End of year finance check

Moving expenses from Toronto to Dublin

Moving countries usually rock the boat when it comes to personal finance. Dealing with all sorts of fees, making sure services like mobile contracts are all paid for and cancelled, buying new items, visa fees and other related costs, cost of flights and luggage, the list just go on and on.

I decided to sit down one night and keep track of all incomings and outgoings during the ‘approximate’ time of moving.

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Musings on Life Scripts and Lifelong Goals

I have moved in and out of so many social circles.

I feel like I play the part of an observer, and I observe these circles.  I observe what is socially acceptable, what is unacceptable, what is desired.

And it changes depending on where you are, how you grew up… basically the building blocks of constructing your social reality.

What’s really crazy is that due to many factors out of your control, your reality is already shaped.  If your ancestors decided to migrate to Scotland, rather than Wales, your parents decided to send you off to boarding school, or some other human-level decision made all have the ability to change your social reality.

I was thinking about the social construct of “The Dream” and how it differs yet still share commonalities.  For example, popular notions of what is thought to be The Australian Dream, The American Dream, and The Canadian Dream all lead to some level of real estate investment, consumerism and the focus on individualism.

And yet, these Dreams have subtle differences.  Take suburbs for example.  If you have never lived in Montreal you are not going to be familiar with the notability around Westmount.  If you have never lived in London, you are not going to have the awareness of the name “St John’s Wood” evokes. For South Africa, it is Sandhurst.  And so on.  And yet many individuals (and in turn, families) completely mold their entire life for the sheer psychological thrill of living in this areas.  Sure, maybe they will construct various artifacts to rationalise this.

The same goes for even the small decisions in life.  Eventually, everything adds up.  Eventually things decay.  Even a primarily home real estate decays … or depreciate in value hence why it is not considered to be an investment by asset managers.  And yet it’s one of the most powerful or at least common ‘scripts’ that can take over our lives.

And yet, I can’t bring myself to the reality of this.  Why? One of my long-term and lifelong dreams is to be able to live in at least four main geographical regions spanning the world. The desire to enact on this script is strong enough that it’s the every day driving force that helps pushes me to do what I do.  If today is not helping me get closer to that goal, then it’s a day wasted and a day lost.  If I ever find myself veering off this script, then I need to get back on that path and it needs to be ASAP.  If something is happening in my life that is negatively affecting my ability to reach this goal, I take that away from my life.

I think it’s very important to have these truly lifelong goals, otherwise it’s so easy to just give up when things get tough.

And on that note, once I have a taste of what it’s like to be on the road on these types of goals… then it gets easier and easier to add more lifelong goals.

BF10 Day 9: Shutter Speed, Jazz On Sunday, Symphony At Sunset and Old Man River

I knew that the Festival Conversations series with Douglas Kirkland, Shutter Speed, was going to be really fascinating knowing his celebrity subjects.  To read my thoughts on this talk, please check out the entry on Brisbane Creative Industries. Continue reading BF10 Day 9: Shutter Speed, Jazz On Sunday, Symphony At Sunset and Old Man River

Lessons from Flying

I couldn’t help but compared what it was like to fly the aircraft to other situations in life – situations where you are pushed to the deep end, situations where you really do need to pilot yourself across whatever it is you are up against. I was going to write an entry about the similarities between flying and entrepreneurship but feel that this is the case in other areas of life. Continue reading Lessons from Flying