I regretfully admit that I have only one international or domestic job I want to do. My lifelong passion has been to sail the world on a cruising sailboat. Not one of the huge ones, but just a thirty foot or so sailboat, with my good friend Josh. I would like to do it for a job as well as for fun. It is a difficult job and many people have died from doing it. The front of freighters crush cruising ships, sometimes the sailboats get split in half in big storms, or on a really wavy day and people get tossed overboard constantly.

How I could possibly make money from sailing, you may ask? There are many ways; some even that I still don’t know about, I’m sure! One way is by shipping things for other people. Sometimes people only have a little amount of stuff, but they don’t want to pay for the shipping for a freighter to put their stuff into one of those huge boxes, or they don’t want to pay airfare; they would look online for a person who is able to do it for cheaper then they would normally pay. Or maybe someone who is staying on a group of islands would want to go to another, but they don’t want to pay for a motorboat ride. Or they may just want to take it slow and look at things as they go. In which case, it would be wonderful to be on a sailboat.

It helps to have international experiences because then when I arrive in a foreign port I know what to expect and I am not totally unprepared for something (like raw chicken sitting in the street waiting to be cut up into a bowl of rice).

The main things that interest me in this line of work are the danger, the beauty, and the complete solitude. I have always been one to love the danger of things that I do. If I am walking along the side of a cliff, say fifty meters away, I always want to climb down it and then back up. Or also just go and jump off of it. Mom says it is testosterone poisoning, which is a family joke.

I think that working on the sea is beautiful for many reasons. First of all, there is nothing blocking my view for miles, except if I look down. The waves as they roll around and over each other are like a dance in itself. The way the ship rises over one wave and then down the other side feels like it is swaying with the dance and trying to participate, even though it will never be able to be exactly in the dance.

I love the solitude of working on the sea because it lets me think about things. I do not have to listen to many voices chattering while walking down the road. I don’t have to hear cars as they zoom past while racing to their work or houses. In this solitude my mind will be totally free to think with my own thoughts.

Those are the reasons I want to sail the world. I can’t think of anything else I would want to do for a job.

Gabriel Miller is a member of the Youth Travel Blogging Mentorship Program

Photo courtesy and copyright Gabriel Miller