I'm writing this from Chiang Mai, Thailand after leaving Seattle two months ago. In the whirlwind of packing up my life, I didn't have the time to share how I was leaving until now. Here is a mini journey into the weeks before jetting off.

I'll break this down into a step by step process inspired from my career as a designer to successfully make it across the world, and not feel like I miss anything.

#1 Have a Vision

Like any good design, you need to have a vision to get you where you want to go. In this case, I wanted to go somewhere geographically different. My particular journey looks spontaneous to most, but I've been working on this for about 10 years.

I chose my career path based on being able to work anywhere in the world. I have a love for photography, but I wanted to be location independent while working. There are many reasons I've chosen digital design, instead of print. One of them comes down to the fact that I didn't want to have to go to a printing press or have paper delivered to my office to choose the correct design.

There's also the subconscious decisions one makes based off of your vision, like only living in a studio apartment to avoid purchasing more items. If I had lived in a one bedroom, packing up my life would have been doable, but a more work. If I hadn't had a vision of working abroad, I might not have made some of the decisions I made along the way.

What's your vision for your future? It may seem depressing, but try starting at your eulogy and working backwards.

#2 Planning and Designing

I'm differentiating "a plan" as something different than "a vision". A plan to me is more short term and specific to a project. A vision is long term, where your collective choices add up over time.

When you put together a plan, you have to decide where you are going to spend your energy. A plan is a bit more in lines with project management, where you have deadlines and a span of time to get things done, so prioritization is key. What did I choose to prioritize? Physical organization, finances, electronics/resources, and research via people.

What did I deprioritize? Learning the language, researching places to go, understanding visa rules in detail, finding long term housing, and many more things I can't begin to mention. That's the point, those items were deprioritized, so I didn't have to spend my time thinking about them. Oh, and an itinerary. This was purposeful. My plan for counties I would visit was to have no plan. I told people I would be out of the country "from 3 weeks to 3 years."

Organization:

I organized EVERY physical item I owned. I sold, gave away, or categorized everything. I labeled every box I packed on two sides. Then I measured every item in my apartment including those boxes and mocked it up digitally. This served two purposes - Lowering my cost of the storage unit I needed by getting the smallest one, and being about to find things quickly if I ever need to pull something out of there.

I could go more into my mythologies of organization, but that would take more than we have. Instead, I'll add some picture of my storage unit. (Yes, that's an aquarium. I own an aquaponics system.)

As you can see, if I wheel my bike out of the storage unit, everything is reachable and easy to get to. This is user experience design for my future self. :)

Choosing a suitcase was also very important for me. I wanted a backpack and would be flexible to take to all the places I hadn't yet planned out, but still be easy to access my stuff (ie. front loading). I chose the green REI Co-op Ruckpack 40L with a matching (I'm a designer after all) 18L pack that could clip on. This flexibility with two packs has been one of the best decisions I made when planning. It means that all of my luggage is carry on, so I never have to check a bag. I can wear one the packs on my back, and one on my front. I've also found I'm using my small pack daily to transport my work station to coffee shops. Win, win, win!

As for packing my suitcase, if you only hear one thing about packing, hear this - packing cubes. Don't ever travel without them.

Finances:

If you are going to travel for an extended period of time and don't want to be hit by ATM fees or foreign transactions, choose the right card to take with you. I have lots of different cards (credit and debit) and cash with me, in multiple locations, incase something gets lost or stolen. The one card that I'm using however and has been a life saver is the Charles Swabb debit card. It refunds all your ATM fees. Plus, it's pretty. It's got a world map on it, and you can't see from this image, but it actually sparkles in the sun. :)

Oh, one last note about finances. Please tell your bank(s) you are leaving the country. You don't want your card to stop working because you missed this step.

Electronics/Resources:

Even if I tried to plan for everything, I would miss something. This is where electronics come into play, and by that I mean, your smart phone. I've traveled for long extended times without smart phones and I think there are many advantages for our minds to take a break from our electronics, but I wasn't going to be on vacation.

#1 When working and traveling, you need to be able to get set up as quickly as possible in your new country. Call your phone company before you leave, figure out how the data plan works, or if you need to purchase an international one. This will save you time on the ground when trying to figure out where your air bnb is, before you've found a place with wifi.

#2 Buy yourself a universal adapter. What's the point in planning to use your electronics, if you can't charge them?

SEE MORE IN PART 2 (coming soon)