My concept

I needed a clear concept for my experiment. What else would you expect from a perfectionist‘s mind? A way to rationally let go of my rational thinking. To let coincidence or fate and intuition or my heart show me the way.

The swinging pendulum

In life, things are often about balance. I like describing this as a pendulum. It swings from one side to the other. It stops for some time in one position. After being on one side, it will probably go to the opposite for some time. Imagine work-life balance. As my job was my main focus for years, I needed a real break from it and live more fully with more freedom. In the future, I will certainly set it back to that sweet spot in the middle, where the pendulum can stand still and rest – a healthy work-life balance.

In the case of my journey, one extreme of the pendulum is living a self-driven life, lead by rational thinking, by the mind. The other extreme is driven from the outside. Call it fate or coincidence, outside of personal choice, fully letting go. I believe the balance point of the pendulum is a deeper sense of knowing. Neither following the mind nor coincidence but following your heart. That was is meant to be because you feel it deeply. Even if that path leads you to pain, you know that it was meant to be and you wouldn’t want it any other way.

I want to experiment with the other side of the pendulum. Learn a new way. Deprogram myself so something new can arise. And hopefully, land on that sweet spot of knowing from inside my heart.

Terms and conditions

I want to travel simply and sustainably. With my backpack, my musical instrument, by public transport, car-sharing or hitchhiking, no flying. I will sleep in hostels or couch-surf. 

I want to decide where to go by using flipism. And here’s how I’ll do it:

On arriving in a country, I’ll soon decide where my next border crossing will be. This will define my general direction. I’ll list all neighbouring countries starting from the North and clockwise, excluding the ones I‘ve already visited. Draw a line in the middle to split the list in two. Flip my coin. It will tell me if my next destination is above or below the line. For odd numbers of possibilities, I’ll to toss the coin to decide if I shall draw the line above of below the middle destination. Keep going like this and by elimination, only one option is left. If, by any chance, my intuition is strong about a destination, I will follow it.

The choice is made, let‘s go!

Oh, one last thing. I am leaving my smartphone behind.

nature, landscape, mountain