That sounds awesome man. Care to discuss?
Afters years of struggling with health problems in a completely and hopelessly broken system I
finally got the help I so desperately needed for so long and I reached a fork in the road where my options were either a.) accept that I'm going to be treated like a parasite for the rest of my life because I can't work a normal job and accept that I must do what I must to maintain the level of care that I'm getting despite the toll that it takes on my mental health and remain in perpetual unemployment or b.) find a shot and take it in the hopes that it works out well enough that I can create a way for me to survive without being a shut-in while realizing that I could lose my health care and not make enough to pay for a similar level of care.
I'm taking my shot. I'm tired of being a negative person, I'm tired of being angry, I'm sick of my back fusing together in an absurdly painful manner being treated like some sort of character flaw, and I'm tired of being called lazy by people with no f***ing understand of how chronic illnesses work, nevermind having multiple chronic pain-causing autoimmune disorders that literally mean that nobody hates me more than my own body does. If I fail at least I'll go down in a blaze of glory first. If I succeed I hope I can inspire others and raise awareness about invisible illnesses and chronic conditions.
Without going into a dissertation about what is wrong with me I'll just jump into the more fun side: what I'll be doing. I've always loved travel and when I recognized that I desperately needed to get away for a while for my own mental health I started searching for advice for traveling with my worsening ailments and I found almost nothing. The advice I found was either geared towards the elderly or fully disabled. I did a ton of research and most of what I found was so difficult to find or surprising that it could not only help someone like me, but anyone who wants to travel but doesn't have the time or patience to do an absurd amount of research. Travel is a real-time logic puzzle in the sense that so much of it is about how you respond to the unexpected or unfamiliar. You have to be able to think on your feet in order to get the most out of travel and that's something I've not only done well in the past, but the best memories I have of my travel history (I'm starting off with 38 states, 4 provinces, and 15-17 countries I've been to) almost all come from completely unexpected situations, and I think I know how to work this all together in a way that can relieve a lot of the stresses that people experience while traveling. I'm a unilingual introvert with health problems that make it difficult to leave the house, but I've only ever felt comfortable in my own skin while traveling and connecting with others. My favorite memories almost all involve unexpected side-effects of travel, be it the amazing weekend I had in Québec City with a Dutch girl and Aussie mate who I met in the last hostel I'll likely ever stay at, the time I climbed a mountain in Andorra because I would have done anything to get away from my travel partner at the time, learning the Prague streetcar system so I could sit amongst the visitors fan section during a hockey game with 4 people who had never seen hockey before in their lives, or running from a Finnish sauna and doing snow angels in meter-deep snow to close out the only good year of the first 31 of my life. Finding that balance of planning and spontaneity is the difference between travel being a life-affirming experience and being a miserable headache. I was in free fall mode for years just waiting to hit rock bottom and I finally reached that point where I completely ran out of f***s to give. There's so much I want to experience that I've been told I never will because of my problems and I say to hell with that.
This trip of mine is a really weird Frankenstein's monster of a vacation thanks to it not starting out as anything bigger than self-care at first. In my initial research I came across the existence of repositioning cruises and found one that was both an incredible deal and had a near-perfect itinerary for me. I'm terrified of water and suffer from a bit of vertigo...but this is all about conquering fears for me. I'm going on a 16 night transpacific cruise departing from Vancouver that'll end up in Yokohama (Tokyo) with stops in Sitka (AK), Otaru, & Hakodate (both in Hokkaidō, Japan). Since I'm already going to be in Japan, my health has improved under new treatments, and I saw a chance to turn this into something bigger I decided that I'd double-up on massive journeys and spend a couple weeks in Japan, too. I can't imagine doing another trip this big, the logistics of it are a nightmare and I'm going to have to have a couple shots with me that require being maintained within a narrow temperature range, but...10+ hour flights aren't exactly easy for someone with my conditions (most people with my back problem just outright refuse to fly) so I'm going to try to cram in as much as I possibly can while acknowledging that I'm going to have days where my body isn't going to allow me to leave my room.
I adore train travel, so the Shinkansen has been on my bucket list since middle school. I got a JR Rail Pass and will be setting up shop in a couple cities and using that to take day trips. Not a ton of my Japan trip is planned out, but I have a solid years' worth of ideas that'll allow me to be flexible. The part that is planned is ending in Hokkaidō so I can appreciate the changing of seasons for the first time since 2011 and spend a couple days in an onsen town where the water is supposedly therapeutic for people with my issues.
I don't speak Japanese, the only person I know in Japan hasn't used their social media in 6 years, I'm going solo, and I won't even be on my own in Japan until my 19th day of solo travel. I can't deny that I'm nervous beyond belief, I'm going all-in with a pair of 7s, but the upside so greatly dwarfs the downside that I have to try. I hit rock bottom and ran out of f***s to give, which is the only way anyone could possibly justify going on a 35 day-long trip without proper funding. This is my gambit. My one remaining shot. I've suffered too much for too long to go down without a fight.
Anyway, that was way too long of a response...
9.4 -> Flying to Vancouver
9.6 - > Cruise begins
9.9 -> Sitka, Alaska
9.18 -> Otaru
9.19 -> Hakodate
9.21 -> Tokyo
??? -> Osaka/Kyoto/whatever my body lets me do
10.4 -> Noboribetsu
10.6 -> Sapporo
10.8 -> Fly home
Gonna use that absurdly long time on the open ocean to learn how to do a lot of the technical side of things and hopefully begin breaking out of my shell. Oh, and I guess I never explicitly said that I'm starting a travel vlog/blog. I don't know when it'll fully launch, but at the very least I'll have to start using social media to post pictures as I go on (@fragiletraveler on Instagram).
