The other night at dinner, I was asked some interesting questions when the subject of my “Thirty before 30” plan was raised.

• Are you doing this for the journey or for the sport of baseball?
• What are you trying to achieve?

Now, whilst on paper these aren’t difficult questions to answer, I found myself somewhat stumped and without a seemingly rationale response.

Surely, if I’d been thinking about why I want to do “Thirty before 30” and its purpose I’d be able to answer immediately right? Like in reality the answer should be right there as it’s a decision I’ve previously made. So well rehearsed that I don’t even need to think about it – similar to something like “Why did you drink that water” “because I was thirsty”.

But yet, here I was. I had to pause and think for a minute on it… why?

The more I think about it, the more it becomes simple to me.

Why not?

See as I’ve pondered this overt the last 24 hours, I’ve come to the realisation that ultimately in life every decision we made that might break from the norm (as alluded to in my first blog post), will be questioned by those that only know their own paradigm. Sure, if you’ve gone the straight and narrow with law, finance, medicine etc. etc. the idea of leaving your career for four months at age 30 might seem like madness and could potentially put you back years.

So that’ reasonable then that they might question the rationale behind it all, and what I could possibly “achieve”.

But what got me thinking even further was at what point as adults do we lose that sense of adventure and curiosity?

For example, when we talk to a 10 year old, and they say they want to go to the moon one day, we encourage their sense of adventure, of curiosity and of willingness to simply be themselves and ACHIEVE what they want.

How come then, at age 28, something like this is questioned and needs solid rationale behind it or else it is labelled as potentially a pointless exercise?

Now I am not being critical of the two people who asked me these questions. I totally understand where they are coming from and they are also from a vastly different generation.

But in order to give them somewhat of a response:

The achievement will be the journey and I’m doing it to simply watch baseball.

Today in Australia marks perhaps the funnest holidays on the American calendar. I’m referring to of course, 4th of July or Independence Day (aka when America curb stomped the British out of their newly formed country)

I’ve always found it interesting how Americans will state the name of this holiday fourth of July when they would write it as 07.04 – or July 4th, where we in Australia would say 04.07 – or 4th July…. but yeah, who really cares, just merely an observation (get used to these).

Anyway, 4th of July is a great holiday not only because of Booze, BBQ’s & Boats, but also that extra special “B” which is the only sport running at the moment BASEBALL!

Over the last few years, the celebration of the holiday has really ramped up within the diamond. Teams are not getting fully decked out in ‘Stars and Striped” uniforms (with the exception of the Blue Jays of course), and putting on special giveaways to the fans in attendance (watching the Cards v Nats game yesterday 90% of the crowd were wearing red, white & blue cowboy hats – you’re very mistaken if you think I didn’t also want one!)

So whilst your average baseball game might be as Americana as it gets, on the fourth the schtick is ramped up to 100 and truly goes into overdrive!

In Australia, our equivalent to the 4th is appropriately called “Australia Day”. While us Aussies aren’t celebrating our independence (although I truly hope this happens in the future), much like the Americans, we are celebrating all that makes our melting pot of a nation great, and much like the Americans we also typically do it with Booze, BBQs and Boats!

This time next year, on the 4th of July, I’m excited to be also celebrating that extra special “B” with whoever I might be with 😉