One Chance to See the World

Australia is a very small country

As I was walking to the library yesterday here in Brisbane, a girl caught my eye. I crossed one of the pedestrian bridges carrying my laptop and as I stepped onto the south bank, two girls were standing there chatting. I thought I recognised them, and upon second glance realised where I had seen them before. One of them was this girl.

I met them on Fraser Island, on the same coach tour for the two days I was there. I liked this shot as the people can be used a reference point to understand the ships size. I didn’t say hello as I was already walking away when trying to figure out how I knew them. I regret it now, as I may never see them again and it would have been nice to know where they have been since Fraser.

Fraser Island is pretty far away from here. For an idea of the distance, I’ve added a map below. You guys should know I love my Google Maps as a reference.

It is a good 8 hours from here, so seeing them again was pretty cool. However this isn’t the first time I have bumped into people in a far away place, nor is the furthest distance. On my travels down the east coast, I bumped into two people in Noosa that I did farmwork with up in northern Queensland.

Pretty far indeed. This became a regular occurrence on my way down the various stops from Ayr to Brisbane, every destination I went to I checked into the same hostels with the same people doing their own thing. I eventually became friends with a group and I would hang out with them wherever we were. People are either going up the east coast or down and often staying in hostels, so bumping into the same people on route is a regular occurrence despite this being the sixth largest country in the world.

I am sure I will keep seeing people I have met whilst I travel, and I like that it is so easy to do so in Australia.

Still, Noosa isn’t the most impressive example of this.

When I visited New York City in 2008 with college, I was checking out of my hotel quite close to the Empire State Building. As we were all sitting with our bags waiting for the coach to pick us up, I heard ‘Sam, is that you?‘. We all looked up to see who was asking, and it turned out to be a friend from my hometown. I couldn’t believe it, and it still didn’t sink in as I was boarding the coach. How crazy was it to be on the other side of the world yet in the same building as a friend from home?

Have you ever bumped into someone in a place you wouldn’t expect? Where were you at the time?

The world is a very small place.

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

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Happy blogging!

A boat called Turning Point

I have had this post in my drafts for a while. I thought I would finally finish it and put it out there. I may have posted something similar as this was an experience I had and I always post about my travel experiences at the time of having them. I have definitely used this photo for a post at the time I took it too, that’s for sure.

When I was doing farmwork, two of the days consisted of taking a boat ride to a peninsula that was only reachable by boat. There was a small stretch of land that stuck out of the Australian coastline and only the tip of this piece of land was inhabited by around five or six homes. One of these homes was owned by our farmer and he wanted our team of eight to help him with a home makeover. We painted, polished, gardened, drank beer and barbecued. It was cut off by rocky, mountainous regions and dense rain-forest, so we headed their via boat.

The boat we used to get there was called Turning Point.

The name has a story. My farmer told me that he has worked all his life and wanted change as he reaches old age. He has been very grateful that his wife supported his high work ethic and long hours that comes owning a farm and stood by him all these decades. He wants to sell the farm and enjoy free time to travel with his wife. He hasn’t travelled before. Whenever he feels like he doesn’t want to sell off the farm and stick to what he has always done, he takes his boat- Turning Point- out to sea and reminds himself that he needs a turning point in his life.

I like the idea that he has this method to remind himself that change is needed. Something to do that changes his perspective and drags him out of the daily routine he has had for decades. A window into a new life that has never been experienced.

I need one of these, somewhere to go that reminds me of my goals. But then again, I believe that is what this working holiday visa is for. Every day I spend in an environment that isn’t the one I grew up in reminds me that I love my life and that I don’t want to go back to square one. I want to keep progressing, travelling and blogging about it. This visa was my turning point.

What is your turning point? Do you have something to go to that reminds you to change a bad habit or daily routing that you have wanted to escape for a long time, or experience something completely new? Let me know in the comments and as always, I will see you there.

This was a great trip working with these farmers, and the experiences I gained will stay with me for a long time.

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

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Happy blogging!

Don’t fear an age.

