Be ready for that Extraordinary Job

by Ed Teja

An important aspect of extraordinary jobs is that they can pop up unexpectedly and disappear quickly. If you aren’t ready to leap, you can miss out. Unfortunately many of the best things in life are inconvenient, and opportunities, while desirable, can also be amazingly disruptive. Change is inherently unsettling and it pays big dividends to do some serious groundwork ahead of time. Here are a few tips I’ve established after many years of living and working in Asia and The Caribbean as well as traveling for work in Europe.

1. Get out of debt and stay there.
Debt is an anchor. It defines the earnings you need, and can keep you from taking a low-paying job that might lead to exactly what you want. Debt makes it harder to pay your dues, and credit card debt is the worst kind.

2. Keep your travel documents current.
Many jobs that are desirable have to be filled yesterday. There isn’t enough time for you to apply for a passport. “The expedition to the Artic leaves in two days, can you go if we pay all of your expenses? or “We need a deckhand to help us return a boat from Trinidad to The Canary Islands. We leave tomorrow.” I’ve seen it happen many times, and personally had wonderful chances to travel on someone else’s dime in Europe and Asia and at times had less than 48 hours notice—to leave, not to make up my mind. I was ready and went.

3. Simplify your life
Prune down your belongings. The adage “you can’t take it with you” applies to adventure lives as much as death. On a yacht you’ll barely have space for yourself. You often won’t have time to put things in storage, and if you did, how would you pay for it? I’ve had jobs where there was limited internet access and mail came irregularly, and never more frequently than every six weeks. Online banking is wonderful, but when it fails, consider that you might not be able to call the bank and get it sorted out for maybe a year. And then they’ll probably want you (in the boonies somewhere) to fax them documents that are happily in a safe deposit in Omaha. Not that it matters, because the nearest fax machine is in a town fifty miles upriver, and only works sometimes. (An all too real scenario.) Simplicity, for the traveler, provides peace of mind.

Get a handle on personal relationships too. Now. Make sure that anyone truly important to you understands and agrees with your desire to hit the high road. Don’t assume the other person would think it a great idea to live under a thatch roof in Venezuela for a couple of years – talk about it. (I’ve done it – it was great.) You don’t want the stress of working through such an important subject while an employer is waiting to hear if you are going to fly to Costa Rica next Monday or not. How you work things out is up to you, but be sure the home front is taken care of before you leave town. You’ll have your hands full learning about new places and a new job without trying to deal with relationship problems at the same time.

4. Don’t try to be in two places at once.
When a sailor goes to sea, he or she needs to be there, in the present, not wondering if the house back in Canada got rented to someone sane, or if Dad is taking care of the classic car. It is just too stressful. I’ve seen people who were ostensibly sailing the world, spending a fortune flying back to the US or Canada to “take care of business.” Trust me, it is not the way to go. If you want to travel, travel. If you want to put down roots, do that. But don’t try to do both.

5. Think laterally.
This is a cliché, to be sure, but when you throw away the business consultant connotations, it is true. Often you have to think laterally in order to realize that some job is actually the path to following your bliss. A job renting go carts on Grand Cayman Island for the summer might not be what you want, but it gets your foot in the door in the resort business, is nearby a marine science research facility, and adds punch to a resume that will take you traveling. Something as simple as having worked at a job outside your home country is an excellent credential.

There are more things to consider, of course, but the first three of these are absolute musts if you are serious about jobs outside the normal career path, and some people just doing these hard. If you have questions about any of these, Kim and I will be glad to answer them.