I remember arriving in Dublin on 26th June 2024. It wasn’t like my previous arrivals to Ireland, charged with excitement and anticipation. As I travelled from the airport, I felt completely different to how I had expected to at this moment. Yes, a small part of me was excited to be back in Ireland, my spirit home and favourite country in the world. A bigger part of me was utterly petrified. Sitting stiffly in my seat on the Dublin Express Bus, I gazed out the window at the city building up around me, I wondered to myself one thing:
What the fuck do I do now?
After seven weeks travelling through Canada, the holiday was over and it was time to get back into work mode. It was time to lay the foundations of my new life in Ireland, which included finding a job. I had savings, probably more than most people setting out on a working holiday. But even the sum that I had felt small when I broke it down and calculated it against my expenses. I was anxious about my money running out quicker than I thought it would. I was scared it would all be over before it started, that I wouldn’t find a job in time and would have to return home to Australia.
Jetlagged and fuelled by a paralysing fear of failure, I spent my first two days in Ireland applying for jobs. After multiple applications, I was mentally exhausted. Reality was setting in and I was putting an immense amount of pressure on myself.
I was building my life from the ground up, and I knew it should have been exciting, but I was feeling increasingly overwhelmed.
At this early stage of my trip I was opposed to staying in backpacker hostels. It was summertime, and during my travels in Canada I had opted to stay in student accommodation at universities. In Canada it was the same price as a bed in a backpacker’s hostel, and you got your own private room. In Dublin it was slightly more expensive, but to me the cost was worth it for privacy, and I actually loved my little apartment, and I even had my own bathroom. It was the perfect environment to get over my jetlag and get started in Ireland. Still, I felt guilty for choosing this slightly more expensive option, thinking maybe I should just suck it up and move to a hostel.
I was so scared of ‘failing’ my working holiday in Ireland.
The pressure to have a job by a certain time was intense. I had been single for five years and had always received welfare payments back in Australia to supplement my low income. I had created a travel budget before leaving Australia, and knew how much I would need for each expense. I felt I needed to match the balance of my savings to my projected weekly expenses, to create a timeline of sorts to know how long I could last on my savings alone. I was scared to know this timeline. I was scared to see on paper how long I had before I would be broke, of how long I had until my plan ‘failed’ and I’d have to go home to Australia.
I was questioning my decision to spend two months in Canada instead of coming straight to Ireland. Tourism is much more seasonal in Ireland than Australia, and I was concerned I had arrived at the wrong time of year. That I should have planned to arrive earlier in Spring and started applying for summer jobs in time to start work at the beginning of the peak tourist season. And I was scared there wouldn’t be any jobs when summer was over.
I had been involved in a number of volunteering positions before leaving Australia, and sometimes I wished I hadn’t committed so much time to those areas in 2023, instead giving myself more time to research and plan for this trip in advance.
I wanted to believe that my timing was perfect for my own personal journey. That everything happened when it was supposed to. But did it really? Or had it just happened when it happened, because of the choices I made or didn’t make?
My perfectionism fuelled my inner critic. It pettily picked at all the things I thought I had gotten wrong on this trip. Mostly, when I felt like I had spent money wrongly. In the lack of a structured budget, I had been cautious about my spending down to the dollar/euro. I had always tried to buy the cheapest food, even at the expense of not having healthy food.
I had a deep fear of not being able to support myself, of being financially irresponsible, which reached much further back than my decision to take a working holiday. Throughout most of my adulthood I had always worked low-income jobs offering less hours so that I had more personal time to prioritise my creative writing practice. This path worked for me for many years and felt right for me. Yet I still felt a deep-seated fear and shame around not taking a more ‘traditional’ path, believing I should have gone to university so I could have gotten a well-paying full-time job and supported myself properly.
I had a deep fear that being myself was not financially viable in the world. I had a dark money shadow.
I was operating in survival mode, from my small self and small mind. Thinking I was the only one supporting me in this experience. That I was responsible for everything, out of a feeling of obligation, that I had something to prove.
Even without a budget, I had been responsible with my finances during my travels. I had obsessively kept track of my spending. I reasoned with myself that if I had stayed only in hostels, I would have missed out on some amazing experiences at unique and quirky Airbnbs, like the eclectic 100-year-old townhouse I stayed at in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
I was mindful that I was probably catastrophising about my financial situation and causing myself unnecessary stress. That the projection was not as bad as I was making it out to be, and that things would probably work out alright. But instead of dismissing my concerns as anxious overthinking, I considered the possibility that I was not honouring a base-level survival instinct. Perhaps putting the figures on paper and and facing the cold hard digits of my financial reality would actually bring me peace instead of distress.
Despite what my anxiety was telling me, I knew I had made sound financial decisions on the trip, to the degree where I had probably been too frugal and deprived myself unnecessarily. As it was I had arrived in Ireland under budget, with some finances which had been allocated to Canada still left over. I considered the possibility that facing my fear, crunching the numbers and reassessing my financial situation would actually be one of the most powerful things I had ever done to boost my confidence in managing my money, not just on this trip but in my life. If I approached it not with fear but with the intention of creating clarity for myself and establishing a plan. And accepting that plan lovingly, however it unfolded.
By avoiding assessing my finances, I had withheld financial information from myself out of fear. Now I wanted to be honest with myself, act and make decisions from a place of knowledge, motivated by love. This knowledge was not supposed to be frightening, just to tell me where I was at, to know what to manifest. It was also intended to give me peace. It was time to honour the fear in a positive, solution-focused way.
Having a budget would help me know how much I needed to earn, and I felt ready to know this figure. I felt ready to have that plan in place and allow this abundance into my life. This figure was not something to be feared, but to be excited by. I was ready to take the focus off my current savings and limiting myself to that figure as my only financial means of supporting myself during the trip. I also wanted to be open to other channels of income and financial support, rather than just from a job that I did. This could come from a tax refund, prize money from a writing competition, and even non-mpnetary exchanges like house and petsitting opportunities which would help me save on accommodation.
The truth was that having a job, although significant, was a small, singular part of this experience. The purpose of doing a working holiday was to live in Ireland and channel the experience into my writing. There is a book waiting to be written, a vision given to me and asking to be born into the tangible world. It was already coming to life from my being in Ireland. Over the past year I had shaped my life around this dream. I had not been given this vision for it not to work out.
I decided I would hold compassion for myself however things unfolded. But I wanted to give myself to Ireland. I wanted to drop the fear, the projections of outcomes, and commit to being there fully in the moment. Mentally, spiritually, physically and emotionally. However it turned out, I did not want to be the reason it didn’t because I didn’t believe it could. I wanted to know I had done everything possible to make it work. Everything from my physical efforts to my mental, emotional and spiritual responses.
It was not about showing up fully to be in Ireland for the full twelve months of my working holiday authorisation. It was about showing up fully for my vision of being on a working holiday in Ireland, whether for three, six or twelve months, however that unfolded.
The present moment was all I had. I had learned this time and again in yoga and meditation practices. And this was an opportunity to fully embrace that concept, submit to it and put it into practice.
Kate Kelsen 