I read an article online recently of a girl holding a funeral for her twenties. She turned 30 and felt her ‘fun decade’ was over. Surrounded by black balloons with a drink in hand, she mourned the year it all ended. You can see the article here.

For me, I don’t mind turning 30. It doesn’t worry me so long as I am in a place I am happy to be by this age.

Tell me, would you rather be a poor student at 17 or a happy 30 year old? For me the answer is obvious. Age is only a number, so long as we don’t let age decide who we are. I am all for maturing, however I am not going to live my life dictated by what people are doing at my age but how I feel at the time. People are diverse. I have colleagues and friends that at 21 got married and had children. I have friends in their thirties partying like it is their first year of university. On paper I would not have guessed their ages, but one thing is for sure. Their age is irrelevant.

I am not looking forward to turning 30 in June. Not because I don’t want to, but because of the attitude people have to turning 30. A (supposedly) constant spiral downhill of body pains, nights in with a cup of tea and cat adopting. I am sure if that is what people expect life to be like 30+, I wouldn’t be surprised if life leads them there. This life is fabulous if that is what you want it to be. But that is my point, make life what you want it to be. This is my aim, and I can easily imagine my thirties being the best decade of my life if I ensure that I am working hard to achieve this.

Who do we look up to more? The spotty teenager riding his bike on an early morning paper round for a couple of quid each day, or Dwayne Johnson, a highly successful, motivated and super ripped forty-something? It seems for role models like him, age is not an issue.

So why do we look up to people older than us, yet envy those that are younger than us? I believe it is all down to achievement and ensuring we are in the right place at the time. Youth is beautiful because we are free of responsibility and have time to think about what we want to be in the future. Adulthood is when shit hits the fan.

But it doesn’t have to hit the fan. It just takes a little work. 30 could be the best year of your life. Or 50, or 70. We can only live in the moment and it is down to us to make that moment a good one.

Don’t let time dictate your happiness.

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging!

Convert negative feelings into a laser beam of awesomeness

I often find days when I am in a low mood and totally demotivated. The days in which I think ‘what’s the point?’ and everything just feels a little shitty. I wanted to post this as a reminder that this feeling can be hijacked and used to our advantage. I want to type this to reflect on, as well as possibly help others stuck in this rut.

The good thing about these problems is that they are all in our head. The problem with these feelings is, well… they are all in our head. For me the mind can be a pretty claustrophobic place, no matter where I walk or run the bad thoughts are right there around me. Physically escaping them is virtually impossible. This is why it is much better to instead of try to escape the thoughts, mold them into something of worth.

This is the very reason why I blog and started to back in 2014 after my father died. I use it as a machine to transform all of my negative emotions into something of worth. I am tired of wasting time because of negative emotions and doing nothing until my mood lifts. We simply do not live long enough to spend hours of the day procrastinating and being slaves to our mental health. If we can use this feeling-down time as rocket fuel alongside our feeling-good time, think of how much progress we could make every single day.

Whether this is to blog, or to work out or whatever the passion. Negativity only pushes us further from the finishing line. I mean no matter how we feel, we want to get to that finishing line, right? Whether it is a career or marriage or whatever we want in life, feeling sorry for ourselves for not being there won’t get us there. What will get us there is taking steps. One by one.

Now for me personally, I want to build my blog so it is successful enough to do it at least part time. I also want to be successful enough to publish a book with a big enough audience that want to read it. I can’t get that overnight, so I blog every day. Some days I ask myself why I spend so much time here without pay. Why I think I am even capable of doing this. But this is a natural state of negative self reflection and the reaction to these questions determines if those thoughts are right or wrong.

I could respond by saying ‘you know what, I am doing this for free. What is the point?’ and never pick up my laptop again. I could let those few down days a year demotivate me and convince me that I am not capable of going further. Even if I am not convinced I am going anywhere 36 days of the year, that is just 10% of my time. To allow 10% of my time to dictate the other 90% would be utterly crazy and I would be doomed to fail. When I am in that 10, I think of the other 90. Nine times out of ten I am moving forward, no matter how fast or slow towards the goal. The finishing line never moves, it is always in that same spot for us to reach. It is down to us to keep making that distance smaller.

