perspective

Why I decided to stop everything and take an adult gap year

Wondering if you're truly happy is a shortcut to depression. It's a quote from a meme I laughed at, which has stayed with me for years.

Last year I was working a dream job in food media and running a successful side hustle with my partner. I had a core group of friends and some fulfilling new ones.

It also happened to be the year I booked the most sessions with a counsellor.

Aside from general wellbeing, we spoke a lot about what to do with a small business that felt suffocating, managing the fear of redundancy at work, as well as a niggling desire to throw everything away and start fresh in another country.

As the year progressed, my dream job became lonely, and the satisfaction that came with producing good work was replaced with a grey displeasure.

Cooking huge pots of chilli oil for my side hustle started to feel more like unpaid employment than entrepreneurship.

The rose-coloured glasses had come off, and I found myself wondering whether I would look back and be able to draw any warm memories from my thirties, or if it would all just be work.

I had learned to squeeze those feelings into a little box and move them off the home screen in my brain.

How we planned to take a year off work to travel

Just before my 32nd birthday, I told my partner that time abroad was a non-negotiable, and we began building a path toward life in a backpack.

The plan was a few months of travel followed by job searching in Asian global cities. If we liked it, we'd stay. If not, we'd travel until the end of year or our money ran out.

Turns out checking off a bucket-list adventure year isn't easy.

My work and identity were emulsified like an oil and vinegar dressing (spoiler: counselling helped).

I have the privilege of owning an apartment and ultimately my partner and I settled on a serviced apartment arrangement that could cover our mortgage repayments and give us a place to come back to.

We each resigned from our jobs, to keep all options open for a permanent move, and so I could properly explore contract work on the side. Our chilli oil business went on pause.

To cover the cost, we had a few years of savings ticking along and some generous gifts from parents.

It took many conversations to detach the idea of a house, wedding or new car from our nest egg, in favour of experience and memories.

A trip to figure out where I belong

Growing up to Chinese and Swiss parents in Australia left gaps in my identity.

I remember the first time I visited China at age 26. I was worried it would be an overwhelming place full of chaos. 

Instead, kindness and tranquillity gripped me immediately, and I mourned what I'd been missing in all the years prior.

Now that I have a committed partner I want to share that part of me with him, and celebrate it. I want to learn from the family values and dedication to community, and try foods I've never heard of before.

I want to taste the most fragrant dan dan mian, the juiciest samsa, and wash cumin lamb skewers down with a Tsingtsao on the side of the road. I want to do it for so long that I'm sick of it. I want to miss Naarm/Melbourne, and figure out where I belong.

I'm days away from boarding a one-way flight to Taipei. From there I'll head to Changsha, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi'an, Lanzhou, Zhangye, Jiuquan, Urumqi and hopefully Ili before crossing the border to visit Kazahkstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Thinking about it brings on a special kind of giddy.

I'm not sure how far we'll get with an ambitious $150/day budget for all expenses, or if we'll be able to land jobs and stay in Asia like I hope, but even if we end up broke and fed up, there will always be home.

Camellia Aebischer is a former food editor, who writes about food and culture and films videos too.