“Have you ever tried to stop-peeing midstream? It’s like trying to put spray cheese back in the can. The damage has been done, and the only thing left to do is try to enjoy yourself.”
That’s a quote from a deleted chapter in a book written by (in my opinion) one of the funniest bloggers on the internet, Geraldine DeRuiter.
Geraldine is an ‘accidental’ travel writer. Nine years ago, she found herself laid-off from a copywriting job and decided, “screw it, I’m gonna travel.” She’s since visited around 30 countries, and her resulting travel blog, The Everywhereist, describes itself as “an award-winning cry for help.”
TIME Magazine calls it “consistently clever” and FORBES Magazine named it one of the Top 10 Lifestyle Websites for Women for three consecutive years.
Five years ago, Geraldine was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She jokes about her resulting brain surgery on her website — “[I get to] make cracks like, “I need this like I need another hole in my head” — but in all seriousness, her tumor re-framed importance of travel (and living your dreams) in a new light.
I brought Geraldine onto the show to discuss the wit, wisdom and why behind globetrotting. What has she learned after nearly a decade of traipsing the globe?
And more importantly (for you) — Assuming you’ve built the savings, should you travel now, or wait until some future benchmark (such as early retirement) before you start wandering the globe?
Here are some of the questions I ask her:
- Tell us about your first trip outside of the U.S.
- Do you have an estimate of how many countries you’ve visited?
- What have you learned — about yourself, about the world, about cupcakes — from these travels?
- What have you NOT YET learned, that you’re still trying to figure out?
- What countries do you keep returning to?
- Do you ever get tired of traveling?
- There are haters who say that travel is self-indulgent; that its nothing more than a glorified vacation, and that if your focus is globetrotting, then you’re not a productive member of society. What would you say to them?
Enjoy!
Resources Mentioned:
- The Everywhereist
- All Over the Place – Geraldine’s book
- The Power of Being Clueless – an excerpt
- Her mortifying story about peeing on the bathroom floor at age 11 – deleted chapter
- Follow Geraldine on Twitter: @everywhereist
- How to Start a Blog in 5 Minutes
