
I grew up wanting to be a good kid, a successful student, a trusted member of my community. But ticking such boxes was never enough. I was under constant pressure to improve, to reinvent myself, to cope with the mutations, challenges, or threats of the jungle called life. I studied economics, then law, then psychology. I was trained, like many others in my generation, to become a highly rated human resource. Meanwhile, my inner resources and motivations, and creativity in particular, pushed me in a different direction.
Before the pandemic, I was constantly on the move. As a consultant or as a negotiator, in the private or the public sector, working for small companies or large institutions, I changed jobs, homes, and countries, on average, every three or four years. I refused to be stopped by fatigue or illness, not so much out of ambition as out of fear of falling behind. Even when I settled down, I still spent more time abroad than at home. Loneliness, initially a side effect of this lifestyle, gradually became the rule.
I am a highly sensitive person (HSP). For a long time, I didn’t know how to describe my condition, until science found a name for it. To me, it was like an invisible handicap that I was born with and had to live with, pretending I didn’t have it. Only later in my life did I realize that my vulnerability also had advantages. No matter how much I read or saw about a place before getting there, my actual travel experience was always exciting, intense, fresh, and… different.
This is how I learned that traveling could be a way to make my most beautiful dreams come true—and to live unique moments that are perhaps worth sharing. For more than seven years, my adventures have taken me across five continents, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego and from the Tibetan Plateau to Easter Island, in more than sixty countries. During this time, I worked hard to overcome my limitations, to free myself from expectations and fears, to make the most out of my solitude.
But life had more lessons in store for me. When I least expected, a near-death experience made me question my ambitions and set me on a new course. In this context, writing became my best friend again, as a way to give back, through words, meaning and gratitude. This is how the project “Seven Years Traveling Alone” came into being.
Sadly, this moment coincides with a generalized crisis – one that threatens to plunge us all into an ocean of uncertainty. What will we choose – to give in to fear or hopelessness, ignoring the voice of the soul, or to step boldly into a reality of our own making – I still don’t know, but I hope this time we will all make a better choice. After my seven years of initiation, I am ready to try.
Akanisi Radu, April 2020