Hey guys!! Sam here - to introduce Live To Adventure, Zac and I have decided that we would share six introductory personal / adventure stories that directly relate to our core pillars. This will help us convey our emotions and how we came up with the pillars! Now, neither Zac nor I are professional writers or bloggers but we thought we’d give this a go and the words will be coming straight from our hearts. As such, we hope you enjoy the journey 🙂 

It was a lovely start to Spring, despite the infamous year of 2020. My home country, Australia, was just beginning to open up again after being in multiple soul killing lockdowns. As it was for most people, 2020 was a bumpy year for me. It all started when I returned from Europe and life became just a little more complicated. I started my first graduate job, my father was diagnosed with cancer, and to top it off the global pandemic brought more uncertainty and chaos.

It was during this time that Father Buchwald said to me…

“This should be the time in your life where you’re out having fun, meeting new friends and experiencing what life has to offer”

Maybe the world is trying to tell us something? 

Maybe it’s hinting at us that we need to slow down and re-evaluate why we are here living on this beautiful planet. It could be pushing us to try and figure out what sets the fire within us alight, or encouraging us to find a career, a hobby or an activity that truly makes us happy. This is the time where we should set out goals for the next 6 months, 3 years, 5 years…

For me personally, this was a real challenge. I had always been stuck in the “expectations” and “path” that my immediate family wanted me to follow. Could it be my selfless nature to do this? Will I ever hit a limit?

I undertook an Engineering degree to follow my dad's footsteps, to make my family happy, proud, and to “get a stable job and degree under my belt”. I don’t regret these 5 years. In fact, I learned so much, made amazing friends and now have a degree under my belt. But I know the times that I try and set out to achieve, I am bombarded with criticism, doubt and many questions from those that I love.

Now, to say that I actually sat down and mapped out my entire life is a lie. Jeez, I don’t even know what I will be eating for brekky tomorrow! (Just kidding - Zac and I have recently discovered our amazing banana chocolate protein shakes. This limits my indecisiveness! Anyways you get the point) 

But I’ve always had one goal that I’ve really wanted to strive towards. The desire to push myself out of my introverted self to meet new people and escape my comfort zone.

This brings me back to a lovely spring day, the 20th of September 2020. I had been added to an Instagram engagement group and this “accountant and national swimmer” (who went by the name of Zac Freuden) was keen on going on an adventure down South of Sydney to explore, shoot some content and to meet some like minded people.

We set a date, did some location planning and the count down to the weekend began!

Little did I know, that exactly a year later, would be the start of Live To Adventure and tie into one of our core pillars. Human Connection.