Well, 2017, you certainly weren’t what I expected but I couldn’t be more amazed at how we did this year.
We may have missed our financial goals but we accomplished so much more than we ever anticipated when we left the US in January. While virtually nothing went as anticipated, we had a blast and life will never be the same.
We visited 15 countries and lived in nearly as many cities, and made 100’s of friends around the world, including an Emu named Emma and a Koala named Morton. We danced in Barcelona, did Yoga in India, wrote in Italy and road tripped in Australia. We met Orangutan’s and Proboscis monkeys in Borno and learned about Monitor Lizards from a tiny woman that spoke no English except to say “Madame” in Thailand.
We had some close calls, but came out on top in the end. There was the time we got bit by a dog in Malaysia and almost died in the jungle of Penang, and the subsequent treatment for rabies, or the time we got splashed in the face with sewage water and became so violently ill with that we decided to name our parasite Norbit. Then there was the date with Mr. “I Have No Empathy…,” that left us thankful to still have skin.
We went swimming in a couple dozen rooftop infinity pools (and even made out with a boy in one), shopped for seafood so fresh it was jumping out the bucket and snubbed an Ambassador during dinner to read our Kindle during a cruise through Ha Long Bay — one of the dozen or so UNESCO sites we visited.
We learned to live with less and to make the most of every day, and to appreciate things so much more. We witnessed poverty so extreme it can’t be described and we saw the effects of human evil in multiform. Walking through a high-school where more than 20,000 Cambodians were tortured and slaughtered made us a different person, as did seeing the fresh blood of the attack on Las Ramblas.
We witnessed a half dozen hindu, buddhist and muslim holy celebrations and learned that people are more or less the same, no matter where you go or what they look like. We all want to love & be loved, we all want to be safe and happy. We learned the power and language of laughter when we peed on a trash heap on the side of the road with a half-dozen Cambodian women which resulted in an hour long giggle fit for our tour bus.
We got covered in grease paint by some of the cutest kids in the world, and donated money to a woman pushing around a stroller full of kittens in dresses in the name of charity. We saw cats and goats on leashes, and got to pet kangaroos. We rode our first motorcycle and drove on the left.
We changed our life at Date with Destiny and danced our asses off at Business Mastery. We saw the great barrier reef from a seaplane and chastised a cockatoo like it was a dog when it stole our Pringles can. We ate gelato & pizza under the Tuscan Sun, stumbled into dozens of amazing temple and cathedrals, and got stuck in an elevator in Utrecht .
We crashed our bicycle into a rice paddy and had to be pulled out, and we quit Remote Year. We smelled durian for the first time (which can best be described as a cross between rotten bananas and warm dirty diapers), and ate fried scorpions and multiple meats on sticks. We posed with 1000’s of statue’s and did a couple 1,000 other things.
2017, you weren’t exactly what I wanted, but you were exactly what I needed.
We learned to love ourselves this year, to savor every moment, follow our heart and our gut and to trust that everything is going to work out.
The conversations we’ve had, the things we’ve witnessed, the stories we’ve gathered are priceless and we wouldn’t change a thing. Except maybe the sewage thing. Or the rabbies thing… but really? Those stories are going to be the best to share in the years to come.
Now it’s time to put you to bed in anticipation of an amazing 2018.
With Love & Light,
P.S. If you’re ready to start your own amazing location-independent adventures and you’d like some help getting your business off the ground book a virtual coffee with me or check out SixFigureFreelancers.com.
