Life's too short to play it safe
From December 1st until December 13th midnight, PST, you can vote for your favorite November 2011, “My Gutsy Story.”
To VOTE, please go to the poll on the sidebar of any of the 5 “My Gutsy Story,” submissions, (not on the homepage.)
Here are the 5 stories. Only ONE vote per person.
1). Rhonda Hayes
3). Lauri Kubuitsile
4). Jill Fales
5). Nikki Ah Wong
The winner will be announced on December 14th.
Good Luck to all of you. Your stories are amazing and inspiring.
At 49 years old, I was a manager in a non-profit organisation with a great salary, a company car, a phone and laptop. At 50, I became sort of motorbike riding gypsy, with no regular income. I spent the whole year travelling, exploring and living on an average of $100 a week.
It was a magical year.
I have always loved travelling and started at an early age. When I was three years old, my parents left England for New Zealand, the land of clean, green pastures, rugged hills, and described in my childhood as the quarter acre, pavlova paradise. I feel exceedingly fortunate to have grown up there.
I took holidays to Fiji, Singapore and England in my late teens. I got married in Samoa, and lived there for a year, sometimes staying in homes with no glass in the windows, no flushing toilet and a shower that was a hose attached to a tree branch.
Even when I had five sons, we managed a trip to Disneyland with a weekend In Hawaii and another week in Samoa.
I loved being a mother but my marriage was always hard work.
Finally, just before I turned fifty, and the second to youngest turned 18, I finally realised my marriage would never be any better and moved out into a flat of my own. I left my husband the house and children so he could continue his home based business. He repaid me by taking the youngest, who was almost 12, to Australia.
I love New Zealand and it surprised me to see so many of my friends and family move to Australia. I thought it was just a bigger New Zealand, with koalas, kangaroos, giant spiders and poisonous snakes.
I wanted to be closer to my youngest, so I decided to follow.
Before I could set a date to leave, an alcoholic I met online began to cause trouble for me. He called the police to report me missing and then sent hate letters to my employer. Soon after, I was made redundant from my well-paid job.
It seemed like the ideal time to go to Australia.
Luckily, I had also met a wonderful Australian man while online dating. He was my physical and moral support as I left New Zealand to follow my son.
I applied for a live in role at a health retreat but it was only two days before my flight that I received a call saying I could stay with them while they processed my application. The retreat was not what I expected and the job I applied for never materialised, but is set me up as an adventurer. Once I had made the leap, I decided to continue.
After the generous gift of a motorbike from my friend, I began to travel thousands of miles on my own up and down the east coast and mid-western highways. I took up scuba diving again after a thirty year hiatus and began hunting for geocaches*[1] in remote and diverse spots.
Nikki and her motorbike
To solve the problem of a place to live, I began to house sit. I moved into my first suburban home with one small bike bag and a backpack and began a new life. I stayed in 15 homes in one year. A dilapidated bungalow in the city, a recently constructed urban ghetto development, a Midwest country town, and several up market homes in inner city Brisbane, including one in a multi-million dollar gated community.
In between, I travelled and explored. I spent a night in a luxury High Rise overlooking the city and many more nights in a pub rooms that were no better than the back of a stock truck. I even slept in a friend’s car.
It has been a wild and adventurous ride and the adventure isn’t over yet.
I have plans to head to Greece, South America and Malta, the land of my birth. I want to visit Spain, Turkey and as many European countries as possible.
I expect to accompany my friend as he sails from New Zealand to Australia and one day I might try International Housesitting.
I have adopted the quote from the movie called Mr Magorium’s Emporium and now refer to myself as a wonder aficionado. While some people find the years when their children are grown are difficult, I love my new life.
I have written a book about my marvellous year and hope my story inspires others to take a chance on a dream and try something radically new, especially in their later years.
There is a whole wide wonderful world still waiting to be explored.
[1] Geocaching is explained in more detail in my book “Housesitting in Australia – Big Adventures on a Tiny Budget”.
*****
Author of “Housesitting in Australia –Big Adventures on a Tiny Budget”.
Mr Magorium said it best. I am a wonder aficionado. I love life and adventure.
I am a life coach, mentor, house sitter, writer and lifelong learner. I am also a grandmother and the mother of six wonderful sons. I have been exploring the East Coast of Australia on my motorbike.
I am almost ready to release my new book called “Housesitting in Australia – Big Adventure on a Tiny Budget”. It is a story of my transformation from stay at home mother, to a motorbike-riding adventurer. I am very happy and I want to share that happiness with others.
