I’m starting a new job tomorrow. I’m cutting back on my travel time for the next year in exchange for money that will (hopefully) finance my freedom.

This is what I learned by being unemployed for 6 weeks:

• Attitude makes or breaks you.
• You need great friends to support you.
• Finding a job is just another game.
• Life’s short, so having free time to do something meaningful is priceless, and that remains my number one goal.

While working on my resume I decided to create a little graphic of all the places I’ve been to on my travels (I’m a big fan of infographics). Looking at it reminds me of how far I’ve come, and of this quote:

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

I’m going to change it a bit:

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step backwards and two steps forward - every single day.”

These are tough times, but I’ll hold this quote to heart:

“And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.” - Jerry Chin

A new month and I’m out of a job. It’s been fun for the past few years; I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to travel around the world, and to learn lots about life, people and the rat race. But perhaps it’s just time to move on. The only constant in life, after all, is change.

3, 2, 1, here we go..

P.S. It takes a crisis to find out who your friends are. I’m very grateful for each one of them.

P.P.S. I’m on LinkedIn.

“Too many people do jobs they don’t like, in fields they don’t care about, to get slips of paper with dead presidents to buy things they don’t need for women they don’t love for the hope of a marriage that wont last and children they wont see. Is it any wonder people are either psychotically angry or depressed?”

After putting it off for a year, I finally gave hang gliding a try:

Zero degrees Celsius and 5 minutes in the air at 500 feet. What an experience!

I’m only about ten years late to reading The monk who sold his Ferrari, but this quote stands out:

“If you care for your mind, if you nurture it and if you cultivate it just like a fertile, rich garden, it will blossom far beyond your expectations… Yet look at the toxic waste most people put into the fertile garden of their minds every single day: the worries and anxieties, the fretting about the past, the brooding over the future and those self-created fears that wreak havoc within your inner world.”

“Life is like a jail with an unlocked, heavy door. You’re free the minute you realize the door will open if you simply lean into it.

You are what you learn.”

from Scott Adams Blog: Who Are You?