Don't let anyone or anything stop you from traveling. I once dropped everything and took a 2 month long trip to Colombia. I wanted somewhere close, out of the country, non-Anglo, not in the Caribbean or Central America, which I judged to be too dangerous / touristy at the time. Colombia was safe and interesting. I took Spanish classes and bounced around different cities for a few months.

In the beginning it was about exploration and at the end it was about discovering my priorities in life.

The genesis of the trip came about when I started talking to someone at a language school about taking language classes. He started asking me why, then said, "just go there. You'll never get a better chance than when you're young."

He was 100% right.