The Idea
So I was having lunch with my brother in law at a pub in the city (Sydney). I was working as a Sales Executive, he was a programmer and together we had had more ideas (that had never been followed) than any two people anywhere else on earth. This was not so much a brainstorming session than it was a good bitch about how our lives just weren’t going the way we had planned when all of a sudden things became very optimistic. We started talking about what we wanted out of life and how any number of our ideas could get us there. Kelly and I (my wife) had already had our house listed for sale for some time without a great deal of success and for the first time in my life I started thinking along the lines of how we could make our lives better, not richer. (Most of my ideas involve us making millions, not spending our life savings to be left with next to nothing).
I started to regale Anth (brother in law) with my dream of giving up everything to follow the Green Bay Packers for a season, drive on the wrong side of the road, build a snow man, spend 6 months with my beautiful wife and two gorgeous little boys and make a small city’s worth of new friends. The funny thing about living the dream this time though was that for the first time in 15 years, I actually believed we could do it. Normally, as most of you would know, you know what you want, but deep down you figure you’ll never be in a position to actually get it cause what you’re doing in the moment is always more important. This time though, for some reason, it just felt different inside.
As we spoke I knew that our house, which had already been listed for sale was only one phone call away from being re-listed. I was completely over my corporate world, puffy shirt, customer driven job and my wife was stinging for a sea-change as much as the next person. We were both over Sydney traffic and the continual increase in the cost of living, plus I came to realise that spending 6 months away from work meant 6 months, day after day after day with her and our always smiling, ever cuddling, fantastic little boys.
I started to think that at this very point in our lives we weren’t just in a position to actually do this, we were halfway there. At least so far as decisions surrounding our house, jobs and future plans were concerned. With that lunch finished, I went back to the office, spent an hour drawing up the plans and emailed Kelly the suggestion.....
