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Travel Work Skills

Travel Work SkillsI received the yearly travel work offer emails from the archaeology firms in the USA. Each year around this time I receive emails from three different companies inviting me to come and work on their projects. I usually take these offers, as this is the time of year when I usually start to [...]

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Travel Work Skills


I received the yearly travel work offer emails from the archaeology firms in the USA. Each year around this time I receive emails from three different companies inviting me to come and work on their projects. I usually take these offers, as this is the time of year when I usually start to go broke. But, this year, for the most part, I have decided to push through and to find other avenues of making up my bean money. I think this is a matter of self-imposed personal development. Traveling around the USA , working on archaeology projects for a couple of months a year is a good way to go to find nether-regions of my homeland, as well as to make up the money to take off and travel the rest of the year like a vagabond king. But this has gotten a little too easy. Save for some stints of doing farm labor in Europe and teaching English in Asia, I have been making up my traveling money like this since the year 2000; I am looking for other avenues. I do not mind working, and would not be oppose to working the whole year round on the Road broadening my horizons, rather than putting in two months and taking the rest of the year off. Hobos travel to work, no?

I have been writing magazine articles for a pittance (I am making so little money that some magazines even forget to pay me), as well as putting my nose to the grind-stone on the websites. I figure that I am working around 6 to 8 hours a day on these ventures, and am scarcely making $3 for my daily effort. I am happy, I am making something, and I am not digging holes. $3 a day is a dinner and a lunch. I am pleased. But my travel funds are running out of my pockets as if through a sieve, and I will soon myself on the beach, without a copper, if I do not even out my fractions soon. So the yearly archaeology fieldwork emails struck me as just what I need right now. They go a little like the following:

“Any time you want to work pretty much show up at the office at 8 am like usual and you and mira got a job. Call a day a head if you need a room.”

“Starting in about two weeks we are getting slammed with wind tower stuff, even your old friend Empire. Let me know if your interested, or always call the office all summer, as we look swamped whenever you are free. You can hop on with me anytime/anywhere man. Talk to you soon.”

So when I ask myself if I will dig some holes in some nowhere hill-billy town in the USA this summer, I must answer with a whole-hearted yes. But it probably will not last for too long.

On the path from Central America to Eastern Europe and the Middle East I should be running through the USA for 20 days between mid-May and the beginning of June. Archaeology work has been offered to me, and a true vagabond takes a traveling job whenever he can get one. So I replied to the email in the affirmative, and will probably dig holes for a week or two and slightly revitalize my travel funds. A couple of weeks of working a regular archaeology job will get me around $700 to $1,000. If I work with the high-paying company that I did last summer (I was making over $200 a day) this amount will be doubled. One thousand dollars gives me three months of traveling. I appreciate these job offers.

In my experiences of working on the Road and of working in general, it has come to my mind that there are two work skills that an employee needs to have to easily find employment, and two skills only:

1. To be able to wake up in the morning – to get to work on time.

2. To keep your mouth shut – to do what you are told.

If a vagabond has these two skills he should never go hungry.

Vagabond Journey Photographs

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com

Antigua, Guatemala
April 9, 2008

Filed under: Archaeology, Travel Philosophy, Travel Preparation, Work

About the Author:

I am the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. I’ve been traveling the world since 1999, through 91 countries. I am the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China and have written for The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. has written 3699 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.

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