Brave new worlds

‘Quit your job. Buy a ticket. Get a tan. Fall in love. Never return.’ — a five sentence meme that made its way into my Facebook newsfeed and struck the kind of chords that left me wondering what on earth I was doing with my life. In reality, it wouldn’t have been difficult to bring me to such a lost and confused state anywhere between 2009 and 2011. Twenty-hour workdays consulting for a corporate giant, despite being a pretty cool job, can do that to a person. So one day in June 2011, I made it past the meme’s first sentence. I walked away from the only cubicle I had ever known and, one over-rehearsed speech later, I officially burst out of my corporate bubble. This was no longer a thought that wormed its way into my brain every month: I was actually free. The news didn’t go down too