A Terrible Confession...

I have a confession to make... I can't hold it in any longer.... I feel like I have been deceiving you all and I just can't do it any more...

You see... the truth of the matter is that I just wasn't scared when I jumped off the bridge... It was nowhere near the scariest thing I have ever done in my life...

Phew! I feel much better getting that off my chest...

Don't get me wrong. Normally I have a healthy respect for heights, and the thought of throwing myself from a small platform in a suicide-like manner isn't a nice one for me...

There were two aspects to not being scared. The first was mental preparation... For a couple of nights before the bungee jump I rehearsed it mentally. I saw myself going through the whole process. Standing on the ledge, looking out into space, and then flinging myself forwards in a good looking swan dive... This helped a lot! The one thing I forgot to prepare was for the bit immediately before the dive, when I was having my legs strapped to the elastic... You may notice my body language is a bit tense there... a bit of my nervous tension showing through...

The second aspect of fear reduction was a little mental trick I read somewhere... I( can't remember what it was called i the book, but I'm just going to call it re-labelling... The trick is to take the sensation that is happening in your body and to just reframe it as something else. So, instead of fear I called it excitement, and magically it changed it from something debilitating, to something enlightening! I wasn't frightened... I was excited!

Like I said... That wasn't the scariest thing I have ever done.... I'd have to say that the scariest thing that I have ever done was to walk up to a woman in a bar and to try to talk to her...


I still remember the first time that I tried to do this... It was not that long ago! And it was terrifying...

I guess the reason that I find women more scary then jumping from bridges, or roller coasters, is that I know exactly what is going to happen in the latter instances. I have faith in elastic, and metal and wood. I know what it will do... I also think that women have no idea how scary they can be...

Women on the other hand are erratic, unpredictable, irrational, and generally terrifying. Plus rejection really hurts! I have some particular memories from my youth, which arise whenever I think about even trying it! It is something that I think I will have to overcome, perhaps making meeting women exciting instead of terrifying will work (though not too exciting maybe...)

Certainly this is something to work on for the future...

A new project...

Goals in life are important. They give you direction and purpose. Be they big or small, having something to aim towards makes existence worthwhile...

For me personally my goal for the last few years has been simple. See the world, have a good time, enjoy myself...

This time is, however, coming to an end... I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now or, perhaps more accurately, I can see the train approaching on the line!

I have always known that the day would come when I would have to hang up my back-pack and "get on with life". This means that I need new goals...

I was going to travel to South America after my time in Australia and travel around there for a while. However, a series of unexpected expenses, combined with some of the worst weather in Australia for a decade ruining the crops and farm work, have led to an inescapable conclusion. This being that I won't have the funds to fly to South America, travel around for a few months, and then fly back to the UK. My backup plan is to fly to South East Asia, spend a month or so enjoying myself there, and then flying back to the UK.

So... My new goals... I still really want to visit South America. Preferably fairly soon, so I need the means to do that. To this end I read a book recently called "The 4 hour Work Week". It is a guide to how to streamline your life and business, and make both location independent. In simple terms this means that you can live your life with minimum interference from work, and the little work that you do have to do can be done from anywhere in the world... (If you want more information on this book, which I strongly recommend reading, visit www.fourhourworkweek.com).

So my goal for the next year is to automate my life.  I want to have an income of around £2000 a month (or £500 a week), that is essentially self sustaining. The real goal at the end of this is to visit South America next year, and to not have to stop my income stream to do so. I have a few ideas for projects in the pipeline, which I'm not going to discuss on a public forum such as this, but if you want to discuss ideas with me then feel free to get in touch on facebook...


It is good to have plans... It is even better to have big plans!