Hasta Luego

“People see me, and they see the suit, and they go: ‘you’re not fooling anyone’, they know I’m rock and roll through and through. But you know that old thing, live fast, die young? Not my way. Live fast, sure, live too bloody fast sometimes, but die young? Die old.”
David Brent on life

My Instagram page is by no means a hotbed of witty humour – for the large part it’s filled with over-thought, poorly executed puns, the odd dog, selfies with the crème de la crème of high society (notably Adrian Chiles) and the occasional vista. But I’m definitely (probably) not as bad as those who post pictures of inspirational quotes on a regular basis. The cast of Made in Chelsea are relentless in their attempts to motivate me to make the most of my life. People who go to the gym really early in the morning always want more people to join them. Every other person is an amateur Instagram philosopher. According to a lot of people Coco Chanel is the wisest person ever to have lived.

Usually I dismiss those quotes but I couldn’t help be distracted by one I read recently which came from P Diddy, in one of his earlier incarnations, to Biggie Smalls in the film Notorious. “Don’t chase the paper, chase the dream”. When Diddy was passing on his advice I highly doubt he foresaw the effect his words would have on a mild-mannered, affable accountant in London some 20 years later but after re-reading it I decided that me and Biggie have enough in common for the advice to be applicable to both of us: Biggie grew up in the projects of Brooklyn pushing drugs, in and out of jail until he made it as a rapper; I grew up in the countryside outside Brighton, pushing over cows, in and out of detention until I became an auditor. Both our careers also came to a swift end as he tragically got shot in a drive by in LA and I thankfully moved internally into Corporate Finance. The similarities are there for all to see.

Diddy’s advice struck a chord. So five months into a new job as an investment analyst I did a quick self appraisal and realised, after four years, I was bored of working in finance, bored of sitting in front of a computer all day and, although I dreamt of being rich as a kid, I never dreamt of doing it by crunching numbers. So I resigned in order to pursue my hopes and dreams that hadn’t yet been crushed by Microsoft Excel and gave up on chasing the exorbitant annual bonuses which have eluded me thus far.

During my notice period I spent about one month looking for jobs, trying to work out what I wanted to do before realising I had absolutely no idea. So one Friday afternoon I did the coolest thing I’ll probably ever do and went on the Internet at work, found a cheap one-way fight to Miami and booked it with no plan, no savings and no timeframe for a trip.

I took a few days to think about what I wanted to do and how long for. I knew I didn’t want to return to be unemployed in the middle of an English winter and I’d wanted to move abroad for a while so I decided I would head south to Argentina and stay there until I no longer wanted to. Apart from a sojourn to Cuba so I can learn to salsa I have nothing else booked. I loosely plan to be back at some point in 2016, hopefully after making it to Rio to watch the Olympics, which begin a year and a day after I leave.

I’m selling my car, I’ve now saved some money, I’m getting on a plane and I’m going solo – so far it’s been incredibly liberating. Bar being murdered by Mexican drug gangs, the worst that can happen is I’ll delay my career a few months and my parallel parking skills will deteriorate until I can save up for a new car. But I didn’t like my career anyway and I’m a world-class parallel parker so it’s probably about time I gave myself a challenge. I also have fantastic clutch control if you’re wondering. That’s not a euphemism.

So this is very much a convoluted way of saying I’m off travelling and I’m writing a blog as I go because I’m very 21^st century. Besides the fact that I would struggle to fit anything at all into 140 characters, Piers Morgan is on Twitter so that rules it out completely. Feel free to waste some time at work reading it or feel just as free to block me from all social media as many have done before and many, many more will do in future.

I have absolutely no aspiration to become a professional blogger. This is for my own entertainment, to kill time on long bus journeys, to keep my friends, family and my fan(s) updated with my travels. Bear in mind while reading, I’m an accountant and I haven’t written an essay since dissecting To Kill a Mockingbird for my English Lit GCSE in 2005. I did get an A* though so don’t set your expectations too low.

I’d imagine my posts will be centred on me chasing chicas around Latin America intertwined with my incredibly biased musings on topics like Americans (idiots), travellers (try-hards), food (love the stuff), the general public (morons), culture (zzzz), the drug trade (lucrative?), tattoos (don’t have the cojones), finding myself, Buddhism etc. A real classic travelling rollercoaster. Biggie would be proud.

Criticism and abuse are two things I’ve become very familiar with in my 26 years so please don’t hold back with your insults below. Constructive or not, they’re all very welcome.

If any of you are in the area over the next year please get in touch but for now I really have to go to bed – Lucy Watson’s just told me to get busy living or get busy dying so I’m going to send her a photo of me in the gym at 4am tomorrow. I’m sure she’s going to respond to this one.

Hasta luego mis amigos,

Tomás