If I am angry, I think of how I can convert it into blog form. Writing it down and using it to come up with a post others can relate to and feed off. Why am I angry? Is it because I am not where I want to be? Well, anger doesn’t help. At all. What does help is knowing that if I keep at it, I will be where I want to be. Again, where some people stop or even leave the race, these moments in which we decide to keep going despite everything determines how quickly we get there. We can put it off for another day or get there a day earlier than we would have. In time, these days accumulate into months and years. Today deciding not to do something, and that day next week, and the five or six days next month will determine whether we achieve our dream in 2020 or 2025. Or never. Just because we can’t see the finishing line over the peak doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And how fast we climb that hill determines how soon we will be able to enjoy the descent down the other side.

The same goes for feelings of frustration, jealousy and sadness. We can use them as an excuse to put a hold on things, but all that means is we either fail in our aims, or just delay reaching them as fast.

To help with this, I picture myself being in first class on a long haul flight. It is always something I have wanted to try and I have never afforded it. I have always peered into that section of a flight since being a child, between the countless grey seats directly in front of my face and wondered what it would be like to be there one day. Just once. I will be there one day. But will it be next year or in 30 years time? Whenever I feel like slacking I picture being there in 30 years time. ‘Are you happy with that decision, Sam?’, I think to myself as my productivity meter plummets to zero. And then I picture myself in the seat thinking to myself ‘I could have been here 30 years earlier if I tried’.

Regret is a horrible feeling, but what is beautiful is being able to know that in the future I don’t want to look back on laziness and regret it. Aim to predict where regret would lie in your future and change the future by closing that gap to success today.

The reality is we won’t be where we want to be today. But the day will come, how soon that day will come is determined by how much we put into today. Every day wasted is a day further away, and every productive day means we get there a day sooner. Negative emotions such as the ones I have experienced recently should be a motivator to not experience them again. And what better way to escape these feelings than to pin them to the ground and use them as a stepping stone to that goal. The main reasons as to why I am sad is because I am not currently where I want to be, and knowing one day I will be where I want to be makes every bad day a catalyst for progress.

Man on road photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash

Airplane photo by Gus Ruballo on Unsplash

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging!

Improve everyday

I was out walking recently during a hangover after a colleagues leaving do the night before. I needed to get out as my head pounded and my mouth was as dry as sand and the cool, rainy weather was very inviting. I headed across the river and took a shot of the skyline. I went again today and thought it would be a nice idea to take another one whilst the sun is shining. I wanted to blend the two together to give a ‘before and after’ style single shot.

The problem is, I am no good at this.

I can’t blend and struggle to layer, I tried for a good couple of hours today just playing around on PicMonkey, the editor I use for some of my images and I couldn’t get the hang of it. So instead I settled for this.

You can see from the company name on the building split in half by the images that this isn’t a perfect alignment, but I don’t mind. It is a way for me to monitor progress and see how and where to improve. I really want to keep playing with photos to create different effects as I believe it will really enhance my blog. I have a long way to go to develop but that’s okay. I love the feeling of improvement.

And it is nice to see the contrast between the skyline pics thanks to the weather. What a difference a couple of days make.

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging!

5000 followers

Today is a good day. A much better day for me than yesterday, my low mood has lifted and the sun is shining. A blue sky is always a good sign.

It is also a day with a huge milestone for me. I hit 5,000 followers today and I couldn’t be happier. I also couldn’t be thankful to all of my readers for helping me get here. You are the ones that help me to stay motivated and I enjoy engaging with you all through my posts. I will continue to post daily and be as consistent as possible with this. I will also try to find ways to bring my readers into my posts, whether it be through the meet and greet section, guest posts or something else. I want to keep adding to my blog and changes will be made here and there.

So thank you again for helping me get to this point.

I have little time before work today, but I had enough to take a quick walk and find this fish made out of plastic bottles. The seen sculpture below was to make us aware of the damage caused by plastic.

