I agree so much on people just giving up the idea of something before even starting.

Great analogy with tourism: I am a travel enthusiatst and I am on the road the larger share of the year. My friends think I have some secret way of making money to pay for all the trips. And they can't even beleive that now we live in a crazy era, when you can fly thousands and thousands of miles for 2 or 3 Euros. Even the accomodation can be found for free with such websites as couchsurfing.
And they don't even check!