Prologue

Deciding to quit a job isn’t easy. But, for me, it was easier than the alternative. I could so easily see how my life was going to play out: make partner at my law firm in the next few years, have a couple of kids, buy a house, probably move to the suburbs because schools are too expensive in the city. It wouldn’t be a bad life by any standard. Yes, I would work too much and not have enough time for kids and hobbies, but I’d have stability and creature comforts and one or two nice vacations a year. I completely recognize that many people would kill for that life.

The thought of it, though, was frightening to me. Peering into that version of my future was like watching someone else live out a life that I felt no connection to, no fulfillment from. Is that really how I wanted to spend my one shot at it? Now nearing my thirties, my options for creating new forks in the road seemed to be narrowing with each passing day. When I thought about it, this straight roadmap for how my life was going to go, it made me desperate to change something.

So, together with my husband, Pawel, I did. We made our own fork, and chose the unknown road.

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You know the anticipation you feel before a vacation? That feeling doesn’t even begin to cover how I felt in the weeks leading up to March 2020. This wasn’t a vacation, though, it was my life. All of a sudden, all of the knowns of my future were replaced with unlimited possibilities. February was a mad dash to pack up our life, figure out how to condense it into a 45L backpack, and book some travel plans for the next several months. It was terrifying; it was exhilarating; it was everything I had wanted from a major life change.

If that timeline stands out to you, then you already know where this is heading.

Turns out I didn’t have to wait long for the first curveball this new path would throw my way. The odds that the timing of our drastic life change would coincide nearly to the day with a global pandemic completely shutting down international travel must be so infinitesimally small that it’s almost comical. At the time I definitely saw no humor in the situation.

But as I write this now, two years to the day since the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on the same exact date that we said goodbye to Chicago and headed off to South America, I know that I wouldn’t change a single choice I made. So, what follows is a collection of essays that chronicle the lessons I ultimately profited from when those crazy odds turned out to be right on the money, and the adventures we managed to have despite the circumstances.