The next big thing

Since I was a kid I've dreamed of going to Australia. For years I blamed it on being a kid who thought koalas were cute, and recently realized it was probably more that Robert Scorpio on General Hospital was Australian. I wish I was kidding about this reasoning but it's true. I've always been fascinated by it. I'm interested in the culture, the slang, the accents, the boys, the fact that people can live there at all when everything's designed to kill them, and I know people joke about that but there's something in that that genuinely speaks to me. I have all these things I want to see and do, and in a dream world I could spend a whole summer there, exploring everywhere I can get to. I have a friend there who's been encouraging me to go for years, and I would love to, but it's always been too expensive. Australia has been my holy grail of trips for my entire life.

Last weekend, my friends and I got together at one of our houses. I'd just gotten back from California, my ex-roommate had just gotten back from London, and most of the night was us talking about our trips. And then somewhere towards the end, the one I'm going to Disney with told us that she's going to Australia next month basically on a company's dime, and I have been seething with jealousy ever since.

I want this clear: I don't compete. I find inspiration in other people getting to travel, and I'd much rather celebrate someone else getting to do something cool rather than being upset about my own situation. But I was mad at life about this one. Sarah once got to go and invited me, and I couldn't come up with the money in time and it's always bothered me, and this was worse than that. Days later I was still sitting at work thinking, "Why am I not doing that?"

And then I thought, "Why am I not doing that?"

I'd told my Australian friend a couple weeks ago that my goal was to go there in 2018. So I'm going to make it happen in 2018. I'm not going to get a whole summer to travel. It'll probably be more like two weeks, and I'll have to choose which cities I want to hit. I'd always wanted to tack New Zealand and Bali on there, and I'm not sure that's feasible. I'm going to have to be judicious and find deals and make some sacrifices, but so far it's looking like I can actually pull this off if I'm careful over the next two years. I've been doing research, figuring out which cities are the best for what I want to do, and I'm making notes on prices so I have an idea of what I need to save.

I'm also figuring out how much it's going to cost to go diving with sharks. That is non-negotiable.