09 Jan Plans For 2017: Work More, Travel Less…Wait What?!
This is probably version 12 of this blog post (or 20…I lost count), because we’ve gone back and forth about what to say, how to say it, if we should say anything, and most importantly, what we should actually do this year. Well, after much debate, much confusion and probably a little too much wine this festive season #WhenOnHoliday, we are eager to announce that our goal this year is to travel less and work more.
Yes, you read right, and yes, we are very serious…well, as serious as one can be during this jolly season (let the festivities live on, I say!). No, this probably should not apply to everyone (YOU, for example, should be aiming to travel more, so get those itineraries done and flights booked early!) but we, as How Far From Home, have some other plans for the year ahead, and unlike every other 2017-goal-setting post you read this month, we are choosing to travel less.
But before you think we’ve gone mad, and HFFH is “closing down”, let me explain…
Those of you who have followed our journey since the early days (back in early 2015), will know that Stevo and I left the rat race and society’s formulaic life to embark on a journey fueled by a personal project to see how far we could travel from Johannesburg (our home), and to see how far we could push ourselves out of our comfort zones. If you’re not a regular reader, and did not know that – hi and welcome! But I digress…
After clocking up over 200 000km in less than two years, one could say we’ve gotten pretty far (not to mention the rollercoaster of experiences and opportunities that got us beyond what we even thought possible – I mean, our story was published by Instagram, AdWeek, and Buzzfeed, we ended up on stage at Design Indaba, we worked with Beautiful Destinations and Tastemade, received nearly 1 million double taps on our Instagram feed in 2016 alone, did a whole bunch of crazy stuff like fly in a Redbull helicopter and go viral for scrubbing toilets, and we managed to travel the world for two years and only have a loss of US$600*).
Everyone’s perception of success is different, but in our eyes, we could say it’s been a pretty successful two years. We actually can’t believe some of this stuff! #Blessed doesn’t begin to explain it.
But before you think, “that’s great Chanel, why on Earth would you want it to stop?” or “why are you telling us this and why are you aiming to travel less – why aren’t you out there traveling further, experiencing more and chasing even more dreams?”, let me tell you that coming to this conclusion wasn’t easy. We’ve had to think bigger than big, think selflessly, and question our purpose and intentions, and in doing so, we’ve realized that the How Far From Home mission is bigger than us now, and bigger than our initial we-must-get-further-from-home goals.
We’ve realized that we need to do more with this globe-hopping and society-questioning journey. From what we’ve seen on our travels, the people we’ve met and spoken to, and the growing trend of collecting experiences over things, we’ve realized that this type of life is so much more than simply a sabbatical idea (which is how this started for us) and we’ve realized that everyone (yes, every person, no matter their background, skillset or restrictions) should have the opportunity to live life to the fullest, just like us. Wouldn’t you want to recharge your soul, get in tune with your skills and desires whilst seeing the world, knowing that at the end of the two years it would have only meant you lost out on a mere US$600*? That’s probably less than you’ve spent living your structured 9-to-5 life, staying put in one place – am I right?
Well, our evolved mission now is to liberate as many bored, unhappy and hungry-for-more-because-there-really-is-more-to-life people out there. Whilst gathering research, we’ve chatted to students in Brazil, lawyers in the U.K., pilots in Switzerland, sales executives in U.S.A, web developers from the Netherlands, and photographers back home in South Africa, all wanting to live on their own terms, wanting to see the world, craving a life like ours…and now we want to share the love even further.
So here’s our plan:
Work more: We have a couple big projects in mind to teach YOU and liberate YOU to design a life that gives YOU the option to travel as much as you like – just like we’ve been able to. Life’s more fun when you have people to share the experiences with anyway, so the quicker we can empower peeps to do what we did, the more fun it’ll be for all of us.
Travel less: We will continue to see the world by doing various housesitting, volunteering and sponsored gigs (as that is our life now), but we’ll aim to move around less, clocking up fewer kilometers (thereby staying in places for longer) so that we have more focused time to work on our big projects.
We must also mention, that although our travel goals have lessened distance wise, our focus is shifting once again to being more creatively challenged (as we have felt ourselves becoming a little complacent over the last few months), and in doing so, liberating others and (hopefully) finding innovative ways to change the world (that initial purpose has not changed). We’ll be trying new things on the content front (our board shots on Instagram, for one, are getting a little revamp), we’re aiming to launch a learning platform (almost-daily updates on this in our Instagram Stories – so follow along), and we’re writing our first book (YAY) so here’s to How Far From Home 2.0 – aiming to get everyone (not just us) far from home.
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*Looking at our bank account after two years of travel, we have managed to regain the savings we used, concluding that our only loss has been US$600. We’ll unpack this in detail in a future post.
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