Hate your job? Take a risk and don’t be afraid to get lost

THESE Aussie boys were in a bad spot, worn down by the daily grind. Then they made a decision to transform their lives.

EVERY job has its used-by date. Whether it’s a 45 year teaching gig like my old man’s or a 5 minute singing “career” like an Australia’s Got Talent winner, when it’s done, it’s done.

After six years loyal service in my first TV production job, my time was up. I’d learned all I could, made great friends and had enjoyed my fair share of after work drinks.

It was time to move on and broaden my horizons.

But as I was rapidly approaching my 30s and already hiding my baldness with a closely trimmed skull, I decided I wasn’t ready to trade in a cubicle in Wolloomooloo for a cubicle in Waterloo.

I quickly found I wasn’t the only one this viewpoint, with my good mates Parv and Nick also looking to do something different with their lives before it was too late — although to be honest, it never really is.

Instead, the boys went off to the United States to mingle with clown people. Picture: SBS/Supplied

With no ties binding us to Australia the decision was made to pack our bags, pool our meagre funds together and head to the Land of the Free to get lost for a while.

With plane tickets booked, there was just one thing I still had to do. Quit my job.

Not one to burn bridges, I spent a couple of days drafting the perfect resignation letter. The day before I was set to hand it in I was sitting in my cubicle, reading and re-reading emails to avoid doing actual work, when a company-wide email came through.

A meeting was set for the afternoon, which everyone was ordered to attend. As we assembled in the foyer our CEO began a speech littered with words like “restructure”, “streamline”, “with great regret” and my personal fave “glocal”, a combination of global and local.

Hitting the road in the ‘AWESOME PATROL’. The engine wasn’t so awesome. Picture: Supplued/SBS

The next day I suddenly found myself among a group of employees on the scrapheap, and I couldn’t have been happier. I was already preparing to resign and say goodbye, the severance package was just the golden handshake.

It was time to board our plane and head to the USA.

With no concrete plans and a desire to do something different and original, we bought an unreliable ’99 Camry with 300,000 kilometres on the odometer and hit the road.

We placed our fate in the hands of the strangers we encountered along the way, and in the cheapest GPS we could find, in the hope of discovering a side of America that hadn’t been uncovered in backpacker travel guides or featured on glossy travel shows.

Over the next six months we added approximately 35,000km to the dial and crossed through more than 35 states, finding ourselves in a host of unlikely scenarios.

ZAP! The trip, broadcast this week in the documentary series Unplanned America, took some interesting turns. Picture: Supplied/SBS

An emergency appendix operation for Parv in Portland grounded us for a week, giving me just enough time to befriend the locals and wind up invited to an 8,000 person nude bike ride.

While couch-surfing in Colorado our hosts put us on a path that led us to lay ice on a cryogenically frozen man in a mountain hut.

We immersed ourselves in these often strange worlds. A small sampling of some of these scenes included going deep into the LA porn scene, spending time with Chicago’s up and coming underground gangster rappers, living with Slab City drifters in the California desert, fighting crime with a vigilante superhero crew in Seattle and being welcomed into both the FBI classified Juggalo Family and the underground gay ballroom houses of New York City.

I quickly learned to leave any preconceptions at the door, relying on the hospitality of complete strangers.

The boys found themselves in some interesting situations. Picture: Supplied/SBS

In doing so I had found myself in worlds I hadn’t known existed prior to encountering them. While all these subcultures and societies were vastly different from each other.

The one thing they had in common was how readily we were accepted into these unique communities.

Of course, it wasn’t all beer and skittles. Our car broke down more times than I can remember leaving us stranded in some of the least interesting towns in America.

I also had a run in with poison ivy that still haunts me to this day. But those mishaps were all part of the adventure and I can look back on those experiences with a wry smile too.

Just six months earlier I was sick of my job, worried about my retreating hairline and eager for change and new experiences.

After travelling the length and breadth of the States without a plan and with two of my best mates I was reinvigorated and inspired from the experiences that defined the trip.

So what’s the lesson to be learned from our experience? I’m not really sure.

But if you’re sick of your job, don’t wait for someone to come along and make a change for you. Be bold, take a risk and have a bloody good time doing it. Just make sure there’s no poison ivy on the banks of the river where you decide to go skinny dipping …

Oh yeah, we also filmed our whole adventure and managed to convince SBS2 to air it as a six-part series called Unplanned America. So tune in Monday, May 12 at 9:30pm and see what happens when you take the road less travelled.

Originally published as Hate your job? Take a risk and don’t be afraid to get lost