Categories
Journal Lifestyle Travel

Quitting my job: the story so far

Quitting my job: the story so far

It’s been over two months since I threw caution to the wind, quit my job and set out to travel the world with Charlotte. Let me catch you up on the story so far and living in Malta.

Riki-Rewind back to May. It’s my last day at work (and coincidentally everyones first day in our new office), I handed in my equipment the previous week to the office move so with nothing to work with and everyone busy unpacking their stuff and settling in, I had the day to get tweaked on ‘Goodbye Coffees’, frolic around the new building (which btw was a fantastic upgrade to the previous office) and check out the area.

It was a good last day.

That evening I had strategically planned (after wrongly assuming my office was still going to be in King’s Cross…) a trip to Paris on the Eurostar. I figured if I’m going to leave work, I’m going to leave in style. Going from a full time job in London to being unemployed in Paris within the space of a few hours felt incredible. Charlotte and I were on our way to the world’s most romantic city.

We stayed for three days and walked EVERYWHERE. Like, 8-10 hours a day exploring kind of walking. It was great, but man, that’s too much. Still, we unintentionally saw all the main sites and had a Nutella crêpe by the Eiffel Tower. We loved every minute of it, even if we were staying in the sex district, a 5 minute walk from the Moulin Rouge.

The feeling of not having to go back to the UK was a feeling of freedom. There was nothing stopping us from carrying on round Europe, but alas, we headed back to the UK, stocked up on chocolate that didn’t make it past the border… because we ate it. All of it.

A few weeks pass, we bought a one-way ticked to Malta and we’re packing only hand luggage for a three month stay. We figured just taking hand luggage would be good practice for backpacking South East Asia. And it was. Most of the stuff I thought I’d need I haven’t touched, so that’s good to know.

I have a Brother living with his girlfriend, Yana, in Malta. They’ve been enjoying our company for about a month now and I got to say, Malta is an amazing place and for short holidays from the UK, return flights for under £100 per person is a no brainer.

An all day bus-pass here is €1.50 and I recommend going to Valetta – Malta’s capital city and Mdina – Malta’s old capital (walled) city which has a population of less than 300 people and they put rubber horse shoes on their horses to reduce noise. While in Mdina, have lunch Fontanella, their cakes are as good as the view.

So anyway, in Malta we were going to spend time preparing for our travels and sorting stuff out, though we haven’t really planned anything yet, I’ve definitely ticked some things off my list:

  1. Finished my portfolio website (mobile responsive and super sexy, of course).
  2. Got this blog up and running again. Still working on the look and feel.
  3. Topped 10,000 points on Treehouse (where I learn programming).
  4. Built Sweat Roulette, a simple fitness web-app with Charlotte.
  5. Had a press interview about Sweat Roulette.
  6. Made the news (half a page!) with Sweat Roulette.
  7. Joined some freelancing websites to make money while travelling.
  8. Got a tan.
  9. Read some books.
  10. Jumped off a cliff. Everyone else was doing it.

And that’s all taken place in Malta within the space of a month when I’m not at the beach – there’s something to be said for having time to do things.

And that brings us up to now.

I’m still looking for potential revenue streams so I can become location-independent, being a designer/developer is a good start due to only needing a laptop, prime for remote work.

Being ‘always on’ is taking its toll though, so I’m probably going to take a week off from the internet soon which I’m definitely going to blog about.

I’d love to hear comments about what you want to hear more of – my travels, making money travelling, the geeky bits – let me know below, yo!

Not everything makes the blog, so follow me on Twitter and Instagram and say hey 🙂

To be continued…

Categories
Journal Lifestyle Travel

How to make money while travelling

Make Money Travelling - Marcus Michaels

I’m still trying to figure this out, but the way I see it is that the ideal way to make money is by not doing anything, or doing something of little time / effort that you can do from a phone or laptop.

These are my solutions so far. They haven’t made me much travelling money, but if I reckon if keep at it, they should be a viable income stream at some point.

Categories
Journal

The British Tag

British Flag by Marcus

I’ve been tagged by Charlotte to answer 12 questions on the genre ‘British’. The origin of such shenanigans stem from Beauty Crush on Youtube. I am not drinking tea whilst answering these.

