This blog is almost solely about my love of my friend Haps book and how it has made me feel a little more normal than I did last week.
If you haven't heard of my dear friend Hap let me introduce him to you....Mark Cameron aka Hap was a hung over dreadlocked student when I met him in my hall of residence in my first year at University and over the coming 3 years we would work together on almost every group assignment I had in my Marketing major, usually with a girl nicknamed Dogs making for a cherished bond in my life. In my last year of university Hap called around to my flat having graduated the year before to have a cuppa on my balcony overlooking the city of Dunedin. He told me of his mission to live and work on all the continents before he was 30. At 21 that seemed a fair plan, so the next day he headed off to Korea to get the ball rolling. Over subsequent years Hap made his way around the world working and backpacking and falling out of trees - see Hap and I were part of the lengthy email generation where you would send bulk emails of your travels into your family and friends inbox's and they would either read them or delete them. I literally lived off Haps emails, possibly responding to every one asking for the next instalment. When he fell out of a tree he decided to put it into a blog and it is from hapworkingtheworld that I started KiwiJoBloggs about my own musings and travel adventures and tips.
So it comes as no surprise after a decade of travel and a rich aray of stories that Hap came to write a book and it is marvellous! For its honest and heartfelt trials and tribulations of love and life on the road. From doors being opened and inevitably slammed in your face. From moments of great wealth to desperate dashes to soup kitchens. Its deeply personal and laugh out loud funny, the girl in me cringed plenty with tales of his sexipades (and explains why when I met his sister earlier in the editing process she had mentioned it was a real "insight into her brother she hadn't necessarily counted on") it had me sighing with understanding about his altitude issues, crying with despair and joy at his heartfelt tales of the emotional roller coaster of life on the road and literally had me spell bound with the variety of situations he ended up in.
But I stayed in bed all day on a sunny Sunday (in the depths of a very personal existential crisis) to finish the last pages and came to understand something about my friend that made me want to leap across the world and hug him crying "I totally relate!".
Hap's final chapters have been the hardest of his journey. As anyone who has had goals in life will understand when you come close to the end, You and everyone around you asks "what next". With each question its like an incision in your soul. Never answering the burning question just making it seem bigger and more impossible than everything you have ever achieved so far. I don't have the answer to this question yet, but I am pleased to say that Hap does, and he is storming the nation now learning his craft and spreading the good word not least with a new tan line on his left hand on the fourth finger where it meets his knuckle.
I am so grateful for Hap sharing this part of his journey as so often the cheerful demeanour and sun drenched photos of our travels belay an image of joy when loneliness and lack of purpose seem to plague us. Thank You my friend from the bottom of my heart for being an inspiration and a true and honest man. You've lived your first behemoth goal in life - what is to follow can only be great. Of that I am sure.
Hap Working the World is available at all good bookstores in NZ and Australia and can be ordered online from here.
If you haven't heard of my dear friend Hap let me introduce him to you....Mark Cameron aka Hap was a hung over dreadlocked student when I met him in my hall of residence in my first year at University and over the coming 3 years we would work together on almost every group assignment I had in my Marketing major, usually with a girl nicknamed Dogs making for a cherished bond in my life. In my last year of university Hap called around to my flat having graduated the year before to have a cuppa on my balcony overlooking the city of Dunedin. He told me of his mission to live and work on all the continents before he was 30. At 21 that seemed a fair plan, so the next day he headed off to Korea to get the ball rolling. Over subsequent years Hap made his way around the world working and backpacking and falling out of trees - see Hap and I were part of the lengthy email generation where you would send bulk emails of your travels into your family and friends inbox's and they would either read them or delete them. I literally lived off Haps emails, possibly responding to every one asking for the next instalment. When he fell out of a tree he decided to put it into a blog and it is from hapworkingtheworld that I started KiwiJoBloggs about my own musings and travel adventures and tips.
So it comes as no surprise after a decade of travel and a rich aray of stories that Hap came to write a book and it is marvellous! For its honest and heartfelt trials and tribulations of love and life on the road. From doors being opened and inevitably slammed in your face. From moments of great wealth to desperate dashes to soup kitchens. Its deeply personal and laugh out loud funny, the girl in me cringed plenty with tales of his sexipades (and explains why when I met his sister earlier in the editing process she had mentioned it was a real "insight into her brother she hadn't necessarily counted on") it had me sighing with understanding about his altitude issues, crying with despair and joy at his heartfelt tales of the emotional roller coaster of life on the road and literally had me spell bound with the variety of situations he ended up in.But I stayed in bed all day on a sunny Sunday (in the depths of a very personal existential crisis) to finish the last pages and came to understand something about my friend that made me want to leap across the world and hug him crying "I totally relate!".
Hap's final chapters have been the hardest of his journey. As anyone who has had goals in life will understand when you come close to the end, You and everyone around you asks "what next". With each question its like an incision in your soul. Never answering the burning question just making it seem bigger and more impossible than everything you have ever achieved so far. I don't have the answer to this question yet, but I am pleased to say that Hap does, and he is storming the nation now learning his craft and spreading the good word not least with a new tan line on his left hand on the fourth finger where it meets his knuckle.
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| Reading Hap Working the World at the Entrepreneurs 2012 Conference waiting for Bill Clinton to speak (after being told you are nobody unless you have written a book!!) |
Hap Working the World is available at all good bookstores in NZ and Australia and can be ordered online from here.
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