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Freedom is probably my favourite word. If there is anything that I want from life, it’s freedom. True freedom.

It’s interesting how we change during our lives. As a child we are completely free. We are happy to attempt anything, laugh and play and run and smile and whatever happens happens. Never thinking of the consequences, just acting in the moment.

As we begin to grow up though, we learn that there are consequences to our actions. While this is healthy – learning for ourselves that we can get hurt from jumping from something too high – we also learn a lot from our parents. We are told not to climb too high – “you will fall and hurt yourself, come down please”, told to slow down on our bike – “don’t go too fast, you will hurt yourself” and told not to eat too many lollies – “you will feel sick if you eat too many of those”. It’s not a negative thing – parents look out for the well-being of their children.

From the innocent advice given by our parents when we were young, we are then bombarded with why not to do things. Fear on TV, fear in the paper, fear everywhere. If we aren’t given the advice directly by the TV, our parents are. Stay in line and everything will be ok, you will be safe, but be different, and who knows what will happen!

Most people, myself included to an extent, grow up into people that just conform and do the same as everyone else. We no longer laugh and run around and jump and do whatever we choose. We know that if we laugh at the wrong thing people can be offended. We know if we run around and jump up and down we will look like an idiot, so we take the safe option.

We all call it “growing up” and “being sensible”, but from my experience most people hate the constraints in which they live… They crave the freedom that they had as a child, it just takes a long time to realise this.

It seems almost a textbook lifestyle cycle for the Baby Boomers – my parents’ generation. They were born, free spirited fun loving children, then “grew up” and did the “sensible” thing and bought houses, had families and so on. Now as the kids are moving out, they are wanting their freedom back. Some may be rich enough to buy a holiday house, some travel around the world by plane or on a cruise ship, while others buy a caravan and drive around, stopping wherever they please. It’s becoming less and less common for them to just grow old in their house nowadays.

It’s been something that I have been aware of for a few years now, but only now am I piecing it all together. Humans are creatures that are born in nature. We need our freedom to be sane. Early this year my fiancee and I made the decision to lead a life of change. We will still buy a house. We will still “be sensible”, but we will force ourselves to retain some level of freedom in our life. By “mixing it up” we hope to lead an exciting life, with plenty of choice and an easy going lifestyle. We don’t need a lot, but we need our freedom.

I’ve come to realise that while I need routine, I also like change in that routine too.

Contradictory, I know, but like all of the important things in my life they always end up conflicting.

This time however, it just works. For instance, I like to have a set time that I go to bed and wake up, usually have the same thing for breakfast every day, and so on. So my day to day routine is ideally as similar as possible to how it’s been for a long time.

With that said though, I just can’t understand how some people manage to do the same thing forever. Working for the government it’s no surprise that there are some “stagnant” people around the place. While I can see the temptation to stay in your comfort zone forever – with no room for failure, I just can’t understand how you can actually do it in practice.

I’m a pretty lazy person, but I just need the challenge. I need the change to mix it all up and force myself to try new things.

While certain situations can be a challenge at the time, most people will find that after making it through that challenge, they are so much more confident and happy, because of what they have achieved. Change is the ideal way to kick start your life again.

Throughout my career I have had a new job about once every year and a half to two years. Up until my current job I have had no scope to “move up the ladder” in those workplaces, so I had the option of sitting stagnant in the same job for quite some time, or moving on.

In each situation, I have chosen to move on once I feel that I have mastered the job, and that I have contributed to my team and employer.

Each move challenges me, and forces me to learn new skills and information – something that I would not have learned in my previous employment.

This is why I believe that change is good.

It might be change of job, or something major like moving interstate or overseas, or even just picking up a new hobby. Regardless of what the actual change is, it provides the opportunity to continue to grow as a person, and stay fresh.

I posted an entry called “Is this living?” not so long ago. In the entry I mentioned a motocross rider that was more afraid of working a boring 9-5 job than dying doing something that really made him feel alive.

On the weekend I had to go to work as my team was moving some servers. It was a full weekend’s work and on the whole I thoroughly enjoyed it – I enjoy the physical work for a change. Unfortunately though, one of the team members invited to “help” was just an absolute waste of space. All he did was get in the way and essentially cable things incorrectly, which I would then have to come back and do properly later anyway. Long story short he cost us time and money by being there and we would have been ten times better off if he just stayed at home.

This is a man that only wears clothes in shades of brown or grey, smells like a stale closet, and by the sounds of it the most exciting thing he has ever done was catch the bus to work when his car had broken down.

The whole weekend he’d try and strike up a conversation with anyone, but it was just never about anything important. It was always about his cats, or how he liked earl grey tea or something. About two hours into the second day of working with him I realised that he is a man with pretty much nothing else in his life than dinner and TV at home, driving to and from work, and working itself. What a sad life!

While I don’t want to come across as arrogant, I suppose it gives me a bit of a boost – my life is just so much more exciting.

It’s just further confirmed my plans for life. I just can’t do the “same old same old” that a lot of people tend to sink into. It seems to be a typical theme for Gen Y’s to need to live their life with plenty of change to the Baby Boomers in this respect, and maybe it is just our impatient nature, but to be honest I don’t really care. Life’s too short to just do the same thing over and over and over. I need to mix it up a LOT!

Who am I? I’m a hypocrit…usually anyway. I’m discovering myself. The last year has been an interesting one for me. This blog will hopefully document my discoveries and the changes in my life, while provide some sort of information to the interweb world.

I’m a Gen Y from Australia. Have had a relatively good life and very little to complain about. My parents broke up when I was a teenager but it didn’t really affect me in a negative way for the long term. If anything it’s made me more resilient than my friends. All things considered, life is good. But there’s always room for improvement, right? Whether it be for myself, for others, for the environment, etc.

So where am I at now? Financially pretty comfy. About to get married to the love of my life, and fairly content with my fitness.

But what do I want to change? Diet is a big one. I don’t really want my fiancee to have to work either (she works too hard at the moment). I don’t really want to work full time later on in life. I’d like to live somewhat independant of cars, despite how much I love them. Bikes are the future for me. I guess I just want to be healthy and happy, and I want the same for my fiancee, and our friends and family.

Anyway, I promised myself this wouldn’t be a massive rant. This is my intro. I want to keep it relatively normal. From here on out the posts will be unstructured, random, and generally off on a tangent.