*****
Thanks Nikki for this Gutsy change in your life and for sharing your adventures in Housesitting and traveling around Australia. I can think of several people who would love to start a new life, away from the “conventional” life, and this might inspire them.
Sonia
*****
To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (NEW VIDEO)
REMEMBER TO VOTE:
Our first poll starts December 1st-December 14th to vote for your favorite “My Gutsy Story” of the month.
Thank you to those who have already submitted your “My Gutsy Story” to Gutsy Living. We are saving them for future posts and have five sponsors for November. We shall be getting more exciting sponsors in the future.
Please leave your comments and questions for Nikki Ah Wong below, and please share her” My Gutsy Story” with others who need some motivation and inspiration.
My pre-Thanksgiving dinner workout.
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” MARCEL PROUST.
Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. A time to be with family and to reflect on all the positives in your life.
Here is how I started my Thanksgiving Day.
How about you?
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.
Remember the feeling of a field trip day at school? A diversion from the routine in the classroom. A palpable excitement exuding from the students wiggling in line to board the broad steps of the school bus.
The permission slip was the linchpin to any field trip. I remember carefully placing the detached bottom portion with my mom’s signature in my backpack. I did not want to be one of the poor misfortunates that the teachers warned us about – kids who did not have permission would be left behind to do school work in a class the grade below us.
In a sense, the adventure I am on right now – The Great American Field Trip began with the same first step.
Permission.
This year, the time had come. The kids were old enough. I signed on the proverbial dotted line and gave myself permission to toss aside the map society provides and instead follow my heart.
I began planning our departure for what I named The Great American Field Trip. Driving across America roadschooling our four kids.
This semester, I am the principal, the teacher, the librarian, the learner, the travel agent, the parent and the bus, err…minivan driver.
Think one room school house meets Around the World in 80 Days. OK, not literally the world, but 26 states. We have an eighth grader, fifth grader, fourth grader and first grader. Two girls, two boys. The Class Clown, the Organized Germaphobe, the Smashed Penny Collector, and the Teenager.
School on the Road is a bit different. There is no front office. No school cafeteria, desks, textbooks, P.E. uniforms, tardy slips, grades, or bells. Also absent – a safety net of predetermined standards and curriculum.
Every day is field trip day.
We left on August 26, 2011. As we pulled out of our driveway, in Costa Mesa, CA, and joined the drivers on the road I could not help think that many no doubt were headed to do some back to school shopping.
I felt like I was beginning a back to life spree.
More than halfway through our trip now, our GPA’s are soaring. But just like many things on the road we have created our own definition of the now obsolete Grade Point Average. In its stead, a Growth Perspective Achievement.
Growth happens when we expand our horizons, are forced to think in new ways. Growing also includes increased patience and empathy.
Perspective is tied to the realization that how we view our world is shaped by our experiences and environment. Attempting to see the world through other’s lenses has been a corner stone of this trip. As we seek to answer the question, “What is an American?” We realize there are many correct answers.
Achievement encompasses setting goals and achieving them. Taking risks, both small and big.
Unlike the conventional system of grading, there is no quantitative way to measure our GPA. There is no ceiling. At the end of the semester, I will not be able to reduce what we have learned to an average of numbers or scores.
We are learning what learning really is.
One cannot learn alone just as one cannot teach alone. I am a student just as much as my kids are. We have learned so much from the voices of the past. Those, who despite massive challenges, pursued the promise of a better life, a better country. Their innovation, creativity and perseverance have inspired us. We stand on their shoulders. We are visiting the places where they lived, stood, worked or bled. We are reading the words they wrote or spoke.
Some are famous like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Marin Luther King. But most are ordinary people. A soldier on a battlefield who cannot be identified before he is buried. A Lakota woman, who in the face of losing her family, land, and way of life, continues to teach her daughters how to weave baskets.
We have many living teachers who have enriched our GPAs. Wayd, our river rafting guide in Oregon. Matt, the Park Ranger who brought Gettysburg to life. Dwight, the farmer in Iowa who taught us about corn and took us fishing. The herd of bison in Yellowstone National Park, the majestic old growth redwood trees on the Northernmost tip of California. The World War II Veterans we met at the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C. Susan, who led us on a bike tour through the Tidewater lands in Maryland where Harriet Tubman was a Slave before escaping.
