Hey!

This week I’ve felt a bit lost, as usual, but also hopeful. I’ve also played with the idea of full-time travel or at least traveling to some places I’ve always wanted to go to. It seems that there are quite a lot of people who travel for a living. They then make money through working with brands and either having them sponsor their videos (on platforms like YouTube and Instagram) or working with them directly (i.e. shooting and making content directly for them).

There does seem to be some sort of barrier to entry to get started. You need to know how to make decent videos (and/or writing but that’s another whole thing) and you need to have made quite a few for brands to even find out about you or listen to what you have to say. That being said, it doesn’t seem impossible at all. And all the people who do it didn’t start with a huge budget either. So, I’m toying with the idea of traveling the world for a while, but maybe I should just start with some places in Europe and film it all.

If I enjoy it and I enjoy the content that I get out of it then I could perhaps do something similar going forward. I don’t want to make just ordinary travel videos, though. If I start making videos from different places in the world, I still want to have something to say. I don’t want the scenery to do all the talking for me, even though that would probably work too. I want to either help people directly through the content or help them feel something and see the world differently.

I feel inspired by channels like Yes Theory but also Bernardo Bacalhau, Wholesomesimon on YouTube, and Josh Guvi on Instagram. I also saw multiple videos of people cycling extreme distances over months or years, like from the UK to Australia which seemed insane but also very cool. I might not do that (yet ;) ) but it was inspiring nonetheless. I’m thinking about getting a drone because of watching all this travel footage. Haha, we’ll see. If you happen to have done such a trip, feel free to DM me.

Anyway, that’s just my brainstorming around different ways to make traveling and content creation work together. I’m not sure, though, if it’s actually something I want to do. But I kind of feel that way about a lot of things at the moment. I think the solution is to just try stuff. So I think that’s what I’ll do.

However, I feel more strongly than ever that I’m not looking for a traditional career. This has kind of developed over the past year but definitely since the end of my last job. I’m not going to make any arguments about that here but for me, at least, I think I want a life where I have control of my time and what I work on as well as who I work with. And I think that’s more possible now than a lot of people have realized. I’m not saying that everyone should seek a different path but I think most people should at least consider it.

In reading The Pathless Path this week I’ve also learned about how recent the idea of work as the center of your life is. I think we sometimes forget that this idea of life revolving around work is pretty new and didn’t really exist before industrialization.

The ancient Greek translation for work was “not-at-leisure”. In Aristotle's words, “we are not at leisure in order to be at leisure”. Now, this is flipped. Leisure has become a break from work.

Now, most of us when asked what we do respond with our job titles, as if that describes us as people. Now, I do this too but maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we should rethink our ideas around work. The book talks about things like this in more detail. I highly recommend it to anyone who feels a bit lost in their career or in picking their path in life. It has helped me see things differently, and I haven’t even finished it yet.

Video

This week I watched an amazing documentary called Project Iceman. You can find it now on Yes Theory’s YouTube channel. It was an amazing documentary and we watched it together as a family on Monday evening. It’s about a guy from Denmark who decides that he is going to be the first person to complete an Ironman on Antarctica. If you don’t know, an Ironman is a triathlon consisting of a 3.8km swim followed by a 180km bike ride and ending with a marathon (42.2km run). It is seriously tough to do and to do it in Antarctica was thought to be impossible. But this guy did it. His name is Anders Hofman and he hadn’t done anything similar before, just a “normal” (haha, normal) Ironman. Yet, he put his mind to it and we get to follow his journey from the idea to Antarctica. It’s highly inspirational and completely free to watch which is incredible. Also, someone please give Ammar from Yes Theory an Oscar for directing it. Seriously. It’s that good. Now, go watch it. (Or finish reading first :) )

Book

The Pathless Path. Shocking, I know. Read it if you feel confused about work and what you want to spend your time doing, maybe there’s a different way.

Quote

“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

That's a very limited life - life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact.

Everything that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your things that other people can use.”

This is, of course, from Steve Jobs and I first heard it this week. It’s so true. Sometimes you need to hear something in a good quote to internalize and think about it. And if everything was indeed created by people who were not any smarter than us then that gives us immense freedom to change how we want our lives to be. Listen to the full quote here.

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”- T.S. Eliot

This one also made me think this week. Both of these were from a Yes Theory video by the way. Anyway, maybe I need to explore a bit: try new things, and go to new places, before I can come back to where I started.

Life Hack

Bohemian Rhapsody is great for cold showers, especially now in winter. I tend to put on the song and shower warm up until the first ‘Mama!’ and then I do cold until ‘Figaro!’ and finish on warm. It’s a more fun way to do cold showers and finishing on warm also helps with getting your body temperature up again. Otherwise, I feel cold for hours because it is winter in Sweden and it’s harder to get warm again. Side note, it might make you hate the song (the middle part anyway) and an immense satisfaction throughout your whole body whenever you hear ‘figaro’. I don’t know where you would hear it, but it’s worth noting.

Hope you have a great rest of the week and I’ll probably write something similar next Friday!