This post may contain affiliate links, meaning we get a commission if you decide to purchase through our links at no cost to you. This helps fund Slower Travels without costing you a cent!

Words by Shafinah Jaafar | Edited by Tania from Slower Travels

Shafinah Jaafar is a teacher based in Singapore who, for a long time, treated travel like a scoreboard. Landmarks ticked, itineraries maximised, days measured in how much had been completed. It took a particularly brutal six days in Germany — five day-trips in six days, coming back to her Frankfurt base every night feeling like she'd failed because she hadn't finished her list — to finally shake her awake.

That was 2021. Since then, she's been quietly, deliberately unlearning everything she thought travel was supposed to be. What she's building instead — in her travels and in her life — is something harder to photograph but far more worth having: presence.

Tania: You describe leaving an eleven-year job as both terrifying and a turning point. What made you finally ready?

It wasn't one moment. It was about three years of sitting with the same question before I finally left — and I didn't spend those three years drifting. I was increasingly deliberate about the things I wanted to reintroduce into my life: playing the piano again, rollerblading, cooking, reading and writing more seriously. The more time I spent with all of that, the more apparent the misalignment became.

Tania: That's such an honest way to describe it — not a dramatic leap, but a slow accumulation of evidence.

Exactly. And I think that's actually how most real change works, even if it doesn't make for a very exciting story.

Tania: How would you describe your life now, on the other side of that decision?

I move between focused periods of work and travel, and work is no longer so all-consuming that travel becomes an unwitting escape from it. I teach for a living and choose to be taught in my spare time. Every weekday, I set aside half-hour pockets of time specifically for reading, writing, and learning something new. That ability to stay fully engaged with my time — whether it's a work day or a rest day — is a privilege I wake up every day thankful for.

Tania: You use the word "content" to describe how you feel now. That's not a word people use very often — most people are chasing something more dramatic.

I find that I'm no longer living for the next break or escape. I fully enjoy my days as they are. Whether I'm working, resting, or travelling, I get to be wholly and utterly present in what I'm doing. That's made a huge difference.

Tania: And the travel itself — how has that changed?

I used to plan trips down to the minute, ticking off every must-see landmark. Travel felt like a checklist, and I was racing from one place to the next, forgetting to actually enjoy the moments. Now I consciously make decisions that allow me to breathe. I choose six-hour train rides over forty-five-minute flights. I deliberately leave one or two days on the itinerary empty. Sometimes I wander off the route entirely, with stray animals as my guide.

"These unplanned, wandering moments — the ones that don't appear on any itinerary — are what make me fall in love with travel, over and again."

Tania: What's the hardest part of living this way — the part that doesn't get talked about?

Comparison. That quiet, human flicker of it is absolutely unavoidable when you choose to steer off the path that everyone else has taken. There are moments when I see the very normal, stable lives that my peers are building, and it makes me feel like an outlier in ways that are sometimes difficult to sit with.

But I've also lived different versions of that life, and each time, it's reminded me that it isn't an ecosystem I could thrive in. The work now is just learning to hold that comparison lightly, without letting it cloud my choices.

Tania: I love that framing — holding it lightly rather than fighting it.

And I think it's important to be honest that it doesn't just go away. My response isn't to resist or justify my choices. It's just to stay honest about the kind of life I can actually do well in.

Tania: How do you define freedom?

There's a thin line between being able to do whatever you want without responsibility and being able to do whatever you want with agency. For me, freedom is the latter. It's having the main commitments of my life coexist without one constantly overwhelming or erasing the others. And at its core, I suppose freedom is the sense to participate in your life as it unfolds, rather than just through structures set out for you.

Tania: What are you still figuring out?

It's one thing to step out of a structure that doesn't fit you anymore. It's another thing entirely to build something that continues to feel aligned as life changes around you. I'm still learning how to hold ambition and ease in the same space, without swinging too far into either extreme. And I'm still learning to trust that there isn't a single fixed version of a "right" life I need to arrive at — just a continuing process of paying attention, adjusting, and staying honest about what feels true at each moment.

Tania: And for someone reading this who wants to make a change but doesn't know where to start?

You don't have to overhaul your entire life overnight. Start small, because even the smallest shifts give you a much clearer sense of what you actually want over time — and just as importantly, what you don't. And when that clarity comes, be willing to be honest with yourself. And be willing to act on what you notice.