Why I want a grownup gap year (and why it won’t happen)

The grownup gap year is the new mid-life crisis and I want one.

Standby for a first-world whinge... I was a young wife and a young mum and I missed out on the whole backpacking thing. Now mid-thirties, I'm desperately trying to figure out how to get my gap year back. Of course, the answer is that I can't. Bar actually packing up my career, children, and whole life, to head off to Indyaaaa and find myself, a couple of weeks on the Costa Del Sol is - in reality - all I'm getting at this point. My grownup gap year will continue to exist only in the alternate mum-of-three reality that is Pinterest. The fact remains that gap years, like youth, are wasted on the young. I comfort myself with the fact that the reality of grotty hostels, delayed flights, toilets that are not toilets, unhinged roommates, having your worldly belongings stolen, and buckets filled with questionable alcoholic mixtures, are not appropriate life goals for a woman of a certain age. But they ARE. I want to go to a full moon party. I want to cannonball into a waterfall with abandon. I want to bungee jump in an exotic location. I want to ride an elephant. I want to do hungover sunrise yoga in Goa. via GIPHY My new plan is to recreate the gap year experience at home. Obviously, I'm aware that this is going to be largely disappointing. After all, spending a night in a tent in my back garden is in no way equivalent to camping in the mountains of Montana. A day trip to the Cliffs of Moher will not equal Everest Base Camp. A guided tour of Christchurch won't compare to the Taj Mahal. But I will not be deterred. Instead of starting all of my conversations with "when I was in Thailand..." I'm going to say "this one time, when I was trekking through the Burren..." Oh never mind. One family ticket to the Aillwee Caves please.