SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO JUST SAY YES BEFORE YOU'RE READY
Each year I give myself a little challenge to learn a new skill to the level where I'm good enough to get paid.
You see, however much you love doing something, if there is an income attached to it there's a pressure than can detract from passion. If I ever feel like I'm getting bored or tired of something that I really enjoy, the pressure of money can turn that passion into disgust.
So, multiple skills mean being able to leave a job in the fallow field, left alone to grow in the heart again.
In 2015 I decided that filmmaking would be my new 'art' and within a couple of weeks I'd somehow managed to secure a 'job' travelling the world making films for a company called, wait for it...Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
I'm not kidding.
It was supposed to be a whopping eight month journey but the campaign cut short after a few weeks thanks to a company takeover. Not to be deterred, I continued on my travels off my own back, searching for filmmaking jobs that would cover my travel, food and accommodation.
All the basics in return for a film and pictures, with a momentous, memory-filled year in return.
This is what happened.
I went to Bali and filmed some surfers.
And then went north to Ubud and spent a week at Bambu Indah
Most mornings at Bambu Indah the owner, John Hardy, leads a stroll through the local area encouraging people to chat and pick up litter. It's called Spearing Garbage, Talking Trash
Eventually, Australia called. Having skateboarded across this huge land many years earlier it was a veritable pleasure to traverse between Perth and Sydney on one of the world's great rail journeys, the Indian Pacific.
Once on the east coast I was whisked into the New South Wales bush by Vic Widman, who runs the largest 4WD drive school in Australia.
It just so happened that my first driving experience (at the ripe old age of 35) took place right here...
After hill climbs and bog holes I returned west to a small island off the coast, named Rottnest. For I'd been dared to get myself a selfie with the world's happiest animal, the Quokka.
Europe then beckoned, as did a week of kaleidoscopic changes from a balcony in France