Here it goes…

Categories
Journal Makings

How to build a one page personal website

Website Showcase

This is a walkthrough tutorial, with code examples on how to build this one-page website that you will be able to customise with a text-editor. I’ll also talk you through buying a domain name (http://example.com), web-hosting (where your website is stored), how to point yout domain to your web-host and upload your website.

I’ll make this as easy as I can and will assume you have no previous coding experience. You might want to bookmark this page because it’s quite long.

Ready? Let’s go.

Before you start building your website, you should have a clear vision of what you want on your website and how you want it to look. You can sketch something on a napkin or make it pretty in Photoshop. Either way, it’s a lot harder without some direction.

Categories
Journal Travel

Choosing a Travel Backpack

Following on from this post, and with the help of friends sending me links, I’ve narrowed it down to 4 potential carry-on companions.


1 | Minaal | http://www.minaal.com/ | $299 (Yup, Dollars).

This looks like the ‘Apple’ of travel bags, and as such, it has a pretty hefty price tag but it looks amazing and has some great reviews. If I have a sudden windfall of cash and frivolity, I’ll have to hope they’ve got stock for international delivery!

Minaal Carry On Backpack

Categories
Journal Lifestyle Travel

The Quest for my Travelling Backpack

In or around September, Charlotte and I are setting off to travel the world. Maybe I’ll do another blog post on that further down the line if anyone is interested. Anyway, travelling requires certain equipment. First and foremost; a backpack.

I’ve been passively looking for a reliable backpack that I can take travelling for the past few months. I’ve seen a couple of good bags that have potential, but nothing that’s made my pull out my wallet.

To make this a bit easier for me, I’m going to make a list, (check it twice) and go from passively browsing, to actively looking. I’m gonna be looking so hard, they’re gonna call me the backpack hunter.

My list will have two sections. ‘Nice to haves’ and ‘Must haves’.

Must haves:

  • Fit all of my stuff in (obviously)
  • Sized so I can carry it as hand luggage (RyanAir is 55cm x 40cm x 20cm)
  • Durable
  • Water Resistant
  • Separate Compartments (one for the main bulk, another for documents, etc.)

Nice to haves:

  • Doesn’t look like a travellers backpack
  • Lifetime warranty
  • Laptop section

I don’t actually know exactly what I’m taking yet either, so that’s something I’ll have to figure out as well. Ideally I don’t want to take much. I don’t really want to take anything but I’ll need at least a few vests, underwear, toothbrush, laptop and a camera so I guess I’ll start with that.

Have you been travelling and are full of tips on what to look for in a bag? Let me know, I need some guidance! Leave a comment here or tweet me @marcusmichaels.

Thanks.

Categories
Journal Makings

Sweat Roulette is in the news

News Clipping - The Mercury

SweatRoulette.com has been making headlines in The Mercury newspaper, available to read online and in print.

It’s crazy to think that this idea was only thought up last week and a crude prototype was only developed last Sunday. The website has been updated with more functionality since it’s launch such as giving you a rest period after each workout, a round counter which tells you how many rounds you completed with a dynamic link to share your achievement on Twitter.

A big shoutout to TeamTreehouse.com, I’ve learned so much from these guys. It’s definitely one of the best places online to learn how to code (amongst a load of other useful things). If you want to take yourself to the next level, give it a try with 50% off your first month.

Learn to code with Treehouse

Categories
Journal Makings

Sweat Roulette v1

Sweat Roulette Web App

It’s up, it’s live, it’ll make you sweat your ass off. Sweat Roulette is a healthy project by Charlotte and myself which will get you moving and keep you fit.

The rules are simple. We give you an exercise for 20-60 seconds, then it’ll change. You keep doing them as hard as you can for as long as you can. If you need a rest, skip one exercise.

Timer, Exercise Instructions, Rest Intervals and Music are being development for future release. If you want to be part of this project, feel free to leave feedback or submit a pull request on GitHub.

Give it a go and Sweat Roulette.

Categories
Journal Lifestyle

Protected: Six Steps: Lazy Weight Loss Plan

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Categories
Journal Makings

From Paper to Pixels

The past couple of days I’ve been building a new portfolio website for myself. The hardest part was getting started so I did some really quick sketches, settled on a layout, then started coding.

I took this photo for Instagram, but it encapsulates the whole creation process so well I thought I’d blog it too.

From Paper to Pixels Instagram Photo.jpg