How to Move Overseas or Emmigrate to Australia, Costa Rica and New Zealand

How In the Hot Spot Got Started and the Big Idea

Three years ago when I set up this blog I proclaimed:

“I’m setting myself a personal challenge to write, if not daily, then at least on a regular basis. As Joe Rogan (the host of Fear Factor) would say, I am here ‘to stare fear in the face’. I am taking on my personal fear, the fear of being read, the fear of being judged.”

How I Conquered the Fear of Being Read

Fast forward to the present (2009) and I seem to have overcome that fear without actually trying. The simple act of time passing has allayed my fear of being read and of being judged. I am enjoying a new confidence and feeling motivated to write more and write better. I guess that part of that confidence and motivation has come from writing newsletters about our family move to Panama and emailing them out to over a hundred friends and relatives around the world. Those newsletters ended up as an 18 month chronicle of our travels around Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, our 14 months living in Costa Rica and our ultimate decision to leave Central America and move to Australia! Not bad for a family of five from New Zealand. The feedback I received from those newletters was great. To secretly dream of one day writing a book is one thing, but getting emails from people who have actually read my letters and think that I should write a book is the best encouragement I could hope for.

Writing: My First Love

While in Costa Rica, I also took time to read a book which a friend lent me which reconfirmed what I already knew: that writing every day is crucial. As a child I kept a diary and as an adult I continued, only stopping writing daily when, aged 23 I got a boyfriend (now my husband) whose peeping over my shoulder when I was writing in bed at the end of a day and seemingly constant demands for me to turn the light out, or otherwise indulge him, brought about the demise of my daily ramblings.

But last year in Costa Rica I started writing again daily. I had continued writing during those 17 years in the wilderness, keeping a diary on and off, attending a creative writing course and composing emails to distant friends. I even wrote for a living, penning proposals and effective web copy for clients when we ran our own Internet development and marketing company.

Setting Up a Support Network

In Costa Rica I also realized how important being surrounded by positive and like-minded people is to me. So I set up a writing group, imagining about eight fun, interesting people who gathered weekly to read their musings and provide each other with positive feedback and encouragement. Somehow it turned out to be just me and one other English woman, a like-minded free spirit with drive, determination, passion, creativity and brains. Of course, her zany sense of humor was a huge bonus and we really bonded in frenzy of smoking, wine drinking and sharing every Thursday night. It worked!

The Big Idea
Having been through all of the above, I am now ready to write my blog regularly with one big idea:

To inspire other people to follow their dream of traveling by following my own dream to write.

This is the new introduction to In the Hot Spot which I had to shorten on the actual header:

Have you ever wanted to move overseas?
Wondered what it’d be like to start a new life abroad?
Or shelved the idea because you’re too old, with too many kids and responsibilities?
Don’t give up!
I’m no spring chicken and I’ve recently moved to New Zealand, Costa Rica and Australia with my husband and our three young kids. So if you want to hear what it’s like from someone you can relate to, read on. Any questions and comments are welcome. Thanks for reading and good luck with your travel plans!

Next time I’ll write more about our move to Australia and how we are settling in.

Thanks for reading, feel free to add your comments below.

Good luck with all your travel plans!