An insight into my life....

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"When are you going to get a proper job?"

"When are you going to get a proper job?" I hear this question a lot, my answer? I'm not. I don't want one. 
Firstly I don't see how you can dismiss being a scuba diving instructor as not a 'proper job'. Personally I feel that teaching people to dive and introducing them to the underwater world whilst helping them to see first hand the importance of the ocean and conserving it does constitute a 'proper job' and one well worth doing. But that's just my opinion. 



Secondly, the idea of sitting in an office in a city all day is, quite frankly, my idea of hell. Sure it suits a lot of people and I'm not saying there is anything wrong with choosing a career which demands that. However I have an inherent need to see the world and experience new places and not just as a tourist on a 2 week vacation, I mean seriously? What can you actually expect to experience staying in a hotel somewhere for 2 weeks. That's not the cultural immersion my heart craves. I digress, an office job would be wrong for me in so many ways and whilst I have to accept that people may not take my job seriously or understand why I yearn to travel that's just me. 






A conversation I had with a student stuck in my mind. After experiencing diving for the first time he said to me: "Wow, you have the most amazing job."
I replied, "Yeah I guess I do! I will never be rich but at least I love what it is that I do." 
"Then you are rich."  He made a good point. 

I am a strong believer that you should always do what makes you happy, if you're happy then you're successful. After all, you only live once. 

The travel bug....

Most people memorise their phone number, I don't have a permanent phone number, but I know my passport number off by heart instead. 

I just don't understand how people go to another country and completely ignore and dismiss the culture there. When I travel I desperately wants to immerse myself in the culture and surround myself with local people. I absorb my surroundings until I'm saturated with new experiences and views.

I just can't comprehend a 1 week vacation, how on earth can you experience anything at all in that short space of time? I long to learn of our differences, new languages and ways of living. 

I love to meet the local people who often have no experience of life outside the small place they have spent their entire lives....I fall in love with the way we are so different, yet the same. I live for the little things because they make you realise that this is what life is about, this is what it means to be alive. 

Most people come back from their travels with a tan. I come back with so much more, enriched with everything be experienced on my journey. hindsight is a wonderful thing: I just wish I had appreciated every last second just a little bit more.

Wreck Dive in Bermuda

1st month in Bermuda

WANDERLUST

If I didn't know any better I would probably think life at home was pretty good, and on paper it is. I am blessed, I don't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from, I live in a nice house in a safe area and I'm surrounded by people who love me. I am blessed because I know that this is not the case for all or even most people my age across the world, I know this because I have seen it first-hand.

However, pretty good is not good enough for me anymore because now I do know better: there is a whole world out there where life can be far better than it is at home. I have an insatiable urge to travel; to see the world, experience cultures and dive in as many beautiful locations as I can. 

Life at home is so mundane, repetitive, tedious, dull, limiting and it lacks the type of ocean that I crave. I'm yet to go to a destination I don't like or have a dive I don't enjoy. I thrive off new places and people and being in a beautiful ocean the other side of the world makes me feel alive. I am at peace underwater, like I was always meant to be there and I finally found my place in the world.

I lost myself in the Bermuda Triangle, I found myself there too

BERMUDA

I was extremely lucky to call such a beautiful island home for 4 months and I fell head over heels in love with the place. However, they say all good things must come to an end and leaving and returning home was incredibly difficult.

People ask me how it feels to be 'back home', however I struggle to answer that question as England no longer feels like home. As I travel I get attached to places and for short periods of time that becomes my home. So in the same way I have no permanent address, I also have no permanent home. This is a blessing; I have so many beautiful places around the world I can call home now.

 I came back 'home' to realise that nothing had changed except me. I slotted back into the life I'd left behind exactly as I had previously, with the people around me completely unaware that my perspective on life has shifted so dramatically that i'm a different person entirely now. Life here has nothing to offer me. It's like when you turn down the contrast on a tv, all the colour has been sucked out of life and everything seems so dull. I miss Bermuda.

After my experiences travelling, I look at the people around me with a mixture of fascination and disbelief. I just can't comprehend how people are happy to stay in one place there entire lives and not experience the world and all it has to offer, it seems like an extremely limited way to live and after all we only live once, why wouldn't you seize every opportunity and make the most of it?

I realised that you can preach until you're blue in the face to people that all the trivial things they are stressing over really don't matter because there are much more important things and life is far too short. However, if they haven't travelled and seen the things you have, their perspective hasn't shifted like yours has and so your words will fall on deaf ears like water off a ducks back.

Back home I feel uprooted, like a flower that has been picked. Once it's been plucked out of the soil it has been changed irreversibly, you can stick it back in the ground but it's roots have been severed, the connection it had has been lost, it can never return to be what it was before.

All I can say, to those who want to listen, is: just go. Explore the world, take every opportunity it has to offer and just live. After all life is too short and it only happens once, but do it right and once is enough. I promise it will be worth it.