I know, at first glance this phrase seems a bit contradictory, but here's the story of how we almost suffered a “burnout” when we decided to take things more seriously on our long-term journey across Africa and South America.

It was in 2013 when Stergios finally set off on his RTW trip. Up until the day he left, he had been working tirelessly as a waiter. Rewarding or not, this was his job and he was doing his best, but when he counted his savings, his only thought was to be able to spend as much time as possible without having to work as an employee. So, he left his country free from any work obligations and with no specific plans.

As many travelers do, before he left he started a blog so he could share his stuff from the trip: pictures, videos, his travel journal... No big commitments no great expectations. But what usually happens almost unconsciously to many people the moment they cut everyday stress out of their lives, is the realization of what they really love in life. So, this is how Stergios realized he loved making videos and shooting pictures. When we met and immediately after we started traveling together, I had my own “revelation” about how much I loved writing. This is how we found ourselves with a bilingual website, a YouTube channel with videos from every country we crossed, countless pictures, texts, and of course, this is how we understood that this had become our way of life. Being on the road, traveling on our scooter and expressing our creativity through what we loved, seemed the ideal life. And it was, for sure!

The big step forward was the decision to take a break from the trip and try to sort out how we would proceed (Stergios set off for his RTW trip with $11,000 and when I joined him in South America, I hadn't more than $5,000). Our wallets were significantly thin, but we were determined to find the best option in order to go on with our plans without making – at least many – compromises. We parked our scooter in Brazil, got back to our country, Greece – not the most popular for its economic growth, for the majority of its residents – and after recovering from our post-travel depression (that's another story), we started working hard on our project.

While on the road, we couldn't realize how many things we were doing and how many hours we were spending working. It may seem easy, but since we were sincerely devoted to our plan, worldvespa had changed from a part-time-no-strings-attached hobby into a professional commitment. We were experiencing a positive type of stress, which made us more alert, energized, motivated and resourceful, and this feeling of positive stress got triggered again soon after some months in Greece. Stergios had started working as a waiter again and I had been back to my work as a Spanish teacher. But it was not enough, so I started doing some freelance translations while we were also working on promoting the book we had just released, doing presentations, writing pieces for magazines etc. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Stergios was also trying to make a documentary with his footage from Africa, all by himself. We even took a full-time pet-sitting job! Did I stress enough how much we enjoyed everything? If not, I repeat: we really loved all the things we were doing and we were trying our best in every single one of them.

It was at some point while we were working with a translator for the release of the English version of our book “Rice & Dirt”, when the first symptoms started cropping up. Sincerely, I have no idea when exactly the positive stress started shifting into this chaos, but we found ourselves not wanting to get up from bed in the morning, not having the energy to do things, finding it hard to meet and talk with people, suffering from headaches and stomach issues... So, we did what everyone does these days: we googled it. The articles we bumped into, explained everything: we had reached a point at which our stress had become too much to handle and we were about to hit the level of burnout. We even had booked our flights for South America, but we couldn't feel relieved, just more stressed! Endless lists of e-mails waiting for a reply, sales, prospective sponsors etc... We had achieved what we dreamed of and we were finding it hard to smile about it.

You'll be probably waiting for the magic plot-twist, but actually there isn't any “Deus ex machina” making his entrance to help resolve the situation. We had to find ways to help ourselves and the truth is that we are still working on it. What we managed to achieve is to acknowledge the fact that our devotion has been rewarding (to be honest, not much financially but mainly morally) and to stay faithful to our promise of living according to what we love. Soon, we'll be on the road again resuming our RTW trip, doing some scooter traveling therapy. Let's see what happens next!

WorldVespa.net