“You have exactly one life in which to do everything you’ll ever do. Act accordingly.” ~ Colin Wright
First of all, we want to give credit to Carol’s nephew, Benjamin Andringa for not only creating our logo, business cards and stickers but we are also grateful for his brainstorming with us to come up with the Travelling Mudskippers concept and name and his overall positive energy – he’s almost as excited about all of this as we are! If you’re looking for a talented artist to create graphic designs and illustrations, take a look at his work at www.be.net/bta and send him an email at benjamin.andringa@gmail.com.
Now let’s answer the question on everyone’s minds: Why “the Travelling Mudskippers”….
Mudskippers spend most of their lives as “fish out of water”. An evolutionary marvel, these creatures have adapted both physically and behaviourally to thrive in a completely foreign environment. What compelled that first mudskipper to leap out of the safe and familiar sea, slither onto land and decide to make a go of it? Who knows but, as travellers and adventure seekers, we feel a kinship.
As a couple, we have always loved travelling together. Over the past few years, we bought a big old house with more renovation plans than money to do them and settled into a safe and familiar routine in Toronto. And so, satisfying our itch to travel has become less frequent due to financial and career demands. But we also have a good life here – good friends, lots of family nearby, meaningful professional jobs in the ‘helping others’ field plus we absolutely love Toronto! And, as all other travel junkies out there know, there comes a point when you just have to get your travel fix. We’ve been at that point for over a year now.
One day, Carol came across the Colin Wright quote above and it got her thinking, “Is this all there is to life? It feels like we’re living to work instead of working to live. There has got to be other options!” This led to many long walks and even longer discussions of what we really want out of life and what changes we can make to shake things up. The first of which is embarking on our longest trip to date, 7 weeks in South East Asia. We intend to use this trip to foreign lands with different languages and religions, strange food and culture to see how other people make a go of it. So, not so differently than the mudskipper, tomorrow afternoon we leap out of all that is safe and familiar in Toronto and fly for 22 hours and 50 minutes (ouch!) to see what life is like on the other side of the world. Will we find the answers we’re looking for? Who knows, but travel will challenge us to think and act differently than we do at home. And like the mudskipper, we will be forced to adapt in order to thrive and in the process we will broaden our horizons and our options.
We invite you to follow us on our mudskipping adventures….
the Travelling Mudskippers 