And I have just realised that I took some snaps of it with a whopping 1.5L bottle of water on me. That probably didn’t look good. But I do feel its is our duty to protect the environment in whatever little ways we can and I am a supporter of this, and I hope you are too. This is my photo for the day.

But I will be back later with another post after I finish work. I will also respond to the comments I haven’t been able to yet.

Much love, and I will see you all soon.

Sam

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging!

Do you ever have days like these?

Life is a roller-coaster of emotional well-being. Full of the twists and turns, peaks and drops between happiness and sadness, calm and anxiety, motivation and laziness. There is no set mood on the track, just the waves of states until we reach the end of the ride.

Since I have traveled I have been through the excitement and joy, the adventure and laughter. But this never lasts as long as the working holiday visa does. After the steep rise, the drop. The dip in mood and motivation, the lack of energy and the negative outlooks on life. Today I have hit this sharp turn on the journey and it feels pretty crappy. It isn’t depression or overwhelming anxiety, just a genuine low mood.

It makes me question what I am doing, and how good of a person I am. It makes me question whether I am achieving as much as my peers and the people I engage with on a daily basis. Whether I am or will be as successful as them, the things they are better at than me and the things I am worse at. It is the day when the brain is not interested in the positives I experience, they aren’t important. What I fail at, that is what is being discussed today apparently. Bitterness, jealousy, negative self reflection. You name it, it is there somewhere.

Great.

Every mistake is maximised. Every great moment is just an exception. I pride myself on trying to think of the good moments in life and seeing the glass half full, but some days just don’t allow this. I am sure I am not the only one.

As I type this, in the corner of my left eye an incredibly short man is checking in to my hostel. Probably in his 40’s and is no taller than his suitcase. He has a harder life than me. His case will be much heavier than it would be for me, even if I am average build and very athletic. At 6ft, everything is easier than it is for an adult half my size. There is one think I should be grateful for.

Now I have to say, there has been a couple of moments in my recent posts when I have typed ‘as I am typing this’… and they are genuine. I find it difficult to blog in my room and I need to be out there, hence my blogs photography style. I see so many people daily and every now and then, something or someone will come into my line of sight and just fit in with my blog post. I am not one that believes in fate, but I really do appreciate it when it happens. It is moments like this that make me slap myself back into reality and remember that no matter how bad my day is, there are always millions upon millions that have it much worse. People that have it much worse but will have more optimism and motivation than I do right now. Adults that don’t reach the height limit of the rides that they would love to go on, as I may sigh and complain that I am being dragged to a theme park by a loved one.

I will type another post tomorrow on this and the reasons why low mood is a thing, but not a useful thing. Why we should use this negativity to unlock potential and utilise it to become unstoppable. It is possible and is the difference between great success and oh-so common failure.

In a way, I am pleased I can blog about these days, as it reminds me that they occur and always will occur. It is all about riding the wave.

Featured Photo by Eniko Polgar on Unsplash

Second Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Why I changed my blog three times in four years

Some of you will know that I used to go under a different name back when I started blogging. And some of you will know that this changed. And changed again. My blog is still on a similar theme as it always has been, but I have adapted it to keep it moving and to keep me satisfied when I feel change is needed.

The original blog name reflected an incident that I witnessed a few years back and wanted to write about. It was a time when I was questioning everything, and I started to think very deeply about life, death, reality and beliefs. I left religion and anyone that has done so will know it is a very weird phase. Everything I believed was no longer, and I felt very vulnerable and my anxiety rose. Withdrawal symptoms you could say.

My website was called religionerased or coincidentally, RE for short. One of my first posts was Witnessing discrimination first hand, a post about domestic violence that occurred one day at work. It shocked me that this could occur and that the man committing the act was surprised he was even told to stop. ‘But she is my wife?’ was his reply. This shocked and appalled me. I admittedly lumped culture and religion together at this moment (they can indeed go hand in hand) and it made me distance myself further from any kind of religious belief. I had a lot I wanted to speak about that was bottled up inside me for roughly 6-7 years and blogging was a great way to do that with people that wanted to listen. It gained a following as I published posts once or twice a week, mainly in the atheist community however not exclusively. I remember a great christian blogger following my work and I followed hers, she was so open about questioning her beliefs and listened to my opinions and I listened to hers. She later blogged to say she could no longer keep blogging as she wasn’t comfortable confronting her own beliefs. This was a shame as I feel we had some open and honest conversations in the community between differing beliefs. She was a loss.

