freckles & ash

Image Courtesy of Roz Savage

Earlier this week I tweeted this, after hearing an interview on CBC radio:

Heard a story on the radio about woman who wrote two obituaries for herself. She changed her life to make it like the more exciting one.

I wanted to tweet it so I would remember it for later, but really that tweet barely summed up anything, which is the problem with 140 characters, I guess. So here's the full story.

The woman is Roz Savage, and at the age of 34, she was a management consultant and an investment banker. While on a train that year, she wrote two obituaries for herself. One was a reflection of the life she was currently headed for, and the other was her dream obituary. She realized that while she really wanted to fulfil the dream obituary, her current life was headed in the opposite direction. So she made a drastic change.

And now, almost 10 years later, she has become the first woman to row solo across both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans with plans to row the Indian Ocean next year. She has written books about her adventures, and is also in demand as a motivational speaker. She's also taken up running, and has run both the London and New York marathons, placing in the top 2%.

You can read more about Roz and her incredible story here.