August. A new temporary chapter to split up summer in half. This month was sealed for more than half a year in advance already. And, in hindsight, it couldn't have gone any better.

I applied for a job as a ranger in a nature reserve in The Netherlands for 5 weeks. Participants join for a 2-day adventure of hiking and rafting with an inflatable boat; called Packrafting. A pretty cool concept if you ask me! Together with another ranger, it was our responsibility to welcome, inform, and entertain the participants; as well as interact with the campsite owner and with the administration of the organization. In general, it was our task to keep the whole “micro-adventure” operational. And as long as all went smoothly, we had the freedom to execute it as we pleased.

Three days before my starting date I received a call informing me that my partner ranger had canceled. So, they asked me to find a partner myself. In no time I had found two substitutes. My brother for the first week and my cousin for the next 4 weeks. This provided me with even more flexibility on the job since we were all on the same page. The first week with my brother was perfect to catch up and spend some quality time together. Afterward, the dynamic with my cousin was amazing as well since we both had the same objective: finishing the tasks as fast as possible so we could invest all our ‘spare time’ in studying (and sports). On top of that, we were isolated far away from the distraction of friends, leaving working on ourselves as the only possible occupancy for our free time.

After 6 weeks of full-time traveling, this was exactly what I needed. Traveling is and was very nice. But it lasted too long. Or the way of traveling was not maintainable. And I think it is a bit of both. In the future, I want to travel more and more for longer and longer. But the formula of how I travel should change. These were 6 weeks of vacation. And I got bored of it. I felt unproductive and started to be annoyed by it. I want to make progress, mentally and physically. At this point, I was not progressing anymore but rather living from day to day without real purpose. Of course, it was amazing to be with the people I was with, and the surrounding culture and nature were wonderful. But I didn’t have the time to REALLY take it in and evaluate and process it all. Now, a couple of months later, it has become a shady void with fun memories. I realized even more that I crave to TRAVEL instead of having a vacation. And this (to me) means having a proper routine and being productive as much as possible along the way.

During this month of combined working and me-time for personal purposes, I had the time to stand still with my thoughts over the past and coming months. Evaluating my life and making important decisions for the future. Over the past month, I received a job offer to work at a dredging company abroad with a very high paycheck. Working in rotations of 6 weeks aboard and abroad— 6 weeks at home, free. But this meant that I first had to follow 6–9 months of training in a city rather far away. This had been my plan during my vacation and I was more or less convinced to sign the contract, yet something in me held me back. I was motivated for the work abroad and even more for the free time at home, but wasn’t motivated for such a long training in Belgium, yet so far from home. I considered moving closer to the workplace but there were barely housing options. I kept postponing my decision but didn’t have a real alternative either and kept pep-talking myself that it was indeed a good choice. My LinkedIn kept giving me notifications of the countless recruiters and only one stood out. A consultancy bureau with various engineering and IT options. I agreed to a call and gave it a fair chance (even though I decided 90% already), and it flipped the course of my thoughts. It was the light I needed to guide me out of my blindness. After comparing I realized that I went numb for the 6 weeks of free time and the high pay since the content of this job was less aligned with my career ambitions. Something in me had postponed my decision long enough and ‘the universe’ granted me a sudden solution as a reward for being patient and not rushing my life choices.

During this month I picked up running again as well. My progression had stagnated after the countless beers and lack of daily sports during vacation. But it didn’t take too much time to pick up the pace again. My routine got better and better again, especially because I was reading “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins during the Packraft. The running addiction and aspiration grew by the day. After my marathon, I was looking for a new physical goal to strive for. The spark had been inside me before, but the urge got stirred up a lot now for the next challenge: ultrarunning and triathlon. The faraway targets now transformed into “start working on it now” objectives.

Also a lot of friends came to visit me. It made me, again, realize how valuable my friends are. I hadn’t seen most of my friends since before I went to Spain in May, 3 months ago. I had been the one going everywhere yet still they put in the effort to visit me, again abroad. I am blessed with the friends I have and need to be humble towards them since I am the one who is difficult to reach. The same goes for my parents who also visited for a weekend. And even more so for my girlfriend who had to settle for very little time either during summer. It was not easy and has led to some discussions between us, unsurprisingly.

Lastly, it was inspiring to be in contact with so many different people. During these 5 weeks, I was the person of contact for 600 different people. So many different experiences and visions of the world and how to live your life. It was so interesting to sit around the campfire every other night with new people with each their own backstories and insights. I heard so many stories, especially about traveling since this was an experience through a traveling agency that offers a lot of other trips as well. It encouraged me to work harder towards a work-traveling future life.

These 5 weeks were wonderful. They embodied a meditation/mindfulness retreat to me, surrounded by lovely people, and not to forget, amazing nature!