The backpacking around Vietnam sentence was sarcasm. I can understand that my sense of humour is caustic, but I didn't mean to cause offence. Sorry and I hope you see something else in my reply. If you think that my comments don't apply to your situation, then I invite discussion. Please don't be put off.
If you stick around hubski, I think you'll see that I'm a pretty jocular guy. That said, it is often difficult to tell when people are being sarcastic in text, especially if it's someone one has never encountered before. I do appreciate the apology. The way that I am talking to you about this is much milder than how some users on the site might handle it if someone responded to one of their posts with as much apparent patronizing condescension as you did to mine. You seem fairly intelligent (or at least you have a well-developed vocabulary/understanding of how to use a thesaurus) and to have knowledge about certain things, but I would urge you not to be a dick on the internet. The internet is full of internet forums filled with dicks and the reason I like hubski is because it's not. Hubski is full of people and because of that, I expect to interact with users with the same respect that we might offer each other in real life, particularly when meeting for the first time. Now that that's out of the way, this year will be a stepping stone year for me too, but that's fine. Change is good and I'm doing what I can to be ready for it.