What The Hell Am I Actually Doing?

It's been just over a year since I started travelling, and I'm currently house and cat sitting in a quiet apartment near Lake Constance, Germany. It’s been the perfect opportunity to stop for a moment and ask myself a fairly important question:

What the hell am I actually doing?

When I first set off in July 2025, my plan was simply to ski and to travel. That was pretty much it. There was no ten-year strategy or carefully constructed career path. I just knew that the life I'd been living had changed, and I had an opportunity to do something completely different.

A year later, here's where I'm at.

Another week of talking in Poland

My last progress journal finished with me volunteering with my eldest, Raven, on an Angloville programme in Poland. Luckily we enjoyed it, because we went straight into another one.

We moved to a new location near Warsaw, joined a fresh group of volunteers, and met another group of Polish professionals there to improve their English.

Another week of talking. A lot.

And another genuinely fascinating week of meeting people I would never otherwise have crossed paths with. I loved hearing about their lives, having conversations about travel, families, politics, careers, food, and why the English language contains quite so many ridiculous rules. Like the letters CH having three completely different sounds: machine, chemical, cheese, or no sound at all – yacht!

It also reinforced something I've discovered this year: volunteering is a brilliant way to travel when you're on your own. You arrive knowing nobody and within a few days you're part of a little temporary community. I really enjoy it.

Dropping Raven off, and acquiring another one

After Angloville, Raven and I travelled back across Germany and I dropped them off in Frankfurt before continuing south to Lake Constance.

I then moved into an apartment for my latest experiment in budget travel: house and cat sitting.

The cat is called Raven.

Yes. My eldest child is called Raven. The cat is called Raven.

Things got off to an excellent start when Cat Raven walked along the balcony railing and escaped onto the neighbour's balcony. I'd lost the cat within two hours of being entrusted with her.

Fortunately, she was recovered without an international search operation being required, although she can no longer access her former escape route. We have reached an understanding.

Apart from that, house sitting has been exactly what I needed. After months of buses, hostels, volunteering, cycling, shared rooms, and constantly moving around, I suddenly have an apartment to myself. A kitchen. A sofa. A comfortable bed. Silence. Time to think.

A year of trying things

I've spent the past year experimenting.

I started with the ski instructor course and ended up qualifying and working a winter season in Austria. I did a TEFL course in Peru and thoroughly enjoyed it. For a while I wondered whether teaching English might become part of my new life. It still might, one day. But not right now.

And that's one of the things I've learned.

Trying something doesn't mean you have to turn it into your future. Sometimes the whole point of doing something is simply to discover whether you want more of it or not.

In the past year I've:

Backpacked. Stayed in hostels. Homestays. Volunteered. Done a ski season. Travelled independently through South America and Europe, visiting mountains, jungles, caves, islands, cities, lakes. Cycled with my tent. WWOOFed on an organic farm. Spent 24 hours on a FlixBus, which should probably earn some kind of qualification in its own right (or at the very least a Blue Peter badge). Tried travelling quickly and travelling slowly. Travelled completely alone and alongside my children and my mother for a few weeks. And now added house sitting to the list.

And I've been paying attention to how each activity actually felt.

So. What do I actually like?

Not what looks adventurous on Facebook. Not what other travellers tell me I should do. Not what sounds impressive when I mention it afterwards.

What do I enjoy enough that I want more of it?

The writing, it turns out

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I decided I'd write a memoir. It was going to be about turning 50, divorce, selling my house, travelling through South America, and somehow ending up as a ski instructor in Austria.

But then the memoir wandered off in an entirely different direction.

While writing it and researching, I became increasingly interested in why so many women want to travel alone but don't quite believe they can. So I started writing about that instead. That eventually became Solo in Six - my six-month workbook designed to help women move gradually towards taking their first solo trip.

I also started a website. Then a Facebook group. Then blogs. Then conversations with women who told me about the things that were stopping them.

Fear. Money. Loneliness. Confidence. Family expectations. The belief that perhaps they'd left it too late.

Suddenly, something that had started as me going travelling was becoming something much bigger.

So what do I actually want now?

This week, with Cat Raven safely contained within the correct apartment, I sat down and properly thought about my future. I worked through a questionnaire about what I actually value, rather than asking myself the enormous and slightly terrifying question: "What am I going to do with the rest of my life?"

A few things came through clearly.

I don't particularly want to go back to a conventional working life where most of my time belongs to somebody else. That doesn't mean I'd never work for anyone again. If something lets me travel, pays reasonably well, and gives me freedom, I'd absolutely consider it. But freedom matters to me right now. A lot.

Travel matters too. But I've realised I don't need to become some sort of extreme adventurer. I'm not planning to climb Everest or sail single-handedly around the world. What I love is being slightly outside my comfort zone. Different cultures, different places, trying things I've never done before, taking a route that isn't necessarily the obvious one, but doing it in a way that other ordinary women can look at and think: actually, I could do that.

And that's probably the most interesting thing the exercise showed me. I don't only want to travel. I want to become genuinely knowledgeable about solo travel for women over 50. I want to understand what stops women going, what helps them start, and which types of travel work particularly well for us.

I'd like my writing and my travels to become useful to other people. And eventually, I'd like it to make me some money too. Because inspiring women while slowly emptying my savings account isn't exactly a sustainable business model.

The beginnings of a ten-year plan

So for the first time, I've started thinking beyond the next country.

I have the beginnings of a ten-year plan, although I'm allowed to change my mind. The plan isn't a contract. It's a direction.

For now, I want to keep travelling and keep experimenting. I want to try different ways of travelling as a solo woman in my fifties and write honestly about what works, what doesn't, what I love, and what I would never voluntarily do again.

I want to keep developing Unescorted and building useful resources for women who are somewhere between "I'd love to do that..." and "I've booked it."

I'd like the writing and the things I create to eventually produce an income. But not in a fake look-at-me Instagram way. More honest and more meaningful than that.

And I'd like to keep spending at least part of my winters skiing, because becoming a ski instructor at 52 is still one of the more unexpected plot twists in my life and I intend to enjoy it while I can.

Beyond that? There are plenty of ideas. For years I assumed you were supposed to know exactly where your life was heading. But I'm beginning to think you only need to know roughly which direction you'd like to walk in. You can change the route along the way.

The next experiment

I'm house sitting until mid-September in Germany and Austria. Then I'll be travelling again. My next adventure takes me towards Albania and the Balkans - an area of Europe I've barely explored.

There will be buses. There will undoubtedly be hostels. There will almost certainly be something that goes completely wrong and subsequently becomes a much better story than if everything had gone according to plan.

And I'll keep asking myself the same question:

Would I recommend this to another woman like me?