Billie Besos

So this post comes under a slightly different subject area… and it’s not a super upbeat colourful one full of travel pictures, but I like to think it is still worth a read. Besides, it is still relevant to a travel blog because you definitely go on a journey when you leave uni. Yes, for some it is smooth-sailing. They simply know that they want to go into a corporate role/grad scheme and start climbing up that career ladder. But for a lot of us, it can be pretty daunting when you leave uni. Everything has been carefully structured before this point, and we have been in education our entire life so far (unless you took a pre-uni gap year). There can be a lot of pressure surrounding what you decide to do next, and for some this can be a lot to deal with. I left uni back in July 2018 and I’m lucky in so far as I knew that I wanted to travel and see some of the world before I even began to think of my career. But I couldn’t help but compare my decision with others, and occasionally worry that my decision was going to cause me to fall behind my peers. In a way, you could say that my post-uni anxiety kicked in upon my return from travelling. A couple of my friends had asked me in the summer: ‘So what are you going to do next?’. It is questions like this that made me anxious.

Here’s a lovely picture of the sea

Having now entered 2020, I have had time to reflect on my decisions and I am extremely happy I made them. Maybe I didn’t plan it all perfectly and this could’ve made it all a bit more straightforward, but I don’t have regrets. I do, however, believe that since leaving uni I have been more anxious because of the pressure to make decisions that will determine the rest of my life. I felt mostly relaxed while travelling, but I did always have thoughts niggling in the back of my mind about what I would do when I returned. It was even more daunting that my parents were emigrating and I needed to decide where I wanted to base myself while planning my next steps. I am glad that I chose to go with them to Portugal, despite not having had it in mind that I would live at home for much longer. But in my mind this was only going to be a temporary decision, and I would soon find something interesting to do somewhere else in the world. I really wanted to do more travelling but obviously knew that I would need to work in order to even think about doing this.

And then… after spending some time in Portugal and having no luck with any online job searches elsewhere, I stumbled across an exciting opportunity in the Algarve. Again, I questioned whether I was ready to start a full-time job, and whether this was in fact the place I wanted to live etc. but I thought there was really no reason to stop me from accepting the role. I knew I didn’t want to live in London, despite enjoying visiting my friends there, and I knew that I loved the Algarve region and the lifestyle that comes with living in it. But I was scared at the thought of losing my freedom! It was going to be tough to transition. I was a uni student, then I was a traveller, then I was a seasonal worker, and now I was going to be a real adult… but I just bit the bullet.

A pretty door in a local town, I thought this would break up the waffle

To say this decision came easily to me would be a lie. I feel like I made it while I was in some kind of dreamland, somewhere between still having a chilled traveller mindset, and also not thinking straight due to anxiety. But when I think about it now, I think there were reasons behind me not being entirely focussed when I accepted my new job.

One of my main struggles about committing to living and working abroad was the thought that I wouldn’t see my friends and family very much. On reflection, this is something I try not to be anxious about because I have been abroad so much over the past few years, and I feel that it has maybe made my relationships stronger. I really appreciate the time I spend with people when I visit England, or people come to visit me. I was probably only in England for a couple of months maximum last year, so I’m used to it, and I do feel like I am destined to live abroad.

The calming evening light near my current home… (I promise I haven’t gone crazy)

One thing it has also taken me time to understand, and this is why I gave this post its title, is how to shift between mindsets. I firmly believe that there are a few mindsets you can be in when you first leave uni, and the main ones are: the traveller mindset, the career mindset and the social mindset (or you can just be plain confused). I definitely came out of uni in the traveller mindset and this was my main focus, but now I am having to shift towards being in the career mindset; this is going to take some time for me. By social mindset, I mean the people that move to where the people are, because they want to focus on being around people and getting that buzz, and they probably don’t mind too much about what job they end up in.

I don’t think I necessarily have to choose career over travel, but I do have to have the right mentality for work, and I can’t be quite as free as I was when I was travelling. I think this was partly the root of my anxiety about committing to a job, because I didn’t want my freedom to be lost. But I am coming to terms with adulting. In a way, working abroad still encompasses travel, and I know it’s part of my travel journey, so that makes me feel better.

In summary…

I think the main message I want to give from this post is this: Nothing has to be the right choice, but as long as it’s a good choice for now, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Thanks for reading!