A New Chapter

For most people the need to change your life comes out of sheer desperation. JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter because her life had hit rock bottom. Stephen King got rejected dozens of times and very nearly gave up before he got his first book deal. Even Walt Disney was once fired because he "lacked imagination."

Me? I didn't have a dramatic backstory. I had never been fired, the most rejection I'd ever faced was in my love life and, besides a handful of annoying mental issues, my life had been completely average. Only, that became the problem. I had one thing in common with these people, I was desperate for change. I needed to find a way to make my life better.

Weirdly, I can pinpoint the exact moment I came to this realisation. I was stood in the middle of Tesco (always a good place for epiphanies I find) wondering whether I wanted to buy something to cook or just see what I had at home. An internal debate most adults of the twenty first century have had, I'm sure. Certainly not one worth writing down.

Except this was different. In that moment I realised just how spectacularly mundane my life had become. I had fallen so out of love with it and so far into the depression of the ordinary that I felt like crying. I felt like climbing the shelves King Kong style and beating my chest whilst I screamed "I'M TWENTY-ONE, THIS SHOULDN'T BE MY LIFE!" I felt like dropping my basket, running out of the store and catching the next train to as far away as possible.

I did none of these things of course. Instead I completed my very ordinary shopping, got into my friend's very ordinary car and went home to my very ordinary flat. I dreamed that night of far away lands. Of falling in love with strangers. Of experiencing the world and the beautiful colour of our existence in a way that I never had before. And so I made a promise to myself to never to be bored with my distinctly average existence again.

Which brings us here, to the very beginning of this journey. One which I'm inviting you to take with me.

The challenge is simple. Do anything and everything out of your comfort zone. Do something which you'll look back on in a few years and think "I'm so glad I made myself do that." Something which doesn't quite let you catch your breath because if fills you with so much excitement. Something which makes you wonder why you didn't change your life sooner.

As cliché as it sounds, tomorrow really is the first day of the rest of your life. Tomorrow morning I'm going to write a bucket list of all of the things I want to do in the UK, around the world and in general. I'm going to challenge myself to do what I, putting it frankly, have never had the balls to. And I'm going to make sure that my boring old life gets a makeover. One that leaves me with no regrets for not using it to its full potential.