Couple Who Quit Their Jobs to Travel Reveals Real-Life Looks Very Different From Their Dream Instagram Feed

You don’t have to be a genius to know that everyone’s lives look way better on social media than they actually are.

Whether we’re raving about our meal at the latest hotspot, posting heavily-filtered and edited shots of our squad pre-night on the town, or making everyone jealous with sunset and palm tree-filled vacation shots – everything looks pretty great in social media land.

In reality, you could have gotten in an argument with your significant other while you waited for a table, none of your crew looked remotely as put together a few hours in, and the hotel you stayed in was actually pretty grimey.

But that doesn’t matter, as long as it looks like it was the best thing ever on Instagram, right?

Of course, the “idealic lifestyles” of some users have made them social media sensations in their own right – like the couple who quit their jobs to sail around the world with their cat for years, or Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, who also quit their advertising jobs five months ago to travel the world and document it all via their blog and Instagram account. And yeah, to many of us constantly rushing, pavement pounding young professionals (YPs), it certainly looks pretty enticing. But now, the couple who made many of us green with envy from our office desks and inspired a flood of beautifully wanderlustful thoughts to fill our brains have offered a (rather raw) reality check for us perpetually faking-it-until-we-make-it YPs. That’s because Cartell and Dirnberger went from living a scenery-filled dream to scrubbing toilets very quickly. Only, it still looks like a scenery filled daydream to the rest of us on social media, ’cause that’s the only angle we can see. Yesterday, more than 15,500 miles into the journey, the couple shared a post from Athens that detailed the harsh financial reality of foregoing bi-weekly paycheques and stability.

In the post, the couple details odd jobs they’ve taken just to keep afloat, which include everything from scrubbing toilets and making beds, to polishing wine glasses – a far cry from their advertising days.

“So far, I think we’ve tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, 2 tons of rocks shoveled, 60 metres of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we’ve polished,” writes Cartell in the post. As if that wasn’t bad enough, instead of sampling the best of the world’s cuisine, most of the time, the reality of their dinner includes crackers and jam. Not to mention, most of the time, they’re not even able afford the ‘luxury’ of bus travel.

Even so, it’s worth it. Cartell calls the adventure “heaven,” with aspects like the scenery and the “time to brainstorm our own ideas, and push our own creative experiments” worth the dirty work.

So, while they still may be living the dream, it’s not the glossy, fun-filled, carefree dream as depicted on their Instagram feed. You know, the same way that your last vacation wasn’t quite as picture perfect as it looked online.

Try to keep that in mind the next time social media is getting you down. Is it really paradise if you’re stuck cleaning toilets while you’re there…

All photos courtesy of How Far From Home.

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