Jane’s Mottos
I was interviewed for a podcast the other day and my two mottos for life came out in discussion. I thought I’d share them with you.
1. How can I make this happen?
If I have an idea, my ‘go to’ statement is “how can I make this happen?” I don’t go into all of the why nots at first. I go through how I can bring it into reality.
When we started casually housesitting, travelling and writing articles and books at the same time, we noticed we weren’t home much. So I wondered how could we be, what we now call, location independent. I didn’t know anyone else who was an analogue nomad back then, (except for grey nomads).
As I ticked off steps of how it could work, I eventually would come to an obstacle, but by then I was so excited by the possibility, I would actively seek a solution.
Some solutions to obstacles may be inconvenient or tough to overcome but the joy and excitement of what was possible far outweighed any problems that popped up.
How can we make it work? San Juan Islands, Washington State
2. Ask for what we want!
Here’s where the two mottos coincide. We didn’t know other travel writers or book writers. We worked out our writing system by trial and error. In essence, we made up our own system.
One example is many travel writers go on group famil trips. (A famil is a familiarity trip for a group of writers and photographers) For a while there, we didn’t know about these. We would ask the people who ran things, what they had to offer travel writers. Having a bit of article writing and photography experience under our belt certainly helped.
Then the publishers or tourist companies would come back with an offer or not. By asking for what we wanted, the worse response we got was no. Invariably however, it was a big yes. Some of our best adventures came about because we had the audacity to ask for what we wanted.
This photo is of our trip in a Utah (courtesy of Utah Tourism) with a Jeep Wrangler (courtesy of Jeep)
Of course, there is rejection and as travel writers, rejection is common. Even the most experienced heralded writers have rejections. They are not rejecting you personally, they simply don’t answer. It can be a bit soul destroying if you let the nos or no answers get to you. So, any positives that come along get our full attention.
That is why when I ask people if they want to change their health, I am asking because “what I want” is for people to feel good, and we would like them to be able to live life with energy and enthusiasm. I don’t want people to feel exhausted all the time.
It’s like being a travel writer. If people don’t answer, so be it. Just keep swimming as a famous fish once said.
