lifehack

Making the Most of Now

It Scares me….
  • Have you ever looked back and wished you’d taken that trip or finally tried that new hobby?
  • How do you know if you like something if you’ve never tried it?
  • What on earth are you waiting for?

Why do people wait until they are ‘retired’ to travel. I don’t know… I think it’s backwards and an unbalanced way of living. All too often, we hear heartbreaking stories of people’s carefully planned lives being cut short by illness, accidents, or other unforeseen circumstances. This begs the question: why wait for the “magical” retirement age of 65 to experience life? Why not start now?

I would think I’m a pretty out there person, squeezing in a lot of things, but I still think I have ways to go in fully committing. Upon realizing this, I’ve been all in for trying to get a solid job at a large multinational so I can expat around the world, trying new things and cultures. I see it as a part-time travel job with work to sustain the adventure. “Work to live, not live to work”.
 
From my first international trip back when I was ~19 years old, I realized how eye-opening and open the world can be. I probably didn’t (and still don’t) fully appreciate or endorse it all, but I know the opportunity is there. Trying new things and putting yourself out there. That’s why I am moving overseas – to live life in the fast lane, try new things, and most of all – to have no regrets.

Fired up! Get Some Go About ya!

So cool, I know I want to do something… But what is it and how am I going to make it happen?
1) Planning. As any good Finance person will tell you, success starts with planning. “If you fail to plan,you plan to fail”.
2) Execute: Make it happen. I’m not a humble guy… So I’m just going to say it, I’m good at this. I make things happen. I put plans on shared calendars, I book far ahead, I work through fatigue. YO to the LO.
3) Enjoying the moment and reflecting. An area I need to work on. Sometimes I’m too caught in 1 and 2 that it interferes with the moment.

My 2024 Travel Planning Map

One of the main things I wanted to get out of creating a blog was a way to autobiograph-ise my life. I like dates, timestamps and visuals – so I went in search of something of the Timeline variety to record, remember and relive my life. After all, my biggest fear is to look back on my life and regret not doing enough. 

I stumbled upon an amazing, innovative site Knightlab which is all free to use their templates on Storytelling – Timelines and Storylines being my 2 favourites. 

Hours upon hours of my time went into the creation of this:

  1. Planning – design, template dates, highlights, databases, storage, naming conventions, etc
  2. Scouring my Memories – Looking through photos (Google Photos is a great tool), memories, talking with friends for memories, old photo albums and others to pull out the moments in my life that I want to look back on and remember. Those critical moments where I achieved or learned something amazing. Or just something funny happened.
  3. Putting it all together – writing the memoirs, making the short highlights videos, uploading everything, ensuring everything works and the main point, redoing it all every (year?) to keep it up to day.

Without further adieu, the Timeline of Ross Michell until the end of 2020 (as of time of writing).

Timeline of Ross Michell

Again, I would strongly recommend everyone to find your own way to record, remember and relive your own life. This last few weeks has been a saviour with COVID lockdowns coming back into Sydney, it has helped me reconnect with people and myself looking back on these memories and learnings.

“…After all, these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind.” – Memoirs of a Geisha