Struggling with my 'About Me' Page

In my last post I had hinted that I'd been holding off publishing a post for a few weeks and I'm going to explain why. I'm in the process of refreshing Squeezed Daily, lots of ideas and I've also found someone to contribute to the blog, Sarah Radhanauth. She's also an interior designer and shares my love for the beach, travel and design which is really cool. So expect to see some great content appearing on a regular basis. 

Another thing I've been working on is an 'about me' page. This is where I've become stuck. I've done about 20 versions of it and am getting nowhere!!!! So I thought I'd just dive in, throw up one version in the hope that I'll get some feedback. 

I plan to condense it down but I had to start by just writing it out first.  

So be honest with me, I'll only curl up into the fetal position and cry, haha - not really, (maybe a little). I'm thinking it might be a case of breaking the 'too much info' rule, but I have a burning urge to tell my story so allow me to get it out of my system......  

About Me

Greetings! My name is Sarah Woods, and you may already know that I live on a boat with my family on Magnetic Island, Tropical North Queensland, Australia. This is our starting point for our around the world adventure. 

What you may not know, is the story on how I got here. 
(this is the part in the bio where I start to get a bit sweaty)

It's a somewhat complicated story, but the pivotal moment was when our 'collection' of businesses (my husband is a prolific entrepreneur), that ultimately turned pear shaped caused by a combination of family, (valuable lesson there to not go into business with family again), and the current economy.

Forced to sell our properties, we moved onto my Father-in laws boat as a temporary solution (it was only sopposed to be for two weeks), one and a half years later we're still on it and couldn't be happier, much to our and others disbelief!

The first boat in this image is the small 35 foot canal boat 'Summer Dream' that we have managed to live on for the past year and a half. Manly Harbour, Brisbane.

When it was time to sell the house was a bit traumatic at first, we had put so much into it and we saw it as being our dream home. But once we decided to sell everything in the house it became an unexpected cleansing process, we piled all our 'stuff' ( being a designer, we had some pretty awesome stuff!) into the garage and stood there looking at it all, I felt physically sick about how we were so stuck in the 'consumer' way of living. Since then I have been obsessed with keeping things simple, and try to live by a new "collect memories not things" way of living.

Our house on Armytage street. My favourite area of the house, I love these pendant lights I found at Lavish essentials. Yes, we sold everything you can see here.

I'm not saying I'm completely free from the hoarding mindset, I do love pinterest, and when I pin something, it kind of feels the same as if I've bought it, which is great as it costs me nothing and I don't have to find a space for it. (It keeps the mini hoarder inside of me content).

From the shift in mindset from selling all our stuff, we found living on the boat to be sort of a loop hole, a way we could still have a fantastic lifestyle and have very little overheads, we had no intention of renting a crappy little house and starting again from scratch. We talked about taking the opportunity of not having any more ties to business etc to do our world cruise now instead of waiting till the kids grow up or when we would have enough cash to sustain ourselves during the trip. 

Moreton Island is a stunning sand Island about 2 hours boat trip from Manly Harbour in Brisbane. We would spend our weekends here every chance we got.

We decided why wait! the thought of cruising and discovering amazing places with the kids was an opportunity we couldn't pass up. What kid wouldn't prefer to be schooled  with 100% attention from two teachers (Carlos and I) till noon, then spending the rest of the day swimming, surfing, fishing and exploring? 

 Best friends.....for now anyways.

I could now see we were going down a road that contradicted our core values and further away from our original dream when we met in our early 20's, to travel and explore the world on our own sail boat. 

"It's only when you loose everything that you are free to do anything" - Tyler Durden, Fight Club

The funny thing was, we had thought the only way to achieve our dream was to make copious amounts of money semi-retire and then set off. Even though we were making a lot of money through property and the building company, we had our heads stuck in the sand. 

I now have a hunch that the universe has a way of changing things to set you back on the course you were sopposed to be on. Not quite the road map we were looking at before, but definitely a more creative/exciting and surprising course. As soon as I stopped fighting it, things just started to happen and fall into place.

From there, we came to the conclusion that we don't need much to live, much money or the need to spend much either.
If nothing else, the kids have had a total mind shift that was also not expected, they don't want for anything, and not having a TV hasn't hurt either. They are thriving with the new lifestyle, with most time spent at the beach, fishing and discovering. From having a giant toy room to now, a very small tub of toys, and they are perfectly happy. We also enjoy being in such close quarters, we are constantly interacting and learning to work things out like a mini tribe. 

The kids toy room. They don't miss all their toys, in fact, they had a ball selling most of them at our garage sales and at the market.

Syd and Indi (the two kids with the curly hair) playing with a friend at Picnic Bay, Magnetic Island. They love to play with what they find that has been washed up on the beach.

Though we enjoyed living in Manly Harbour, we loved to take the boat to the nearby Islands, we just had to leave, to start moving and to start our new adventure. The longer we stuck around, the more unlikely we were not to go. 

Another big thing was that I needed to remove ourselves from the 'dream stompers.' The ones that say "you can't live on a boat", "you can't home school" and my personal favourite, "there are pirates out there you know". All a lame-o attempt to try and make sure we don't achieve our dreams, as their own dreams are shrivelling up and dying.

Syd and me, about to head out dor a surf. There is something for everyone, I get to go surfing, Carlos loves his kite boarding and the kids have boogie boards. I look forward to going surfing with the kids at remote islands on our trip.

Now we're here, the very start of our trip, on a tropical Island that seems to have it all, even surf in the right conditions. The only problem is I think we will miss living here when it's time to set sail. I can feel my body unknotting itself a little bit more every day, allowing me to finally breathe freely. 

The self imposed barrier to our dream we had before has been broken down, the money is flowing in so we are well on our way to owning our own sailboat and my recently launched online business is coming along nicely with help of the government grant I was lucky to receive, has taken a lot of the stress out of the developmental stage, which is giving me such a kick start to my business. I try my best to be creative with my work locations, taking my MacBook and Ipad to the cafe, park, beach and pool so the kids can still get out.

 One of my favourite spots along the beach to work.

A unexpected biproduct of boat life is living a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, it gives me a very nice feeling that we have a small impact on the environment, I'm sure we are all a lot healthier too as we catch fish almost daily, I have a learnt to be creative, trying different fish recipes. Best of all we are doing it all together and having a ball in the process.

Mud crab caught in our crab pot, freshly picked cherry tomato, basil, fetta and Chia seed salad.

Now you know were I've been and where I plan to go, what happens in between is not set in stone, but I have a feeling it will never be boring and anything is possible.


A bit of a novel isn't it? Would you give it a thumbs up or down and why you think so? It would be extremely helpful ;)
Enjoy your week,

Posted by - Sarah Woods