I recently did one of those online personality tests and the results came back to tell me I’m an “Explorer / Negotiator.” Which, is a more interesting description of a personality type than I think I’ve heard. I’m also an ISTJ on the Meyers-Briggs, but considering I’m quite the explorer I’ll stick with the first description.
I do like to travel, and wander and generally move around, never quite content to stay in one place for too long. But, I have been to a few places I could stick around for a while. Like southern France and the Inishowen Peninsula of Ireland. I’ve been in Seattle for a record length of time, but I’ve moved more than once a year on average since I’ve been here!
I somehow ended up in the perfect line of work to be this nomad, doing freelance web and graphic design work. I currently do work for clients that are located in various parts of the country and world. Though I have yet to do work from various parts of the world myself, the potential is there and I hope in 2008 to take advantage of that more.
In 2008 I’ll be pursuing my interest in small-scale organic farming. And, I plan to continue freelancing in my spare time on the farm. Mainly I want to explore my interest in food and alternative lifestyles. I have also never been content with the fairly typical American lifestyle I was living between graduating from college in 1997 and 2006. I had my share of debt between a new car payment, a manageable credit card debt, a house at one point, a modest appetite for consumption of unnecessary and irrelevant things. After a while I realized living in debt and not being aware of how I’m spending my money and not caring where my money goes when I spend it was not a good way to live. And I also realized in 2006 that not traveling abroad, at least to Europe is really short-changing yourself. So, I took a year off and traveled through all of western Europe, Norway and even went way down south to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and a tiny corner of Zambia.
(The pictures in the masthead of this page are mostly from my travels. There are hundreds more on my flickr account.)