Not sure if 31 is young or not any more, but 3 years ago, I left everything and spent 1,5 year riding across South America. I had had a fairly decent job and some (about 5000 UK pounds) savings, didn't own a house though. Ran out of money in Argentina, found a job on a horse farm, carried on a few months later.

It was the best time of my life. Lots of wild camping, cooking my own food and so on, very minimal comfort, but it was the best thing ever.

Right now I'm back in the UK, planning the rest of my round the world bike journey. I'm stuck in a regular 9-5 job; my salary is pretty average, so I can afford to save about 600 pounds a month. That means I'll save about 7000 pounds a year; I'm also going to need a new bike, probably something like a Kawasaki KLE500, that's about 3000 pounds, so in the end I'll be left with about 4-5000 again.

And here's the weirdest thing: I am worried that it won't be enough to get me going. I want to go around Africa next and I always thought, I started off in South America with more or less the same amount, so that's what I'll do now as well-just go and wing it, find jobs on the way, volunteer, whatever. That's how I did it before, anyway. Why shouldn't it work this time around, right?

But suddenly, I'm not so sure. I also find myself a bit worried about safety in some countries as a solo female rider; I'm worried about visas and the carnet, and insurance (didn't need any of that in South America), and I'm worried about what will I do when I come back-I will probably have to start all over again, explain my CV gap, somehow find a job, to save money for Asia, Australia and so on...This is so NOT me, I didn't care about any of that before-I just left!

What the hell happened to me?..I was 28 when I left for South America, so I can't say I got very much older; I only spent 1,5 years back in Europe, so surely it isn't our Western cultural conditioning which tries to tell us the world beyond our borders and our 'safe' jobs and life insurance and mortgages is dangerous and unpredictable?..

So here I am, all worried and unsure, and at the same time going absolutely mental because I miss travelling on my bike so bad it drives me nuts sometimes. I find it ridiculous for human beings to spend 8 hours sat at desks at 'work' everyday, I find it absurd to waste my time on such trivial, meaningless activity - I'm talking about your average office/managerial jobs here mind you, not work that's actually meaningful like medicine, science etc-I feel caged and just barely able to breath sometimes, and when I remember a sunrise in the Peruvian Andes, or cooking spaghetti for supper over a camp-fire somewhere in the caretera Austral in Chile I just want to curl up in a ball somewhere and cry.

I wonder what happened to my balls - or rather, ovaries-of steel and how come it's so much harder to leave this time? Not like I have a family/kids, or debt, in fact I have absolutely nothing to lose, and yet I'm stalling.

Sorry for the long rant! I know I will eventually leave for Africa, and I'm 100% sure I will regret spending so much time on a silly office job, but wow it's difficult to get unstuck...