The Backpack My Boss Gave Me When I Quit to Travel
I was 32 and I'd done everything right.
Good college. Decent job in marketing. An apartment in New York—okay, Bushwick, but still.
On paper, I was winning.
In my body, I felt like I was disappearing.
The Template Life
9:30 AM: Standup meeting. Someone's talking about "Q4 initiatives." I'm nodding, but I'm thinking about the departures board at LaGuardia.
1 PM: Lunch with coworkers. Same table, same salads, same gossip about who's getting promoted and who's about to get fired. I smile and nod. I stopped having opinions about office politics two years ago.
3 PM: Staring at a campaign deck. Moving a headline two pixels to the left. Then two pixels back to the right. Calling it "iterations."
6 PM: Pack up to leave. Email comes in: "Quick question—can you jump on a call?"
8 PM: Still on my couch. Laptop open. "Emergency" client request that could've waited until Monday. But emergencies are how you prove you're committed.
10 PM: Close the laptop. Open it again to check Slack. Nothing urgent. Close it again.
Repeat.
Everyone called it a quarter-life crisis—though at 32, I was running out of quarters.
But it wasn't confusion. It was clarity.
The corporate burnout wasn't from working too much. It was from working on things that would've been exactly the same if I'd never touched them.
I wasn't stuck in a job I hated. I was stuck in a pattern I'd optimized for safety instead of meaning.
My studio cost more than it should for a window that faced a brick wall. But that's New York—you pay a lot to feel like you're making it.
I had health insurance. A 401k I didn't understand. Two weeks of PTO I felt guilty using.
The benefits kept me there. That was the point of benefits.
I'd started doing something strange a few months earlier. Something I couldn't explain to my roommate without sounding completely unhinged.
Every few weeks, I'd take the bus to the airport...
The Airport Ritual
The breaking point wasn't dramatic. It was a Tuesday night at LaGuardia.
I'd started this ritual a few months earlier: After work, I'd take the Q70 bus to the airport. Not to fly anywhere. Just to watch the departures board.
Mexico City 8:45 PM
Buenos Aires 10:20 PM
Lisbon 11:55 PM
I'd sit there for an hour, watching people rushing to gates, and then I'd take the bus back home in traffic.
My roommate thought I was losing it.
"Why don't you just book a vacation?" she asked one night.
"Because I don't want two weeks in Cancun," I said. "I want to leave."
"Like... become a digital nomad?"
I hated that term. It sounded like a tech bro cliché, all Instagram sunsets and laptop stickers.
But yeah. I wanted the digital nomad lifestyle—not because it looked good on social media, but because it was the only model where my time actually belonged to me.
That's when I knew. I wasn't daydreaming about quitting my job to travel.
I was already gone. My body just hadn't caught up yet.
The Conversation
I wrote my resignation letter on a Sunday night. Sent it Monday at 9 AM before I could change my mind.
My boss called me into his office that afternoon.
I expected anger. Or disappointment. Or a counteroffer with more stock options.
What I got was silence.
"You don't have another job lined up," he said. Not a question.
"No."
"You don't have a plan."
"Not really."
He leaned back in his chair. Long pause. Then:
"Good."
That wasn't the boss reaction I expected when I quit my job.
He wasn't trying to talk me out of it. He was... envious?
"You know what I have in my garage?" he said. "A North Face backpack. A tent. A sleeping bag. I bought them for a trip to Patagonia twelve years ago."
He laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound.
"I kept telling myself 'next year.' Then I had a mortgage. Then twins. Then I became the guy approving other people's vacation requests instead of taking my own."
Two weeks later, my last day, he called me into his office again.
He handed me a backpack. Not new—worn, faded, with a patch from Torres del Paine.
"This was supposed to go to Chile," he said. "But someone should use it."
I tried to refuse. "I can't—"
"Take it. Because one of us should do this without a backup plan. And it's not going to be me."
Inside, there was a handwritten note:
First stop: somewhere you can't check email at 11 PM.
Don't come back when it gets hard. Because it will get hard.
That's when everyone comes back.
The Backpack Evolution
That backpack lasted eight months.
It survived rainstorms in Oaxaca, a sketchy overnight bus through Guatemala, and more coffee shop floors than I can count.
It finally died in Medellín. The main zipper gave out while I was packing for a weekend hike to a waterfall outside the city.
When I started looking for a replacement, I realized something: there was no backpack made for people like me.
Everything was either "tourist" (bright colors, too many pockets, screaming "rob me") or "office worker" (boring black rectangle, no water bottle holder, falls apart on trails).
I needed something that could go from a coworking space on Monday to a mountain trail on Saturday. Something waterproof that didn't look like tactical gear. A travel backpack for both the city and hiking—because that's actually how I lived.
That gap became BackpackBeat a year later.
The 7706 Lightweight backpack sitting next to me now is what I wish I'd had from day one—the best backpack for digital nomads who refuse to choose between "professional" and "adventurous."
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you what those first two years actually looked like.
Two Years Later: The Reality
The first day after I quit my job, I woke up at 6 AM.
Old habit.
Then I remembered: I don't have to be anywhere.
I cried. Not sad tears. Relief tears.
Month 3 — Oaxaca, Mexico:
Finished client work in four hours at a cafe. Spent the afternoon at a mezcal distillery learning how they roast agave.
I realized: I was never lazy. I was just solving problems I didn't care about.
Month 9 — Medellín, Colombia:
Had a panic attack in a hostel bathroom at 2 AM.
"What if I'm just running away? What if everyone was right?"
I called my old coworker Sarah. She picked up from the office.
"We're in the same quarterly planning meeting you left," she said. "Same. Exact. Meeting."
I felt better.
Month 18 — Mexico City:
Sitting in Parque México. My 7706 backpack next to me, laptop inside, hiking boots strapped to the bottom because I was heading to Nevado de Toluca that weekend.
A guy at the next bench saw my setup. American accent, looked tired.
"So you're living the digital nomad lifestyle?" he asked. "Is it worth it? Quitting everything to travel?"
I gave him the truth:
"It's not a permanent vacation. It's not Instagram. The digital nomad lifestyle reality is:
- You trade office politics for visa runs
- You trade a stable paycheck for location freedom
- You trade work friends for constant goodbyes
- You trade Sunday scaries for 'where do I belong?' spirals"
"So... is it worth it?" he asked again.
"These are my problems," I said. "Not someone else's. And that makes all the difference."
The Template Is Optional
The digital nomad lifestyle isn't for everyone.
But if you're reading this at your desk right now, feeling that familiar tightness in your chest—
That's not anxiety. That's your body telling you: The template is optional.
I'm not saying quit your job tomorrow without a plan.
I'm saying: start noticing what makes you come alive. Start watching the departures board. Start asking what you'd do if you weren't afraid.
My boss's backpack is in my closet now, retired. Too worn to use, too meaningful to throw away.
The 7706 has taken over—21 countries and counting. It goes from coworking spaces to cloud forests to everything in between.
We built BackpackBeat for people who are done filling out someone else's form. People who want to live between the city and the forest. People who choose their problems instead of inheriting them.
Because here's what I learned:
The template promised security. My boss took that deal and it cost him Patagonia.
The backpack promised nothing. Just the weight of everything I owned and infinite directions to walk.
One made him survive. The other is letting me live.
Read next: The First 30 Days After I Quit (Coming soon)
