My first reason to travel to Southeast Asia was hearing that it was cheap.
To me that not only means it is less expensive but it means that it is wild and changing fast. I want to see the things that will be gone in a few years. There are parts of this world that simply won’t exist in five years. in 5 years or in 10 there might not be half as many small villages or native languages spoken in the developing world. I want to see some of that before its gone.
I also think that this kind of travel will be more fun for me while I’m young, I’ll leave Europe for the time when luxury is a priority over cheapness. So Southeast Asia sounded like the place for me.

My first preparations started with learning about money and how to be strong financially, I didn’t know it would prepare me for traveling at first I just knew that I hated to feel poor and I wanted to live my life as well as I could. Money would be important, not because it caused happiness but because it made the basics easy so the hard stuff could be focused on. I started with learning about money mindsets, and how to live decently without spending a lot of money. I learned to dislike payment plans, and enjoy finding cheaper ways to live. At first I sacrificed a lot of my time and energy, and sometimes happiness in order to save my money but after awhile I learned that there are two ways to have more money 1- save more and 2- make more. I also learned that money was less important than I originally thought. So now I generally think money follows after becoming an effective person so I spend my money as effectively as I can and I work knowing every hour I spend is irrevocably lost to my history. I will never get back the thousands of hours I’ve spent in pursuit of my financial goals, not a bad thing but something that is true. So when I work I have a damn good reason.

I learned a lot about investing, Grocery outlet, Whole foods, selling things, what is expensive for no good reason and what is worth spending a lot of money on. I learned that there is essentially unlimited amounts of money in the world but only a finite amount of time in my lifespan.
I spent six months learning about business and money. I learned the basics of a couple internet coding languages, and how to draw traffic and up your websites rank in google.
But I have a shortcoming when it comes to focus, I force myself to continue past the point where my happiness is negatively effected. I’m somewhat used to being uncomfortable so I don’t fully notice my discomfort until I am very low emotionally. I got to that place after months of working very hard on business, I got to the point where I couldn’t put much into my projects so I decided it would be better to focus on dealing with my depression. I worked on a better daily habit, I learned that exercise, sunlight, human connection, Omega 3 fatty acids and not too much time to ruminate were suppose to help. I have always struggled to stay happy in one place, I need some kind of immediate reason to get up and go, I used to think I wasn’t motivated but now I think my motivation is acclimated to the dramatic and not the regular. It makes me feel happier in intensity and restless, sometimes moody in the ordinary.

A new dream started to form in my mind, I wanted to travel. I had been working a long time to save up for my next step. I didn’t know what it would be but over those months It started to seem crazy to wait to travel, waiting was ignoring the fact that time is incredibly valuable, maybe the most valuable thing.