Life – To Do List

 

It’s been almost a year since landing back in the UK, and I returned feeling like I had a much clearer view of what was important to me in this lil’ old life.  The job I’d left 11 months earlier was waiting for me when I got back, and I knew how easy it would be to slip back into old ways.  So, fueled by nostalgia and the free booze on the plane home from Mexico I took a pen and scribbled down what I resolved to be my guiding principles for Life Version 2.0.

Having just found the crumpled piece of paper on which I wrote out my new life plans, I thought it would be fun to write about the reality of the last year and whether my big visions have worked out:

This was my brilliantly titled “Life – To Do” list:

• Be outdoors more.  Sunshine + fresh air = happy Charlie. Ditch the oyster card, don’t replace my car.  2 wheels good, 4 wheels bad.
• Get a grip of my work/life balance.  No more spending weekday nights in Slough/Newbury/other random places that IT consultants work
• Find a job that lets me to travel more and for longer.  If this means taking a pay cut, so be it.
• Stop thinking adventures can only happen in other countries.  Get to know the UK, and stop moaning about the weather. Suck it up!
• A dedicated and committed routine of dinners out and drinking does not count as an acceptable hobby!  Take up something new new and stick at it.
• Pick an area to live an make it a proper home (for a while at least…).
• Set up a fund of some kind that would help give young people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to travel and volunteer abroad.  (Squiggly arrow and lots of question marks to “JOB????” suggest I had grand plans of a career change!

 

Some of these, I’m proud to look back on and say “Yay! I totally did that!”.  On other ones, sadly the more altruistic ones, I didn’t quite get my butt in to gear.  So, as the countdown to the next big trip in May begins, I’m going to spend the next couple of months dusting off the blog to write about mini adventures in life and travel over the last year, and reflecting on whether it really was the cliched life changing trip I’d thought it was.  Hopefully it’ll also be an incentive to get back on the UK mini adventure hunt whilst I’m still here!