I have had a varied and interesting life story so far at the age of 39. When I left school, I wanted to be an archaeologist, archivist or librarian. So, to achieve my dreams I went and studied both Archaeology and Librarianship at university. Then when I graduated, I ended up working in records management managing more modern daily records for government. Then when I was in my 30s, I was getting bored with doing just recordkeeping all the time, i.e., managing the daily records and wanted to do something else as well. So, I went on to study maritime and logistics at AMC. I was working in recordkeeping for a port authority and had also spent 12 years of my life working as a volunteer at a maritime museum and wanted to combine my interest in ports and maritime with my knowledge and work in a maritime role for either a port authority or shipping firm. So, move out of doing just records management and do something else within the port or a shipping firm. A more senior role. I still loved doing archiving, history research and the rest I was doing, but my daily records management job was getting boring for me. So, in 2016 I quit my records job at the port authority to go start my own maritime consulting firm.
In 2019, my self employment was not making me much of an income. The work I was doing was my passion work rather than earning me money! I spent my days working on projects I wanted to do in maritime, but I wasn’t earning a wage from it. I also had gone back to university to study Egyptian history again while also working on my maritime research. So, during the day, I would write a book on the moses exodus, and do maritime research. This work wasn’t earning me MONEY. I also had a wish to go travelling overseas. So, in order to save and get to go traveling I went camping and spent one and a half years living out of my tent and my car so I could go travelling and save money to move overseas to the middle east. I loved camping. The freedom of camping was wonderful.
THEN in 2021, I finally got to go overseas and went to Dubai. However, there, like in Australia I was working as a freelancer on my passion projects. I wrote and published a magazine, did research and other things that weren’t making me money. So, while overseas having the time of my life, I ran out of money and fought to stay overseas. I wanted to stay overseas more than life! I loved it. And I spend four years planning my move abroad and finally got there and then after five months I had to come back.
Then last year I went back again to the middle east and again wanted to stay there, but again I had to come back because I ran out of money. Now at 39, I am currently taking temp jobs to help supplement my freelance work so I can save money and go back overseas again.