How did I get here?

For 24 years, I worked on a ship between Sweden and Denmark. It wasn’t the sensible “real job” people kept trying to convince me that I needed. Apparently, spending 24 years in the same workplace doesn’t count if your office moves across the sea all day.

The view was considerably better, though. And I loved it. Or I loved the freedom it provided.

The work gave me long periods off, and those periods gave me the freedom to travel. For years, that strange little life suited me perfectly. The ship was more than my workplace. It became part of who I was.

Then, in 2018, it ended.

And when it disappeared, a rather alarming amount of me disappeared with it.

Since then, I’ve been stumbling around trying to find my path. I’ve had random jobs, returned to life at sea, while making several determined attempts to convince myself that I knew what I was doing.

I did not.

There have been years of burnout, trauma, depression and some spectacularly poor financial decisions. When life hurt, I travelled. Even when I couldn’t afford to travel, I occasionally travelled anyway.

Not a financial strategy I recommend.

So here I am: no steady path, a frightening amount of debt and an increasingly loud voice inside me screaming:

Hey! You cannot keep living like this.

So, I’m starting over…

And the strange thing is that this dream isn’t new.

Back in 2012, I moved to Thailand and tried working as a freelance translator from my laptop. I was burnt out, confused, wildly unprepared and had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Which, now that I think about it, has become something of a theme.

However, while I was there, I realised something – I actually didn’t want to move permanently to another country.

I wanted to move between countries.

I wanted to explore.

I wanted to travel, work from my laptop and be free to go wherever life, or a suspiciously cheap flight, might take me. The digital nomad world was still fairly new then, but something inside me recognised it and immediately claimed it as my destiny.

That was the life I wanted.

That was the life I needed.

Then life happened again. Relationships happened again. Fear came rushing in again, dragging all its little roadblocks behind it, whispering loudly:

You can’t do that.

You don’t have the knowledge.

Who do you think you are?

I lost myself more than once, found a few pieces, dropped them again and kept putting the dream away for “later.”

Starting over
after 50

15 years later, I still want to build an income online, become location-independent and create a life I don’t constantly need to escape from. Can you do that after 50? Change direction completely? Learn new skills when the internet appears to be run by twelve-year-olds who already have it all figured out? Is it possible to build an online income while already stuck in a financial black hole?

No idea.

But this time, I’m going to find out. Even though the voices inside my head (and everyone around me) go: NO! Find a proper REAL job!

For most of my life, I’ve been told that I can’t do things. Or, more accurately, that I can’t do much of anything. Eventually, you hear something often enough, and those voices move into your own head.

Rent-free, obviously.

So I learned to stop myself before anyone else had the chance. I became extremely skilled at finding twenty future problems before an idea had even put its shoes on.

By the time I had examined every possible disaster, the project was usually dead, buried, and already decomposing.

Very efficient, sure. But oh so soul-crushing.

It has taken me until now to properly see what I’ve been doing. I have been so brainwashed into thinking I’m useless that I had no idea I was self-sabotaging myself. Constantly. I don’t suddenly know how to fix it, but at least now I know it’s there. And once you see something, it becomes considerably harder to keep pretending it isn’t quietly running your life. Or ruining, rather…

So this is part of the experiment too.

Showing up. Being seen. Starting things before I know exactly how they will end. Trying even when my brain has already prepared a detailed presentation explaining why everything definitely will go horribly wrong.

Easy? Absolutely not.

Necessary? Unfortunately, yes.

I’m not writing this as someone who has already succeeded. From me, there will be no Seven Easy Steps to Financial Freedom, delivered from a suspiciously clean desk beside an infinity pool in Bali.

I’m starting with debt, uncertainty, hormone imbalances, too many ideas and a brain capable of producing seventeen possible disasters before breakfast.

Because, you know, I just can’t do it.

Or so they say.

Very inspirational, I know. 😂

But this is my real starting point.

What will you find here?

Why Pondering Padawan?

A Padawan is an apprentice, someone who is still learning and not yet a master.

Star Wars people: IYKYK.

That is how I see life. We are never really finished. We can keep learning, changing direction and becoming someone new, even when the world thinks we should have sorted ourselves out by now.

I certainly haven’t.

I refuse to behave my age and settle down anytime soon; I’m not quietly accepting that this is simply how my life turned out and this is “as good as it gets”.

So, welcome to my life. If you’re starting over too, or secretly wondering whether you still can, come along.

Let’s see how far we can go together! 💖