So I’ve decided, just 1hr to turning a new digit in life, that it’s time I take control of my happiness and do something in life that makes me feel wholesomely happy.
We’ve finally committed to a date to embark on our much discussed mini retirement — October 15th. Our mini retirement was inspired by Tim Ferris’s concept of taking a break from your usual life routine to pursue your passions now, wherever or whatever it is. It is not about running away from reality, as we are still moving on with our lives just with a different scenery. For me personally, it is more about ‘refueling’ my soul to invigorate new ideas and seeing new perspectives in life. Most importantly, it is about not deferring our dreams in life and living them while we are still able. After all…
“Why should we spend the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it?” ~ Rolf Potts
To elaborate a little bit more about myself, I lived in Brisbane, Australia. I spent my career working as a consulting engineer for 7.5 years in a high stress, deadline and profit driven environment. I’m recently engaged to my partner of 8 years, ready to break my routine and start a new adventure in life.
Along my time in the industry, I have met many others like myself going to work day in day out, rushing from one meaningless deadline to another. Many times, I’ve met some poor souls who couldn’t cope with the stress and have developed anxiety or panic attacks as a result. I realised last year at a very stressful period in my life, that I could not go on like this for another year, let alone 30 more years. I would easily aged tenfold in a couple of years(gasp!) and my fitness & health would surely be affected.
So Robin and I sat down to a long honest discussion about our plans ahead and the dreams we have for ourselves in the foreseeable future. It is during this discussion, that we both decided that 2014 will be different. We will plan our escape from the routine that we have been sucked into all these years. Enough is enough, no more excuses on why we shouldn’t or couldn’t do this now. We have been talking about doing this for years, so this year we will actually walk the talk.
So tonight, I humbly declare that we will be embarking on a life changing adventure this October. We will travel to Europe for a year, to live, to see and to embrace all that it has to offer. Most importantly, to finally have full control of our lives back.
