I’m in my room in Kata Beach, Phuket – thinking back and trying to remembert how exactly it is that I ended up here.
A mere 4 months ago, I was living in Johannesburg and stuck in a very large rut. At 30 years old: I was depressingly single, still living with my parents, working for my dad, wasting time with the same bad boy stereotypes, shopping up thunder storms on credit and going nowhere REALLY quickly.
So what happened that I landed myself indefinitely on a tropical island thousands of miles from the start line?
A number of factors led to the aspiration and inspiration of me taking that first step out of my comfort zone. Or rather – a number of people, who had managed to free themselves and escape society’s shackles .
For the last year or so – I’ve had to endure nauseating photographs on Facebook of my buddy Hailey floating around the world in her little pink, hippy bubble. The photo-torture began with her snowboarding in the States for who knows how long and then a month long trip to ‘Incredible India’ – a place MY heart and soul yearn for. Seriously – it got to the point where if I had to see one more photograph of her sitting on a cliff at sunset, overlooking some ancient ruins or lying on some white sanded, turquoise watered beach in Thailand or packing one more effing surfboard into a van in Australia – I would have confirmed deletion of her friendship with indecorous conviction! What made HER so special that she could just flit from one country to another? And why was I sitting here, in Purgatory, chained to this desk??? These were the questions that aspired in me.
Then there’s my good friend Mawa – who I have been green with envy over since the moment I met her. Her chosen career path is that of an actuary. I still don’t know WHAT it is that actuary’s do, but what I do know is that they are really intelligent human beings.
She’s also a pro-boardrider.
I say boardrider, because she currently dominates the South African snowboarding, flowboarding and wakeskating scene. This year alone has seen her take 2nd place at the SA Cable Wakeskate Championship; her usual top spot at SA Snowboarding Champs and first prize at the major SA Flowboarding competiton in May – which happened to be an all expenses paid trip to Singapore for the World flowboarding Cup in October. And then she surfs for fun.
How much luckier and talented can one girl be?
She’s beautiful, super intelligent – goes harder than most boys on a board and has Billabong, DC and Dakine sending her BOXES of clothes throughout the year.
I’ll tell you how much luckier she is.
She managed to come to a compromise with the company she works for after she tried to quit her job to go snowboarding in the States. They offered her more money and still she said no – obviously – because sitting in an office all day sucks when you’re spending the remainder of your life on a board in any one of the four corners of the earth!
She stills works for them. From her laptop, where ever it is that she’s chosen to lay her weary boards to sleep for the night after they’ve worked so hard all day… Which – for 2009 has already included Morocco, Indonesia, Poland, South America and soon to be Maldives and Singapore.
WHY OH WHY?!?!
Others who have added to the travel torment I felt, include a pair of very naughty British brothers who are permanently wakeboarding their way into country’s, party’s and an insatiable wealth of girls pants!
They too broke their mould and society’s shackles and all I can think about is WHY wasn’t I having THAT much fun when I was 20???
Between these two girls and boys – I was forced to take inventory of who I was and what I had achieved and experienced.
Somewhere along the way I lost my Nicky’ness’ and I had begun reaching breaking point. These people (through being true to themselves) made me realise that I was not being true to myself and living MY life to MY full potential and that I can break my own mould if I want to, and hopefully inspire other people along the way to live their lives, and not merely exist. All I had to do was get up and go!
So I did it! I packed a bag and flew to Norway to meet up with my good friend Chantal, where we worked our asses off for 3 months and saved every Norwegian Krone we could, while plotting our quest to induce some travel torture of our own.
So here it is – Girls getting global!
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Nicky Vermeulen