Despite this, I started to grow tired of debates. I didn’t feel good at the end of the day continuously disagreeing with people, and it just felt a little toxic. No matter how long I could debate with someone, it was highly unlikely that I would convince them, nor could they convince me. A clash of two small egos on very small blogging platforms. It often led to nowhere with someone I will probably never meet anyway. This is the point in which I felt I needed my first change, instead of clash with bloggers I wanted to do my own thing without trying to convince others. If they wanted to read my thoughts and opinions on topics they could. This sounded much better than what I was doing at the time and I would get much more satisfaction this way. I would build an audience that appreciated my posts and I would spend more time speaking to those that had similar interests and were eager to chat. A time much less wasted.

I remember travelling to Brazil for a wedding and the Olympics in 2016. A trip I loved. One day we headed to the Iguazu Falls, a stunning set of waterfalls between the Brazilian and Argentinian borders and we took a boat right to the plunge pool of one of the falls. It was an amazing experience, pretty terrifying as you could truly feel the immense power of the waterfall. I recorded the footage of us heading right up to it, and stopped recording a little sooner than I wished I did. I could no longer see anything from the mist of the water and didn’t think my camera would have been able to.

Stepping off the boat and onto dry land was the moment that I wanted to blog about travelling more. I still wanted to blog about my personal beliefs and thoughts however merge this with my travelling experiences. I thought if I can show the world that someone without religion can find happiness and motivation to live, I have another reason to blog.

I changed the name of my blog to Living with Atheism, and I posted about the change here. I wanted to post with a little more optimism and fun, whilst preserving my original intentions for blogging. I used the ‘Living with’ to state that I aim to live life to the full but also demonstrate the negatives and stigma around a blog like mine. A blogger friend mentioned that this may look like I am trying to compare it to living with an illness or disability, and this played on my mind. I kept this title for a while before ditching it.

So here we are at my current domain. I was really debating whether to change the title altogether and ditch any association with religion or lack of, but it is such a big reason why I blog I just couldn’t. I love philosophy, debate, conversation and new ideas. Instead I decided to make it as blogger friendly as possible and I want to engage with anyone of all walks of life. I always have, I just feel earlier editions of my blog weren’t very good at achieving this. If anything they would have led people away instead of inviting them in for discussion. This isn’t me. So, I eventually went with My Life Without Religion. It is short and to the point. This is my website address, however I have changed the title of my blog to simply Living!, as living is what I want to do and inspire others to do as best as they can.

I believe change is key to success, or simply survival. No one likes change, however without change we rust up. We get complacent and get bored. These can be small or big changes, but I think it is wise to mix life up every now and then. It is stimulating and provides additional challenges. These challenges develop us as individuals over time and are often looked back on with good feelings instead of regret. I would always prefer a regret due to change in style- as these can always be reversed- than regret not change at all. One regret is much more fulfilling than the other.

Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my A bout My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging!

Morning walks

This is a park not too far from me. It’s the first time I’ve been and I think I might head there more often for some alone time or to go on runs.

That’s the thing with late afternoon work starts, I get plenty of chill time beforehand when most people are working. The city streets are full but parks not so much. I get time to think and plan posts and just clear my head.

eu aren’t invited anymore…

I’m reminiscing about easier times today… Last week when I had the whole weekend off, chilling listening to some live music on a rainy Sunday. At one point a huge group of Europeans walked in, taking part in a pub crawl.

As a Brit, would I be invited??

I have to say I’m relieved that despite the Brexit vote, Europeans are still happy to talk to us Brits. I know no individual should be judged based on a countries actions, but when it is a decision made by the people to leave, I thought maybe we would be at risk of a little alienation.

But thankfully it’s not the case because most people are nice.