Last week I spend four days in Amsterdam, along with my regular travel buddy Jordan Bunker. Four days which we had loosely planned out, along with a bunch of recommendations from the Instagram community.
We were over for work, so we knew spare time would be at a premium, but it was a good opportunity to revisit a city that I'd not explored since I was a teenager. A lot has changed in 12 years – if I look back on memories of my first visit, they now feel like a deleted scene from The Inbetweeners...
The job I have created is extremely fulfilling, and at this stage of my life I wouldn't trade it (or the opportunities I am fortunate enough to be given) for anything. But sometimes it does becomes hard to enjoy "the moment", because I'm constantly thinking of the task at hand – in this case, balancing three projects over as many days. Too much at once. The mounting pressure from myself to make every brief "perfect" made the experience of visiting an exciting city quite a stressful one. The light wasn't on our side, locations didn't look like they appeared to on Google, and time was running short. It's not the city's fault – sometimes you've just got to accept that things won't be perfect.
A few lessons learned for me: a balance between work + pleasure is very important, be ready to adapt a plan at the last minute, if there's more than one project going on at once then plan meticulous (and always prepare a plan c!).
I'll put this one down as another learning curve.
Photography by Jordan Bunker (sorry if I stressed you out, fella).
