For the last I’m not sure how many years, I’ve been developing a skin condition, mainly on my finger tips. The skin dies and sheds down to deep layers on a cyclical basis, leaving raw skin which is so sensitive I can’t hold a cup of hot tea or run my hands under hot water. During the ‘dead’ phase (which is most of the time), there are only two or three fingertips which will register on my iPhone screen, making texting quite a coordination challenge depending on which finger tips are ‘alive’. The first diagnosis was contact dermatitis. Interesting but not useful as we couldn’t figure out what I was coming into contact with that was causing it. I did wonder at one point if extensive use of acetone to remove adhesive lettering from the hull of Children of Phoenix when changing the name might have had something to do with it. Then the diagnosis changed to psoriasis and treatment for that certainly has helped the condition… everywhere except on my fingertips, where it’s made no difference whatsoever. The latest diagnosis is that it’s a genetic condition which causes me to shed skin multiple times more rapidly than the average homo sapien. Skin shedding is not an abnormal thing. All animals do it – at different paces. Human cells renew at different rates. For skin cells apparently it varies but is often about a 30 day cycle. It happens on such a continuous cycle that most people don’t notice it. Apparently my finger tips try to renew on almost a daily basis, all at once. Which is more reptilien than human. Am I becoming a lizard?
Today it’s not just my finger tips that I’m shedding. This afternoon I’ll walk out the door of my corporate office job as an organisational change manager with a major bank. It’s a job I’ve enjoyed, with a team who are fantastic to work with in a working environment focussed as strongly on Employee Value Proposition as they are on their customers. It’s a job that gave me the freedom of Lifestyle Leave for our trip up the coast last year and it is without question the most forward-thinking organisation I’ve ever worked for when it comes to flexible working arrangements. It was such a great environment that I opted to drop from contracting rates to a permanent salary. But it’s time for a change. Lizards don’t just shed bits of skin on a continual basis like (most) humans. They periodically have to shed their entire skin, otherwise they can’t grow properly and parts of their bodies can start to rot. If I look back over the last thirty something years, I feel more and more like a lizard. I have stepped out of an old skin into an entirely new one on a regular basis. In some ways I could be described as a change junkie, constantly in need of new things to be happening. That would imply that the changes occur on the basis of rash
decisions; change for the sake of change. That may have been true to an extent in the past, although I prefer to think that I’ve been adapting to changing circumstances in a highly agile manner (that way I can tell myself I’m an evolved human being from a Darwinian theory perspective). Either way, this latest transformation certainly isn’t a rash one. Becoming a Blue Nomad has been a lifetime in the dreaming, eight years in the hoping and five years in the making. It’s not a rash 
decision; it’s a calculated risk that has been planned and carefully engineered based on a clear acknowledgement of priorities. Today might be feeling like taking a step over the edge of a very steep cliff, but actually it’s just another step forwards on a carefully defined path. One that brings us very close to making our dream for tomorrow the reality of a new today.
As I hand my security pass in today, no doubt I’ll be feeling somewhat nervous and apprehensive about the future that we’re about to embark on. But I’ll also be feeling excited and content with the new skin I’m slipping into. I might even let myself forget about being an evolved human being and just find a warm rock to lie on for a day or two, basking in some sunshine like a Galapagos Island prehistoric iguana…