During numerous Melbourne lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, Deane and I started dreaming of a new adventure. We asked ourselves what was possible if we had no constraints and began imagining the lifestyle we wanted for ourselves.
Fast forward to today and we have sold our two Victorian homes and hit the road in 2 weeks to our new home in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. It will certainly be a very different lifestyle living on a couple of acres in the countryside compared with inner city Melbourne. I’m looking forward to sharing with you our personal stories of adapting to this life and the highlights and challenges.
We shared Adam Grant’s illustration of life paths when Maria and her family set off in their van to tour around Australia. This becomes evident again to me. I totally agree with his philosophy of “it’s never too late to choose who you want to become.”
However, when we choose new adventures and take new paths, we make decisions to close off other paths, and there is loss associated with that.
The biggest loss we are feeling right now is saying goodbye to a way of life that we have with our Melbourne family and friends. Our life will be different with them and we need to adapt to whatever this will look like. There will be plenty of great visits to our place but the spontaneity of grabbing dinner on a Friday night or seeing the kids unplanned will be lost.
Over Easter we started packing up the beach house.
Deane built this place with the support of family and some good friends and so there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears poured into its creation. It also has been the home of many, many, good times, including our wedding. So, selling this is going to be particularly difficult and not without a tear I imagine.
I’ve bought Lisa Messenger’s book – Work from Wherever – and look forward to some great words of wisdom to help guide me and in her words “set yourself free and still achieve.” She asks the questions – “Can you run an empire without an office? Can freedom and ambition co-exist? Can you work from anywhere happily and successfully? And can your (work) life be one BIG adventure?” Lisa did just that in 2018 and we are going to blaze that same trail in 2022!
Much of our work is based in adaptive leadership philosophies and we love to run Adaptive Leadership Workouts for our clients. It’s going to be interesting now to be putting this work to the test for us personally and professionally. I know we’re not the only ones making this shift. The stats show that there will be 1 billion digital nomads by 2035 and the last couple of years has proven that we can work differently and better in lots of cases. So, we are going to make hybrid work for us too.
But for now and the next 2 weeks we have a life to pack up to get ready to move. So if anyone has any handy tips for us please share!
Michelle