

Hannah (she/her)

Editorial Team Member

When people begin to plan their lives after high school—or rather, often begin to follow the plan laid out for them—it tends to be built off of the same general milestones. Go to college, start your career, settle down, start a family, save for retirement. Of course, even those who attempt to follow this plan are not always successful, but what about those who don’t want to aim for that set path at all?

Personally, I never had much of a set plan in my mind. As someone who was homeschooled from a young age, my parents have never pushed me to go to college if it wasn’t what I wanted. I’ve known for a long time I wouldn’t be going for a degree right out of high school, but then the question was; what was my plan instead?

Honestly, I didn’t have one. When I was younger, I figured I’d cross that bridge when I came to it, and just wanted to focus on getting there first. Now, as a recently graduated teen, I constantly get asked the dreaded question: what’s next? Until recently, I didn’t have an answer. I knew all the classic career paths didn’t appeal to me. Any time I considered them, I found the idea of being tied down to the same place for years before I inevitably ended up settling down to be utterly suffocating. The same went for the idea of working a 9 to 5, the only time I’d be allowed to choose my schedule being weekends, if that.

Unfortunately, that was how real life worked, wasn’t it?

There was one dream I’d held for years, but that was all it was; a dream. Or at least, that’s all I assumed it could become. Traveling. I’d seen the occasional post online from people talking about the old buses or vans they’d bought and turned into lovely little homes they drove all over the country, capturing the freedom I craved. Daydreams were constant, our graph paper was used up in floor plan designs, but in the back of my head, I never believed it would become a reality. After all, I was only a young teen at the time.

Now, as someone who will be eighteen in just over a month, I plan to make that dream a reality. After all, despite what society tells us, college will always be there. So will job opportunities. Our youth, however? Our opportunities to travel the world before becoming held down by responsibilities? Those are fleeting, and something to be cherished. The amount of times I’ve heard older adults say, “Oh, after my kids move out”, “In five years”, or “After I retire” concerns me, if only because by the time they’ve reached that point, they either cannot follow their dream anymore, or they put it off yet again. I refuse to be trapped by “what if’s” and “someday’s”. I choose to be the one who returns home with stories.

With today’s technology, remote work is easier to find than ever, making it much easier to fund your travels while on the road. I plan to prioritize experiences and relationships instead of money. Or, in other words, I choose to focus on living. Maybe one day I’ll decide staying in one place is the next step for me, which would be completely fine. It just isn’t the step I choose to take right now. For now, I will save up my money to live the life I’ve been dreaming of since I was thirteen. I choose to venture off the beaten path.