Written by Project Passport Founder, Sabriya Dobbins

One day I had a safety net and the next, I jumped without it…

I have literally stressed myself to the point that my body has physically ailed. I have the doctors visits and appointments to prove it. My triggers were several things: school, money, careers, work, life choices, you name it. This blog post is going to get personal because after all, I am here to talk about travel and life stuff.

Let’s start with death. As with life, we cannot forget the death part. It doesn’t matter who you are, it lurks amongst us all. A few days ago, I found out a previous manager who mentored me during a summer internship passed away. He was gone—like a thief in the night, this man left the earth. I could not breathe. I was in shock. He was so healthy, so vibrant and now he is only a video reel of memories in my head. See I have learned to deal with death in itself because when I lost my grandmother in 2017 while being thousands of miles away in Dominican Republic doing volunteer work, my world tilted off its axis—it was devastating, yet she was sick for years and she lived a beautiful life so I had peace in that. But this one with my manager….this one was unbelievable.

My manager and I would spend many of my days on the job talking about the future. He talked about all of the investing he had done for his 401k, stock profile, and other financial management along with why he was saving for an earlier retirement one day. He planned to work for a good amount of years to get his money just right. I mean it all made sense with where he was in his life. Yet, this 43-year old man can no longer live this plan. Retirement never to happen. Broken hearts left behind. Cancer came and went in a matter of months—life lost like a breeze in the wind.

I think about all of the times that people pressured me (family, mentors, strangers etc.) to work for a “good company” and build that 401k. How do we sit here and bank on even making it to use those funds? Now don’t get me wrong, the money is important to pass down to family. But we have this crazy idea in our heads that life is guaranteed. Life is more elusive than we realize. So we just do things that often times don’t fulfill us and we miss out on valuable time with our family—to make that buck in its little limited way. All for a company with a sea of promises that will say its goodbyes and replace you to keep up production when you are gone. My daily thoughts over the years have been: Why am I wasting time doing things that are not feeding my soul? What do I have to lose at 23 besides my life really?

THE ONLY THING we cannot make more of in this world is time. Let that sink in.

You know, I tried to live the life that everyone says made the most sense. Get that good job, work my way up, and build that retirement fun—I really did. So what…we are forced to place ourselves in unhappy, inspiration-less (yes I made up a word) positions to make it to this “dream” life one day? Not all companies are bad but many don’t know how to treat their employees financially nor emotionally. So in the end, I had two choices: 1) Live a life that was what I was “supposed’ to do -or- 2) Live a life that I am choosing for myself.

My grandmother LOVED to travel. I truly believe that some type of travel gene is out there because I am addicted; it gives me absolute life from every smell, every food, every personal interaction, everything really. There are the “homebodies” but I am an “anywherebuthomebody” type of person. I always thought the idea of creating my own travel experiences on my own terms to share with others would be cool but I just never did it. Why? Because only special people are cut out to build businesses, right? That is what we are told aren’t we? Over 80% of businesses fail. 90% of businesses go bankrupt…blah, blah. Yeah we get all of these random percentages to remind us to keep our places as forever worker-bees. So you know what I did, I ripped off the worker bee outfit and now I am going to either drown or swim. I started my own travel company, Project Passport. I decided that life is not guaranteed. I decided that I rather leave this world saying I tried and did than I never tried at all. I decided that life was a gift.

Yes, I am probably the typical millennial refusing to adhere to boundaries. But at this point, there are no rules. Look around you, clearly people are making something out of nothing every single day. Why not me? Why not you? Why not us? To be continued…

Part 2 coming soon.

-Sabriya Dobbins, Founder of Project Passport

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Project Passport is a mental empowerment retreat and event company created to help women connect with one another and gain the tools to improve their lives in the best way possible. Each retreat experience has a unique theme with carefully designed activities to help participants grow and experience transformation. We are making mental wellness the norm, one retreat at a time. Learn more at project-passport.com.