⛵ VOYAGE #07 — Out of Africa

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⛵ VOYAGE #07 — by Nick Jaffe — Jan, 4, 2021



V O Y A G E
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Out of Africa #07

         Welcome to edition #07 of VOYAGE: 2020 has ended, I missed a newsletter, my dream of Africa is over and I'm super excited about 2021!

November of last year was a critical month for deciding how my global overlanding expedition was going to play out amid the pandemic. The Carnet de Passages en Douane for my Land Rover (Penny) was expiring on December 2nd, with South Africa only permitting Carnet substitution, rather than renewal (a whole new Carnet was required). I left Penny with my excellent friends just outside of Cape Town in a rush, expecting to be back on the road in just a few short months. I don't need to explain why that didn't happen.

I spent the whole of November biting my nails. In behavioural economics there is a term coined the sunk cost fallacy — essentially it's when an individual continues to pour resources into something based on previously invested resources. My nail biting anxiety was hinged on trying to decide whether to keep pouring immense amounts of energy & money into a dream which involved complex and costly global travel & logistics (in what can only be described as the worst time in modern history for such activities) — or — to call it quits. I don't like quitting very much, I prefer to suffer for personal reasons I'm not totally clear on. Regardless of the origins of this psychological trait, it's an excellent skillset for someone who likes to dig themselves into really big holes as a means to create an environment where the only option is to succeed. And here I was, having dug a very big hole with an expedition I had turned my life upside down for, which was now in complete stasis and on the precipice of failure.

More often than not, a person decides when to give up. Yes, there are sometimes outside events which can come out of nowhere and contribute to failure, yet the reality is, managing failure or success is more often within us - that is to say, if we embark on something, success/failure is perhaps 95% up to our actions and 5% up to force majeure. The variables here are obviously numerous and I'm using percentages only to illustrate a point, but I believe it's best to simply be frank and honest with oneself and others.

So on that note, what am I really trying to express here? Quite simply, that I spent November trying to decide whether to sink more resources into the expedition or ship Penny home and call it a day.

When I'm into something, I'm all in. I recall during my years voyaging from Europe to Australia, that from the inception of the idea in Berlin, right up to the moment of hitting the eastern shores of home, it was all I could think about for four years. Everything during that period was framed by the voyage and my life was consumed by it: Relationships, projects and work revolved around this burning desire to finish what I had started.

As one gets older, the value of time changes. We know ourselves better and we also have a better understanding of when to push and when to let go. For me personally, I know that if I have a car sitting in Africa as part of an expedition to drive (most of the way) around the world, then I will be consumed by it. My work, my projects and my relationships would enter a state where they would need to end at any moment, when the expedition was finally read to resume. I know myself well enough to know I cannot change this, for better or for worse.

I turn 40 this year and thankfully I don't feel a looming existential crisis. What I do feel is a sense of gratefulness to have lived my life up to this point on my own terms. I think this rather modern idea of a mid-life crisis is perhaps more an issue for those who have not had the fortune, gumption or self-awareness to live how they wished, the barrel of their own mortality pointed squarely between their eyes at the "half way point". From the age of 15 I've been painfully aware of time, sometimes to my own detriment — so after 25 years of thinking about time, my turning 40 is neither a surprise nor a time of crisis — it's really just a period of reflection and a period to be thankful that I'm still healthy.

To compress all these paragraphs and thoughts into a final summary, Penny is currently somewhere in the Indian ocean en route to Melbourne via Singapore.

I made the decision to fail when the option to succeed was absolutely on the table: I could have sunk more resources into the project and arranged my life to be back on the road as soon as it was possible. But in the end I decided not to. Now, you could write to me and say "Nick, it's not a failure, it's a pandemic, you might get to restart your dream in a year or two! You haven't failed!", etc etc. These are kind platitudes, but let's be real: I embarked on a mission and decided in the end to quit, and I'm ok with it. If I was a startup, I'd make myself feel better and replace the word failure with pivot, but whatever.

I'm excited about 2021, because there is a weight off my shoulders and I can dream again. I don't have to wait and see how a seemingly uncontrollable pandemic is going to affect my ambitions and dreams. I don't have to live in limbo. I don't have to worry about having possessions in foreign countries. I can put all my energy into the here and now.

Penny will arrive sometime in late Jan or Feb. I don't know what I'll do with her after that. I expect some local explorations here in Tasmania are on the cards. Or maybe I'll have to put her up for sale. Or perhaps she'll sit in storage and be shipped off overseas in a few years on a new expedition. Who really knows? But I know where she is, where she is going and I feel as though I've got control of the tiller once again.

I'm happy with my decision.

Thank you to everyone for your continued interest in these words and thoughts and may your voyage through 2021 be firmly on your terms!

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