Books have been as important as fuel on this trip. Hannibal, Missouri was a highlight, boyhood home of Samuel Clemens. My kids’ memories of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will not be of cramming for a test. Instead, I hope they will remember listening to the audio book while driving through beautiful scenery of the Great Plains and Midwest. They will remember pretending to paint Tom Sawyer’s fence in Hannibal and licking an ice cream on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. Like the river, Twain runs deep within them now.
Mark Twain once said:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”
He also said:
“Don’t let school interfere with your education”
I think these quotations speak directly to the heart of our adventure. I hope long after The Great American Field Trip is over, my kids have learned among many lessons, one of the most important: have the guts to give yourself permission to throw out conventional maps and trust your inner compass.
*****
The Fales Children on
Payton Fales
Janey Fales
Sally Fales
Wyatt Fales
*****
Thanks Jill for this great adventure which will inspire so many of us to take the plunge. Your children are adorable and I truly believe you are giving a huge “gift” to your children: something they will treasure for life.
To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page.
Our first poll starts December 1st-December 14th to vote for your favorite “My Gutsy Story” of the month.
Thank you to those who have already submitted your “My Gutsy Story” to Gutsy Living. We are saving them for future posts and have five sponsors for November. We shall be getting more exciting sponsors in the future.
Please leave your comments and questions for Jill Fales below and please share her inspiring story.
.
Who goes sky-diving on their 80th birthday?
Who rows the distance between Paris and New York in just over two years at 80?
Doris Walsh does and you know why?
Because after her loving husband of 59 years passed away, four years ago, Doris decided she could either:
So Doris decided to start exercising and developed a passion for rowing.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Doris in her cozy home over a cup of freshly brewed coffee. When Doris greeted me, I thought I had the wrong address and glanced at the unit number, just to make sure. This woman seemed too young and bouncy to be eighty. I kept comparing her to relatives and friends of mine in their eighties, and thought she must be hiding some secret that all of us need to hear about. (Her secret below.)
“Where would you like to sit?” she asked, pointing to three different locations in her clutter-free living area. I picked her dining room table and Doris placed a small dish of wafers, to go along with our coffee. I noticed her fuchsia polished nails matched her lipstick.
Her tidy home and toned body made me realize: this woman takes care of herself and is disciplined.
Doris Walsh was born on February 1st, 1931, in Rosemead, California. She married at 17, and had seven children in ten years. All of her adult children are between 52-62. She now has 24 grandkids and 17 great grand children.
After some background questions about how many siblings she had, “six” and whether she had a happy childhood, “yes” I wanted to prove something that I truly believed. In order to become “gutsy” in life, you must have traveled as a child, and Doris proved me wrong. She said she was rather shy as a child and never moved around more than a 45-mile radius, her whole life. She does believe that being raised to be “independent” as a child and not “coddled,” is very important though.
Doris believes she has done three major Gutsy things in her life:
Doris rowing and listening to music
Doris says that rowing relaxes and takes away any stress. She listens to music and gets motivated when she hears her husband singing, “Some Enchanted Evening” their favorite song when he was alive.
She has become a rowing champion and was interviewed in the Orange County Register.
“I put on my music and just row away. Since I made my goal, I have cut back and now train 3-4 times a week for an hour. I walk here and back home as well. That’s about a mile.”
Doris has a secret: it’s called discipline and setting goals. She says, anytime she says she’s going to accomplish something, she sticks with it.
It’s obvious that Doris and her husband were deeply in love during the entire 59 years they were married. Her daughter showed up during our interview and said, “My parents were joined at the hip. They were the perfect example of soul-mates.”
Doris told me that Faith, is what gets her through everything in life. She knows that she will join her husband one day.
When I asked her what other Gutsy things she would like to do, she mentioned “Sky jumping.” She said it’s different from bungee jumping, which she refuses to do as it can detach your retina. Doris said there’s sky-jumping in New Zealand where you can jump from a tall building. I looked it up and think this might be what she wants to do next.
Plus, Doris wants to keep sky-diving on every single birthday. The problem is her daughters don’t want to.
Perhaps I should volunteer on Doris’ 81st birthday on February 1st 2012, as I’ve never tried.
The secret is: Setting goals, discipline and sticking with it, as well as exercising as you get older. This is how you can make your life exciting and Gutsy at any age. Doris Walsh is proof. I forgot to mention Doris also walks everywhere, even to the grocery store, and does yoga which explains her flexible, youthful stride.
What do you think? Have you met any older Gutsy people? If so, please share what you admire about them?
Don’t forget our weekly “My Gutsy Story” contest. Great sponsors and prizes. Please read guidelines and submit here.
