This is a bit of a deep and meaningful post but please hang in there – it does relate to migration, honest! 🙂

Tomorrow, I’ll be 40 years old. I’m not someone who stresses about my age or how I look – being happy and healthy is way more important to me than worrying about grey hairs or wrinkles (of which I have plenty!). But getting older also brings with it more illnesses and diseases for the people around me who are ageing too, and this is scary.

When I was little, I remember having a play day at my friend’s house along with another friend. The three of us were sitting on her bed listening to the tv in the background. The news was reporting that one in three people would be diagnosed with cancer at some stage in their lifetime. I remember looking at my friends and it made me think about that figure in real terms: if what the news said was true then one of us would get cancer. I was terrified for a second. Then went off to play and forgot about it.

I lost touch with those friends as we grew up. Then a few years ago I heard that the friend whose house we were at only had weeks to live. She’d been fighting breast cancer for many years. She passed away a short time later. She was in her early 30s and had just got engaged.

Lately, I’ve heard too many friends telling me that someone they love has passed away. I know as I get older this is going to happen more and more. It is making me think about what my life means to me.

I’m not telling you that you should move to Australia. Or that your life will be better over here. But I think it’s important to remind ourselves that life is short, and we’re getting older every day. At some point our number will be up, whether we took risks in life or not.

We need to make sure that our time on this earth has some value and meaning beyond ourselves. We need to think about making our lives bigger and better. Sitting back and watching life pass us by is easy. Being comfortable feels good, but it is dangerous because what value is there in wasting our precious time?

So as I turn 40, I’m thinking more about where I’ve come from, where I want to go and what I want to eventually leave behind. For all of my adult life, I think it’s safe to say I’ve lived in the moment. And being present is really important, but I know the value of making plans and learning to pivot and adapt to make sure I’m heading towards the future I want to live in.

So here, as I (almost!) turn 40, I’ve written a list of 40 things I still want to do. They mostly have a connection to Australia – whether that is places I want to visit or things that I can do here because of the lifestyle. I won’t get around to doing all of them in the next year, but hopefully every year I can come back and look at this list and tick a few more of them off. They’re in no particular order and some are more important than others. A LOT of them relate to travel, because, you know, I’m a little bit beach-obsessed 🙂

40 things I am going to do now I’m turning 40

(Want to write your own list? I have a template for you over in my FREE Resource Library. Sign up for it here!)

1. Go on holiday to the Cocos Keeling Islands
2. Try paddleboarding (seriously, I’ve been wanting to try it for ages but haven’t got around to it)
3. Get a group of friends together and book out Pumpkin Island for a few nights (it’s not as expensive as you might think!)
4. Take an astronomy class
5. Write and publish more books (lots more)
6. Get back into jewellery making
7. Hire a cleaner
8. Get a gardener
9. Go on a cruise of the Whitsundays again
10. Take the kids to see Sydney Opera House
11. Go back to Uluru and stay at Longitude 121 (instead of the campground!)
12. Stay at Sal Salis in Exmouth, WA
13. Visit Brisbane city more often
14. Write for more travel magazines
15. Visit Lord Howe Island
16. Take my kids snorkelling in the ocean
17. Visit more outdoor food truck events
18. Drink less wine and coffee and more water
19. Get a massage regularly
20. Get up before 6am more often
21. Watch turtles hatching on the beach at Heron Island
22. See a platypus in the wild
23. Visit Norfolk Island
24. Retrace our South Pacific island backpacking trip with the kids (in more luxury this time)
25. Do beach yoga
26. Go along to the ProBlogger event again
27. Have more spa days
28. Improve my photography skills and invest in a better camera
29. Learn more about video editing and film making
30. Cook barbecues even more often
31. Work more with charities that align with my values
32. Have another sleepover with my best friends from the UK who I’ve known since I was 11
33. Sneak off for more beach picnics with Matt while the kids are at school
34. Have a surf lesson (seriously, again I’ve never tried it)
35. Get braver about being more ‘visible’ with my business
36. Drink champagne on a beach while watching the sun set
37. Help as many families as possible to confidently follow their dreams to move to Australia
38. Hang out with my kids more individually doing stuff they love
39. Finish the endless DIY jobs on our house so we can relax more instead of working on our weekends
40. Go on a South Pacific cruise

I’m going to print this list off, laminate it and stick it on my wall to remind me of everything I’ve said I’m going to do!

Want to write your own list?

Do you have a list of things you want to do in life? (I’m not a fan of calling it a bucket list or things to do before you die as it just sounds so depressing – instead it’s just ’40 things I’m going to do’!) If you don’t have anything written down, now is the perfect time to write your list. I’ve even created a template for you to use – you can get yours when you sign up to my FREE Resource Library and get to work dreaming up all of the awesome things you want to do in the future (I’ve included a few prompts to get you started). It doesn’t matter how many items you have on your list, all that matters is that you sit down and think about everything you still want to achieve. Things that will make you happy and fulfilled.

Is moving to Australia up there on your list? Are there items on your list that will be easier to do if you’re based on this side of the world (places you want to visit or activities you want to try)? I reckon three-quarters of my list only works because I live in Australia – I wonder how different my list would look now if I still lived in the UK?

Your future is what you make it, so spend some time thinking about how you want to live it 🙂 Now go and write your own list! Get the template from my FREE Resource Library here!