A different kind of journey
The other day I read an interesting article in Director Magazine about the rise in 'learning' holidays being taken by people at the top of their game, business owners, company directors.
For so many people 'time out' is a chance to stop, sit, relax, do nothing .. and for others it's a chance to do something quite different else instead.
By the time I started my sabbatical in 2011 I was so exhausted from life I wanted to lie quietly in a dark room, or perhaps on a beach, and do absolutely nothing. Instead, I decided to sail across the Atlantic Ocean as voyage crew on a tall ship to Brazil.
I'm one of the believers that doing something different from your normal routine is as good for the soul (I think better!) than doing nothing at all in the quest to rest or relax.
When I sailed across the Atlantic on a tall ship to Brazil in 2011 with virtually no sailing experience it was more than just a journey to another continent. It was a chance to learn something completely new on the go. Life at sea.
Swapping outlook for lookout and learning all 212 ropes on board stretched my mind, created a new flow and both filled and passed the time... all 28 days of it .. so fast that when we reached the shores of Salvador I did not want to get off.
Journeys then are more than just the distance.
In 2011 I took Lily Cole, supermodel, activist and Patron of the Environmental Justice Foundation on a journey to discover the supply chain of the cotton industry and the production of a humble t-shirt.
We visited the cotton fields, gin, dye-house and wind-powered factory where EJF's climate-neutral t-shirts are made.
On the way we met cotton farmers, climbed wind turbines, drank effluent waste water and lost her luggage and she learned what it takes to make one of EJF's 'Just For' designer campaign t-shirts - a project I set up and ran (2006-2011) to raise critical funds and awareness for the issues they work on.
Designed by some of the greatest designers in contemporary fashion industry, EJF's t-shirts are produced using a process that is low-carbon, energy-efficient, organic, and simply revolutionary...
In four minutes you can follow her journey, hopefully learn something new and feel inspired to get a t-shirt, that doesn't cost the earth http://www.just-for.co.uk/
Blink and you'll miss me, but there I am, minute 1:02 explaining something about a massive pile of organic cotton!
Film produced by Environmental Justice Foundation's filmmaker Eleanor Church
