About Me

I am in my forties, unmarried, with no kids.  I sometimes wonder how I am unmarried with no kids and have not come up with a clear answer.  There are definite pros and cons to having my circumstances and I like to concentrate on the pros. The main pro is that I have fairly low expenses and do not have major responsibilities beyond looking after myself, whilst watching out for my family and close friends where possible.  This has enabled me to take the step of letting my house, scaling down my business and travelling for 6 months from Sept 2014 to March 2015. As of January 2015, I have just extended my trip to July 2015 and now plan to come back to the Philippines and Bali in September 2015 … maybe indefinitely!

From being one of the most relaxed and happy go lucky people around, I somehow turned into a worrier.  I am not certain how it happened, but the result is that I have had a stressful time during the past 10 years and have found myself suffering from anxiety and acute insomnia which has taken it’s toll on my wellbeing and affected my work, activities and relationships.  Levels of stress and associated ills are obviously subjective and one man’s stress is another mans ‘walk in the park’.  I have a profitable business, a lovely home, a close family and good friends …. so what is there to be stressed and anxious about I hear you saying.  Well, on the face of it, nothing.

There have been various things that have occurred over the past 10 or so years, that have knocked me.  However, during the last 4 years, there have been a number of issues that have taken the biggest toll, i.e. My mother developed cancer and has ongoing chemotherapy.  Her never fading optimism and happy outlook on life and circumstances, in the face of endless hospital visits and horrible side effects have been a lesson to me .. she is an amazing person.  In addition, one of my 2 best and closest friends hanged himself, which affected me badly, as I miss him a lot.  My other, very close best friend, who had lived at my house for over 2 years, because he was recovering from mental illness, has lapsed into mental illness and has become a completely nasty and destructive person, periodically going in and out of prison.  During this time, my girlfriend was also 5 months pregnant and lost our baby. After this, the related circumstances led to our break up.  Finally, my former business partner, for whom I was best man and considered a close friend, became greedy and tried to squeeze me out of the business we had together.  Over the course of several years he did a number of underhand things, which were very stressful.  I have happy to say that we have terminated our business ties.

Therefore, the upshot is that I have found myself in ‘a place/life situation’ in which I haven’t been happy, so action is required.

For the past 6 years I have run a building company.  it is a business that I fell into and it pays the bills, but I strongly dislike the work, which involves managing lots of people and a lot of time working on a computer.  The Company will hopefully continue to run and bring me some income while I am away, which is a bonus, however I have made a decision that I am going to find another way of making an income.  I am on the lookout for ideas and business opportunities and as I have had profitable businesses in 3 completely different industries, I am confident that I will come up with a new opportunity.

My primary passions are surfing and running/keeping fit, neither of which I can do very well on 3 or 4 hours sleep a night.  The central aim of my life is to improve my sleep and work to start living in the moment.  I recently started practising meditation and it’s been amazing.  I’d recommend the Headspace App/web site to everyone (www.headspace.com) as well as listening to Erkhart Tolle’s book ‘The Power of now’.  Thank you to Chad Heinneman for bringing these to my attention. My journey during the next 6 months is based around surfing and practising and developing my meditation skills.  I realise that nothing in the future is going to enable me to be happy, as happiness and fulfilment and contentment can only be obtained now, in the current moment.  I do not need to obtain a certain level of money, status or possessions before I can be happy and these things can be nice, but will not provide happiness or contentment. Now … having realised and accepted this, it takes practice and skill to achieve the ability to live in the moment and be truly content…. I am practising and learning all of the time and feeling good for it.

I am meeting up with a number of friends and family during my trip, but will primarily be travelling on my own.  This is something that I would never have been able to do until about 12 months ago.  Until fairly recently, there is no way I would have felt comfortable going in to a cafe, bar or restaurant on my own and a few years ago I would even go into town without arranging to meet friends.  However, I am now much more comfortable being solo in these situations and actually enjoy it.  I now very often prefer to spend time in my own company and I never thought I’d ever say that.