Work Life Balance
Finding a work life balance as a digital nomad can be hard. Due to the nature of how you are working its easy for it all to crossover, the same way working at home can be difficult because where to you find the separation of an ‘office’ and your living room? It can be hard to determine if you’re life is just becoming work and, although we love what we do, it’s important to make sure you set the time aside to enjoy the place you’re in and experience new things. Throughout my trip in New Zealand, I always knew Queenstown was going to be a ‘big one’. There was so much I had been told about what you can do, so many things to see and experience. So although I worked throughout my time there, I definitely had set some time aside to make sure I could fulfill my Queenstown expectations.
On our way down to Queenstown, we stopped at the AJ Hackett HQ so people could book in their bungy jumps for Queenstown. When we arrived I had absolutely zero intention of doing a bungy jump, but then they showed us a promotional video and I changed my mind. There were various ones you do, varying in heights and styles, and I went from not planning on doing one to doing the highest one they offer – a 134 m free fall. I’d worked hard throughout the trip and thought it was time to implement the work life balance. But I’ll talk about the bungy later.
When we finally arrived in Queenstown, we strolled around to get our bearings and see what the place had to offer. We were going to be in Queenstown for a week so we were in no rush. The rest of the day was very relaxed and so I took it as an opportunity to do some work at the hostel and made sure I wasn’t behind on anything. The work life balance was in full swing in Queenstown, there was always something to do so I could spend a good chunk of the day working without missing out on anything. This included Ferg Burgers. If you’ve been to Queenstown or know someone that has, you will have heard about Ferg Burgers, I was told about them before I was told about skydiving in New Zealand. Unfortunately I didn’t have a Kiwi Experience bus driver to give me all the background on Ferg, but a quick Google search explained to me why it was so amazing. (If you have a look on the Fergburger website you can have a read) The basis really is really good burgers, really really good burgers. We managed to dodge the queues and go at a slightly quieter time so we didn’t have to wait long at all, we got our burgers (there’s a huge menu by the way) and headed down to the lake front to eat them. It was sensational. If you’re in Queenstown, please do not miss the opportunity to go and get a Fergburger.
As I said, a lot of my days in Queenstown were spent with a bit of work and a bit of not-work. We carried on exploring the town, with more Fergburgers, beers by the lake and the occasional game of Frisbee golf in the park. But after a chilled out few days, it was time for 2 much more adrenaline filled days for me. All about that work life balance.
Day 1 of adrenaline was the Shotover Canyon Swing. I had booked this in Abel Tasman with the Kiwi bus in order to get the best deal, if I’m honest I thought I’d booked the AJ Hackett Nevis Swing I later learned I was wrong. Nonetheless I was very excited. A couple of others had booked in for the same time as me so headed to the canyon, got briefed on the way and then got strapped up. There’s various options for how you jump that all range in ‘scariness(?)’. I decided on what was, apparently, one of the worst; the pindrop. So I had to stand on the ledge sideways, slightly bent over with my hands behind my back. basically my only option was to look down. After some ‘discussions’ shall we say with the people that were about to throw me off a ledge, I took a deep breathe, did a little jump to the left and then I was off. I, personally, love doing things like this so I thoroughly enjoyed it. It may have taken a bit of courage but it was definitely worth it, so much so that I decided to do a second one. I looked at it as training for my bungy jump. For my second jump I did ‘the chair’ where I had to lean back in the chair until I fell off, which went against everything I was told at school. But again, the jump was amazing and it left me super excited for the bungy jump the next day.
Day 2 was the Bungy Jump. Turns out you have to pay $50 to be a spectator which meant I was doing the bungy jump solo which made it slightly more interesting and much more nerve wracking. The bus journey in the morning was longer than anticipated and my nerves carried on building, turns out my ‘training’ at the canyon swing was not effective. We arrived at a canyon and, again, I was kitted up and almost instantly sent out on a pulley cart thing that would take me over to the floating pod that I would be jumping out of that morning. A couple of people had gone before me and made it look easily, but I learnt that I much rather going first in these type of situations. Eventually my name got called, the rope was attached and there I was, standing on a ledge 134 m (~440 ft) above the ground. The instructor gave me a quick brief of how to jump, what to do when coming up and then said ‘3, 2, 1’. And then I jumped. To begin with all was fine, it was only when I started to look down and I was in a complete free fall that I slightly freaked for a second but then it was the same feeling I got when I was skydiving and I really began to enjoy it. The only thing I struggled with was pulling the cord that would bring me to an upright position on the way up, I tried multiple times but nothing happened so I arrived back at the ‘pod’ upside down. I know with so many things on this trip I’ve said you have to do x, y and z (I’ve already done it in this post), but if you ever get the opportunity to do a bungy jump do it. I found it much more challenging to do the jump than the skydive but it was 100% worth it.
So there we go, that’s one way of ensuring you keep a work life balance. It may have been a slightly extreme work life balance, but I was in Queenstown, New Zealand after all. If you’d like to find out more about how we keep this balance and find out more about our lives as Digital Nomads, click here. And if you missed last weeks post, click here to find out what I got up to in Wanaka.
Work Life Balance – Bungy Jump, Queenstown
I’ll see you on Friday for my penultimate New Zealand blog post!
Ella
(P.S. To take a FREE look at the digital business system we use to live our dream lifestyle, click here)