Know that feeling when your whole life is pressing down on you? Or like you’re living in “The Truman Show,” and you’re Truman? That was me for years. After high school I did everything by the book: I started working, finished my exams, got through the entrance tests and went straight into a degree I’d never really use. I did it mostly to make Mom and Dad happy.
And that endless race: pleasing my parents, pleasing my boss, pleasing my girlfriend, pleasing pretty much everyone. Except me.
A one-way ticket
After I finished my degree, and my ex and I broke up, I said enough. I needed a change, I needed to find myself, because I had no idea who Meirav really was. So I bought a one-way ticket to Australia, without too many plans. And honestly? It was one of the most meaningful decisions I’ve ever made.
At first everything was hard. I started smoking weed, went on dates and random hookups with all kinds of women, and I was really, really lost. I also put on some weight (you try not having the munchies from morning to night in Australian supermarkets). I traveled around Melbourne and the area, went all kinds of places, and still felt lost.
Two months in, it hit me: I was living the life everyone expected me to live, not the life I wanted. So I decided to quit smoking weed, got back to working out and started getting my act together.
One page, four dreams
One day I just started scribbling words on a page. I was telling myself how I felt, and out of those words, without meaning to, came a few dreams I wanted to make happen. Things that, if they somehow came true, would make me happy, with a smile on my face and a sense of fulfillment.
I wrote:
- Take a solo camper van trip
- Do a road trip on the Great Ocean Road, one of the most beautiful drives in the world
- Rent a Harley-Davidson
- Rent a red Mustang convertible
I didn’t write that I wanted to be rich, and I didn’t write that I wanted to find love. I wrote what I felt, in that moment, would make me feel good and put a smile on my face. The Mustang? That’s because I watched way too many episodes of “Gilmore Girls.” What can I say, I’m an ’80s kid.
Since then, that page has grown into a list of more than 80 dreams, from small and simple to huge and insane. Some I’ve already checked off, like my private pilot’s license. And the best part? The list never ends. It just keeps growing. I also told the story of how the page became a list in this video.
“I’m in fucking Australia”
And with a clear head, I suddenly told myself: I’m in fucking Australia, this is the place to do what I wrote down. I have to be brave, make a decision and just go for it.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Melbourne is in southeastern Australia, and not far from there, a little over an hour’s flight away, is the island of Tasmania. The only reason I knew about it was a cartoon I loved, “Taz the Tasmanian Devil.” So I figured it would be pretty cool to go see Taz.
Without knowing what I was doing, I realized I had a mission: a solo camper van trip, and finally facing myself.
Every dream has a reason
I forgot to mention: every dream on the list has a reason. Sometimes it’s a silly reason, sometimes it’s because everyone does it, sometimes because I know it’ll teach me something, and sometimes just for the challenge.
With the camper van, I simply wanted to get to know myself and face myself, and I knew going solo was exactly the way. To learn to trust myself.
I sat in front of the computer trying to figure out what it would take to make it happen, and realized it really came down to three things: a camper van, a flight and a route. So that’s what I did. I found a reasonably priced camper van for ten days, booked a flight and finally built a route.
When I was on the plane I couldn’t believe it was happening, and suddenly I got cold feet. The internet in Tasmania was terrible back then, so how the hell was I going to manage? GPS apps weren’t as good as they are today, and on top of that I had to drive on the other side of the road.
Ten days in Tasmania
But I landed, picked up the camper van and hit the road. At first it was perfect: insane views, and me singing to myself while driving, because there was no signal. I did amazing nature trails and a tree-to-tree zipline course, and I trusted my gut the whole time, so it turned out even better than I’d planned.
The night of the bowl
And then came the night I couldn’t find a campground. Pitch dark, barely any signal, and no idea where there was a campground with showers and toilets. I finally reached a tiny town, the kind you see in horror movies. The only pub had just closed, even though it was only 9 p.m. I knew you weren’t allowed to just park a camper van in a residential area, and according to the app the nearest campground was an hour and a half away. No way I was getting back behind the wheel in that darkness. So I parked the camper van in the middle of some parking lot, set an alarm for the moment it got light and tried to sleep.
Empty street, me alone, and all that’s running through my head is: that’s it, tomorrow I’m in the headlines. “Tourist murdered in Tasmania.” I was having a panic attack, scared to death to get out of the van. So yes, I peed in a bowl. Glamorous? Not so much. Survival mode? Very. (Here’s the video where I tell the story.)
The power of being alone
On the other hand, there were incredible lakes, and I stayed with a really sweet local, a woman who welcomed me like family. And I felt the real power of being alone in the face of the unknown.
I finished the trip with a feeling of wow. I actually went and made a dream happen, and it was just perfect. It was my first dream, and it gave me a taste for more and the courage to keep going. That’s also where I realized this is the life I want, even if it took me a while to actually live it.
What happened next? In the next chapter of the journal.
