Shock.

In Retrospect, shock is something that happened to you. A series of moments that are gradually forgotten. A numbness you choose not to acknowledge.

In the moment of shock it's something different. It becomes something reactionary: fight or flight. Before the hysterics, before the numbness and before the reality of the situation hits, all that matters is you. It's fight or flight. Do you react strategically, how do I deal with everything in front of me, or with a singular thought in mind, how do I save me.

I'm a fighter. I always have been and I always will be. I process a situation quickly, sometimes too quick, and react. I try to think about more than what put me in shock. In fact, I try to ignore it all together and focus on a solution. This is itself can be a fault, you need to deal with a problem head on in order to find the best route of action, but when you're in shock that's not how your brain works.

You think of how fleeting moments can be. How a life amount to being too short; not enough time. You think of the things you wish you could have done, of the things that you have done and most importantly you think of the people that matter the most to you. Lingering on the edge of every thought is the person who can read your mind and bring you back away from the shock. In to the now; back to peace.

I discovered the place that gave me the reason for why I started to travel.

I'd always been content with the life that I had, with the friends I had and the place I lived.


I went to an essential place for some of the things I wanted in life; food, culture and beauty in the feel of a place. I travelled to Italy for ten days to experience the home of it all.
I spent an outstanding day taking photos, eating and sitting in place when I was in Rome. I started to get to know some people who inspire me to this day.
I went to Pompeii where I honestly and thoroughly felt the energy of the place. It haunts me to this day the shuttering of my back when I walked through there.
I visited Sorento, the place that held my gaze with its beautiful cliff side by the pier before going to Capri, where I had Octopus for the first time and fell in love with eating anything.
I took a cooking class that opened my eyes up to the magical aspect of food.
Had a beautiful day at the beach.

Obviously and desperately fell in love with Southern Italy.
I fell it love with travelling.


And now I sit here with tears of joy in my eyes, watching sunset after writing this. I've found a singular place in Asia that has given me the best day of my life. I fell desperately in love with a place that day. Met a stranger who would later go on to inspire me to follow an old passion with some of the most awe inspiring conversations.

I found him on a hike over the island that entered on to the most beautiful bay where the beach ran for miles and the sand squeaked clean.
Talked and took pictures for hours until the sun sank in to the ocean.
When it was pitch black a group of us jumped in to the ocean on the east side of the island to see one of the wonders of the world.

Swimming in a black ocean with underwater glowing lights all around us.

With the milky way above us.

There's a beautiful thing called the courtesy wave.

Every driver knows it, but there’s nothing like what it means when you’re on the open road. Put your hand out, say hello. Say I acknowledge you, I understand you. I’ve travelled this road, I know the beauty in the bleakness, in the regular, in the vast distance of the horizon. In the green, blue and grey.

My eyes are your eyes, my hands closed like yours and legs stiff like the trees we pass. We watch the sun move across the sky and the moon peek in to say hello, bonjour, hola, g’day, buono notte, howdy, neho, annyung haseyo.

Brisbane Living

Personally, coming to Brisbane and deciding to live in a hostel has been an eye opening experience. I still write with my red spice road pens, I still want my personal space and I haven’t learned to not work.

Considering this, I’ve still slowed down to the Queensland pace. When I’ve finished my ascent to the top of the hill where the strip club and church are neighbours, I start my descent home.

A descent from a busy day to when it hits you that the day is about to come to a stand still. Before dinner, before a quiet movie or evening drinks there is the walk down the beautiful hill that is Cricket St.

Countless moments to stop have been taken at the top. There is a particularly breathtaking spot in Brisbane when the sun is setting. Impossible to capture with a camera there is always a moment when the sun is shinning in an ethereal way. When the clouds are alive and colours come to rest. It’s Mount Kootha that takes the day away with its 4 staggered pillars of red lights. Some nights it’s where the moon comes to sleep, but it’s always the direction I choose to face when I’ve rested in Brisbane.

I'm A Long Term Traveller

The difficulties of being a “long-term” traveler is that you have to work in order to live. If you’re life is to travel and see the world, it means staying in places for a relatively long time.

In some instances you find yourself making a home of a new city, spending almost every dollar you earn. Allowing yourself enough financial stability to move to a new city, but not quite enough to properly travel somewhere inspiringly new. Then you decide that you need to be somewhere new, somewhere foreign enough that you don’t know the in’s and out’s, but you are able to acquire a job that will let you get some savings. All is good and well, for about 10-13 weeks until it starts to feel like another new home.

This is where I currently find myself. I’m merely a few hours work-wise away from earning enough to travel to another country, another experience. Instead of putting my head down, I reward my proximity with unnecessary pleasures and excessive expenditures in an expensive country. Effectively keeping myself here a little longer, doing the same thing I could be doing anywhere.

Long term travel; long term because you are too busy living life as it comes, but not frugal enough to speed past the experience of every new place.

Then there comes the time when you don’t want to see you hard-earned money go. You finally have steady, good paying work and you want to keep it, because you constantly see people around you struggling to find any work at all. Fortunately in my case I have a visa that tells me I have to stop working and that I have to go. The overbearing idea of spending it all is hard, but necessary. It’s the reason you’ve worked so hard in the first place; to go somewhere new, do new things in an interesting setting. To become more than what you are; to grow.

Never Have I Ever

You introduce your friends to a game they've never played.

Never have I ever seen my friends tell so many stories about growing up.

Drink up.

There Are Perfect Mornings

When you wake up to the first rays of light long before your alarm.

When you walk down streets that share the names of your friends.

When you scout out the perfect coffee shop with a warm interior, elegantly melodic music and a view. A view of the sun perfectly hitting the branches of the green forest across the road.

When you enjoy your breakfast gazing upon the mountains to the west.

When serenity hits.

When you write.