Life Changes Suddenly

I've always been envious of those people who say "Yeah, it's all happened really quickly," when referring to how their mundane, unfulfilled life turned upside down and suddenly they are living their dream. I always looked at their tumultuous life that emerged with a silver lining and wondered why mine couldn't have the same outcome. But on the other side of the coin I know the same people look at my life and how seamlessly and easily I've cruised from joy to joy.

It was even very recently that I felt I was cursed with good fortune, because I thought, it is only through disaster that awesome things happen. Cancer survivors turn their lives into a story that affects millions. Obese people wake up one day and decide to get healthy, turning flab into mirror-posing muscle in months, and an example for others to improve their health. An ordinary person nearly gets killed in a landslide and becomes a national hero.

I thought that my life was too comfortable. It's satisfactory, it's easy, but it doesn't energize me like I know it could. And there's no disaster to change my life and turn it upside down, and make it better.

Then I realized that's because it's all going just as it's meant to. If life was on the wrong course then a disaster would strike me to allow me to re-evaluate its meaning, but I'm doing that right now without the disaster.

So I thought about all the people for whom life takes a dramatic and exciting turn, and looked at my own life and realized that although I've felt that it just keeps going on, one day at a time, it has taken many interesting and bizarre turns.

I was 25, living in Australia, in an apartment I owned (well... paid a mortgage on) on the edge of downtown, had an awesome Marketing job downtown, had a great circle of friends and I was growing and learning and making my fortune. Then my girlfriend of nearly five years, M., decided she wanted to go to work for three months in England. I said "Okay, I'll wait for you here." An odd decision for me, now that I look back. Had that happened now, I would have been inclined to pick up and move there with her.

After less than a month I decided to break up with M. and began dating a new girl, N., who at first glance seemed a serious improvement. She was everything I didn't get with M. Unfortunately she also had none of what I loved in M. What was worse, this new girl was like the crab who won't let go of your ankle. I was caught in a trap that I couldn't leave... until I left Australia.

Here was my relatively uneventful life turning around and almost exactly one year after N. and I started dating, I was arriving at Heathrow airport in London. My ex-girlfriend, M., was still there, and was now dating someone else. I wasn't going with the intention of rekindling anything, because even though N. was everything I didn't want, M. didn't have enough of what I did want.

For the first week I slept on the living room floor of M.'s house that she shared with four housemates, before finding a terrible room for rent in a neighbourhood on North London.

After a few weeks of looking, I found a good Marketing contract position working for a large package-holiday travel company, managing a Christmas direct mail campaign. I was earning good money, travelling on weekends and saving lots. Life was good.

When that contract ended I took a permanent position as the European Marketing Manager for an international billboard company, with the understanding that the company would immediately begin the process to sponsor me, since the role was outside my visa limitations. It was all very exciting. I would begin a life of working and living in Europe for the medium to long term.

This all came crashing down on my second day at work when I was expected to fill out a form to get a special pass to go behind secured zones at airports and had to disclose my name, passport number and visa details to a government authority. I knew this would be in contravention of my visa and I had heard of stories of people getting caught out, being deported and having to leave their stuff behind, now with a ten-year restriction on returning. This might also limit my ability to get other working permits in the future, a risk I decided wasn't worth it. So I lost my job. I was escorted out at lunch time by my boss, and never came back.

It was devastating!

I felt sorry for myself for about a day, and then I decided, "it's not what happens to you that determines your life, it's how you react to what happens, that makes your life."

I had no job, and London is not the cheapest place to live without income. I calculated that I had about six weeks worth of savings before I would either need an emergency job, or a flight back to Australia. So I applied for jobs and ended up snagging the Contiki Tour Manager position, just in time.

While travelling Europe and getting paid to do it, I met my future wife and ended up chasing her to Canada.

So, in a span that totals only thirty months I sold my apartment, quit my job, left Australia, travelled in Lithuania and Germany, moved to London, worked in a Marketing job, lost a Marketing job, wrote the first draft of a book (that still needs heavy editing and re-writing), worked as a Tour Manager, travelled western Europe for eight months, met the woman of my dreams, travelled some of eastern Europe, travelled parts of Canada (Ontario, Quebec, BC and Alberta), travelled Australia and New Zealand for three months, moved to Calgary, got a job and got married. Two months after that we bought the home we currently live in.

Even since that period of extreme change, I can show a series of significant changes that have occurred in my life. My point is not just to discuss the experiences of my life, but to make a highlight two things.

If you had told me when I started dating N., the bad girlfriend, that in three years I would be happily married to a Canadian and living and working there, I would have told you to have another drink and give up the drugs. It would have seemed like such a distant and remote possibility in such a short period of time that it couldn't happen, especially to me, Mr Consistency.

So anything in life is possible!

The other point is that it takes me to look back on that part of my life, and indeed my whole life to see that it has been a massive time of growth, change and an evolution of my soul. But it doesn't seem that way, because it has happened one day at a time. If you look at a clock and watch the hour hand move it's very, very gradual. It takes twelve hours to make one lap of the clock, and it seems like it doesn't move at all. But if you break it down into minutes or seconds, and watch those hands you can see that it is moving, actually quite quickly.

The same is with life. We live each day and notice very little change, because we focus on the days and weeks that go by, and not much usually changes in a day or week. But take a step back and look at the years and see that life does evolve quite dramatically.

So think, that getting from where you are now, to where you will be in a few years can be a lot more exciting and different than you can imagine, if you're prepared to take the risks that will get you there.

Taking the risk to quit my Australian life and board a plane to Europe took me on a different path. Sometimes it's less extreme than that and may be just meeting a person, who motivates you to change.

Whatever it is, the future is a great big open field of opportunity.