Sooo you know what I mean by spending the last 26 years following the stereotypes … Be good at school, get excellent grades, go to a great uni, get a well-payed job, find a nice guy, eventually get married and live happily ever after.

But somewhere along this “dreamy” journey, I realised that life has started to suck!

In high school when all my friends were partying, ditching school and doing anything else but study, I was all about my textbooks, relentlessly running home after school to do to my homework, prepping for the next day as if my life depended on getting those good grades. Why? You know why! I had to get into that good uni. And it wasn’t just any good uni. 17 y/o me couldn’t settle for a good uni, it had to be best. Why? Well, how else would I get a good job?! So the 5 years of endless studying and part-time working at a local cafe had finally culminated with an offer from Scotland’s best uni. Gosh, what a happy day that was!

The next 4 years went by pretty much the same way. Just a lot more studying and a heck of a lot more work in between all sorts of part-time jobs. But everything’s good when it ends good right?!, or so they say! I got my degree from St Andrews uni, with a First, and I got a job offer at the biggest accountancy firm out there, for the geeky ones who might know it, it’s PricewaterhouseCoopers or PwC. Life was good! I was hitting all those milestones. Uni was done and dusted and now I finally had the well-paying job lined up. So, of course, I took it, no questions asked, and September 2014 saw me joining the corporate world!

And you know what, I was happy. So proud and so excited to have finally come this far into the game. PwC was one of those companies all uni grads were dying to get into (still is) and the fact I already had a company ID and a desk in the London office of 5,000+ people, sure made me happy. I mean, how would you not love the all-glass building, the important look we all put on, the paychecks… I’d be crazy!

So 23 y/o me was as happy as one could be.

Fast forward 3.5 years and the once excited girl who joined the big corporate world had started to get fed up. I spent the first 3 years studying even harder than all the years before that combined, to become a qualified accountant, working ridiculous hours auditing the world’s biggest banks, getting lost in spreadsheets and files I couldn’t even bother open, just to realize that what I had worked so damn hard for was making me miserable.

I didn’t have much time for anything or any burning desire to go back to work the next day. But giving up on all the time and effort I had put in was unimaginable (at that time). So instead of giving it all up, I transferred within the firm to become a personal tax adviser. And life did get far better. No more studying, no more long hours, no more working from the office every day, amazing colleagues, better paychecks. Compared to most of my friends, I seemed to have the best deal going on!

But after a little while, I had fallen back into the same trap. Something was missing and I couldn’t give it a rest. I wanted to be out more, to travel, to hike up mountains, meet different people, do good … basically, do things! Staying in my flat in London working from home, or having the comfort of secure paychecks were no longer enough to keep me happy. Maybe it was London, maybe it was the commute, the office, the same busy people I was seeing every day, I don’t know but I knew I needed a change! And I needed it now.

So for the first time in my entire organized, pre-planned life, I decided it was time to get out of the stereotype, ditch everything and go travelling for 3 months throughout Southeast Asia, completely on my own!

Little did I know when I was packing my backpack and heading to the airport that when I come back I’ll be a totally different person. After so many years of “doing the right thing”, I was finally liberated – from all the expectations, all fears, the stereotypes, everything that was dragging me back to the same old routine over and over again. From hiking active volcanoes to swimming with turtles and trekking in search of indigenous tribes, I had finally realized that all the hard work I had been putting in should be paying off not only in billable hours and paychecks but in adventures and friendships that make me smile as wide as my face can physically handle.

I truly had the best time of my life and when it was all over, I went back to London, back to my flat, back to my job and I immediately knew it was time time to make a drastic change. I first negotiated with PwC to work just 6 months of the years which was perfect for a while. I travelled to South America, went to Nepal, returned to Indonesia to volunteer at a local school in Sukawati. I taught the kids some English, photographed them and their activities and helped the school raise awareness and funds. It was absolutely epic!

In fact, meet some of my students <3