About jonathangoddard
Who am I? This is never an easy question - particularly for someone travelling the world in order to find out the answer. We always have to start from somewhere though. What I can tell you now is that I am nineteen years old, without a permanent address and on the tightest of budgets in expensive places. Experiencing the cold like never before and moving from place to place, country to country every few days. Carrying my entire life on my pack, relying on the kindness of strangers and having only the medium of free WIFI to contact people. And I'm loving it all - it's a different way of life from the one I've lived for the last nineteen or so years. Each day is a new and unique opportunity.
Though I lived in America and Asia as a younger child, I was primarily raised in Melbourne, Australia. I experienced a lifestyle of materialistic abundance - I attended an esteemed private school and lived in a beautiful house with my parents and sister. Of course I was never ignorant of my priviledged position and, whenever I could, I would be sure to be actively grateful for everything I had. This was my life, and though I knew of how other people lived, some better and some much worse, it was the only one I had experienced.
I started studying Arts/Law at Monash University in 2012 - not because that's what I knew I wanted to do but because I achieved the score that got me in. Not the best of reasons to sign up for a 5.5 year degree. In the mid year break, I went with a friend to Europe for six weeks, and although our journey carried with it all the elements of a holiday, we benefited from it so much more than simple time off from our 'regular' lives.
This trip rejuvenated my desire for travel and reminded me of the importance to live each day purposefully, but above all, it inspired within me a yearning to experience and live a different life. I returned to my comfortable, safe and practical life in Australia and each day, felt the need not necessarily to run away but to move towards something else that seemed much more appealing. I didn't enjoy my university course and it began to infuriate me - the idea that I was doing something I didn't like just because it could potentially lead to a secure, wealthy and sheltered future. This was the mindset I had been conditioned to all my life. It didn't seem right anymore, and I wonder now whether it ever did. The prospect of returning to a narrow-minded life raised my ire to the point where I decided to defer university, work to save up money and buy a one-way ticket to the other side of the world and live the life of a traveller for as long as I could. Now here we are.
I am still not entirely sure of what I want to do when I go back to studying, which I'm sure I will, though I am quite confident now that I want to be a writer. Short stories, novels, travel blogs, screenplays - they all appeal to me. I'm hoping this is the start of many things to come.
