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Keeping travel a secret from work

Keeping travel a secret from work

If we had our way, we would go up to the roof immediately and scream out to the entire world “WE’RE SELLING EVERYTHING, QUITTING OUR JOBS AND GOING OVERSEAS INDEFINITELY!”. But unfortunately this is the real world, where secrets about our true intentions must be kept in order to protect the daily routines of our respective jobs.

We can only imagine what would happen if our employers found out about our deep dark secret – that we are going to resign in about 6 months to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. If they found out now, we’re sure every move we make at work would be watched and scrutinized, every legitimate sick day taken would be questioned to the point of interrogation and job satisfaction for these last few months would almost certainly decline.

This is why we’ve decided to keep our round-the-world trip plans confined to ourselves, close family/friends and the travel blogging community at this stage (hrmm, secretive, we know!). As our departure date approaches and the excitement grows, keeping these amazing plans a secret from the people we work and interact with on a daily basis is becoming much more difficult than we ever would have thought!

Daily we are put into situations or asked questions that we must dodge around or answer untruthfully in order to keep this secret. Here are some examples of the questions we often are asked, as well as our not entirely truthful responses and what we really want to say.

Question: Why are you moving back to your parents’ house?
Our Answer: Rent is so expensive these days so we’re doing this as a short-term measure to try and save some extra money for a down payment on a house.
What We Want To Say: To save money to travel the world, baby!

Question: Why are you selling all your stuff? Why not just put it in storage?
Our Answer: The cost of storage is nearly more than the cost of our belongings, plus we probably would want nicer things when we do buy a house.
What We Want To Say: More money for travel!

Question: What did you get up to on the weekend?
Our Answer: Not too much, just did some things around the house/went for walks/<insert free activity here>.
What We Want To Say: Avoided spending money so that we can save it now and spend it overseas!

Question: Do you have any upcoming holiday plans?
Our Answer: Nothing confirmed, but we might go overseas for a couple of weeks next year.
What We Want To Say: Yep. We’ll be traveling indefinitely starting in June/July next year.

Question: We’ll get you involved in <insert work project, training, etc> next year.
Our Answer: Sounds great, I look forward to it!
What We Want To Say: Don’t waste your time, I won’t be here then… sucker!

These are just a few examples and often we do slip-up and have to quickly correct ourselves to avoid revealing our secret. How the hell are we going to keep up this charade for another 6+ months? Surely someone will put the pieces of the puzzle together – all of the little things we’re doing like selling our belongings, moving back to the parents’ house, regularly talking about travel at work and the constant web surfing of travel sites must be pretty strong hints of our intentions regardless of how discreet we try to be!

For those who have been on the same journey, how did you keep your secret from work? Time will tell how long we’ll be able to keep ours!

Flickr Photo: RaymondPhotography

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