Is It Irresponsible To Make Travel A Priority?

I love writing questions as blog titles, it makes me feel like Carrie Bradshaw. Well this is quite a Carrie Bradshaw post really… This is a question I ask myself a lot: Am I still allowed to prioritise travelling in my life?

As a 28 and two thirds year old woman, there is a lot of pressure on what I’m meant to do next. Sure when I was roadtripping around the US at 21, backpacking Southeast Asia at 23 and doing my working holiday in Australia at 24, it was acceptable for me to be travelling. These days it’s totally normally to take a gap year after uni and to clock some air miles in your early twenties. You know, get your travelling done before you “settle down”…

Then in my mid-twenties I was a total cliche, house-sharing with fun girlfriends, having parties on the regs, putting my degree to use in an entry-level job and starting a travel blog on the side. It was all very millennial of me. Travel blogging was like a cute, quarter-life-crisis thing for me to do.

But at 28?

Now life is taking a weird, adult turn. As I approach the dreaded 30 milestone, it seems to be seen as selfish for me to still be putting travel in my crosshairs. Am I not done yet? Shouldn’t I be focussed on more grown-up activities like building a future? Should I be spending money on travel when I should instead be saving it for a house deposit or a wedding or my future offspring?

Quite frankly, fuck no.

Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly back anyone who wants to do those things. I have friends that I’m quite proud of that have managed to get onto the property ladder and I love that some people want to get married and have children as soon as possible. It’s nice. But there’s no pressure on them to sort their lives out. According to society, they’re doing it right.

But the thing is, travel is what I love. And travel blogging in particular. So why should I give that up just because I’ve hit a certain age? It’s all just weird.

I do get the responsibility thing though, maybe I should be thinking about my future. Me and Josh talk about all the things we want from our lives but they’re all so expensive that it just seems ridiculously impossible. Whereas travel is an accessible goal we can actually do. We’d have to save for a decade to afford a house deposit but a trip to somewhere fabulous only needs a few months of saving really. So there’s that.

But then there’s long-term travel… Well, I’m not done yet.

I know there will be some form of career sabbatical in my future because there’s no way I’m just working until retirement now without long life-changing trips to break it up. But I’m not an entry-level graduate any more either. I have an actual real-life job that I really like and pays me a nice salary – not big enough for all those expensive life goals but enough to go for a cheeky Nando’s and not be worrying about my bank balance afterwards. So when am I allowed to do the long-term travelling thing again? Retirement??

Ugh, it’s all just very hard, figuring life out. Maybe I’m starting the “turning 30” freak-out early.

I don’t really know the point of this post other than to rant about how unfair it is that I get judged for choosing travel over responsibility. But really, can’t we all just do what the fuck we want?

What do you think? Am I getting too old to be gallivanting the world and blogging about it? Should I be settling down with a mortgage, a husband and 2.4 children? Am I actually Carrie Bradshaw right now? (Please say yes.) Let me know in the comments below or tweet me @HeelsInBackpack!