Earlier this year, I mentioned how the only thing I could fathom doing less than visiting a nude beach, was go skydiving. I just couldn’t picture it. I’ve been paragliding and ridden crazy rollercoasters, but I’ve never seen myself as a skydiver – that’s something other people do.

When I started this blog, I had a hazy half-idea of going skydiving for the final post of the year. Then, a week ago, I was checking the prices online – to see what I might be up for – and saw that Skydive Australia was having a massive sale until June 30^th. A crazy thought crossed my mind: I could do that next week. I was almost taken aback by my genuine consideration of such a preposterous suggestion, but I decided to capitalise on the momentum.

I’ve always had a knack for dragging mates into my shenanigans, but assumed my luck would run out here. On the contrary: not one but two friends said they’d come with me (although one unfortunately had to pull out due to illness). The affair progressed at a rapid pace and before I knew it, we were booked in for Thursday morning.

So somehow, in a dizzyingly spontaneous turn of events, it so happened that this week I: Went skydiving.

To my surprise, I was pretty nonchalant about it all as the day got closer. I’d booked it in like I was going to see a movie. Cool, I’m going skydiving next Thursday, now what am I gonna eat for lunch?

The morning came. I awoke early – way too early considering I’d worked the night prior – but the meeting point was in St Kilda and I had peak hour traffic to contend with. My eyes stung as I clumsily pulled on the outfit I’d set aside the night prior – thermals, gloves, and woollen socks complementing my thick all-black pants and hoodie combination I’ve been wearing to death lately. It’s June; there’s a reason it was on sale.

The sun rose as I drove to pick up Angelo, my front demister harmonising desperately with the rock music I’d hoped would wake me up. He was waiting outside his house when I arrived. When he hopped in the car, we exchanged a wry smile and a raised eyebrow; no further acknowledgement of what we were about to do was required, nor was it offered.

We arrived at the pickup point and were transferred by bus to Moorabbin Airport. We met our tandem instructors, got suited up, and watched a safety video before heading out to the plane. It was a tiny little thing, not nearly tall enough to stand up straight in. As we climbed in, my instructor asked me if it was my first time skydiving. I said yes, then as a joke, asked him if it was his too. Playing along, he let out a loud sigh and nodded his head. I patted him on the shoulder and assured him he’d do fine. I’m not sure if it was a symptom of my confidence or something I did to reinforce it, but either way, I felt reassured afterwards.

We sat facing backwards as the pilot taxied towards the runway. At one point the plane started making this loud, vibrational sound that reminded me of Hans Zimmer’s famous ‘braam’ sound effect which has become so prolific in Hollywood. As the pilot hit the throttle and we rocketed down the runway, a part of me felt like the main character in an action movie.

As we ascended, I took in the tremendous views over Melbourne’s south-east. It was a glorious winter morning with a crisp blue sky and scattered clouds. I’m usually a bit uncomfortable flying, but, transfixed by the scenery, I felt calm. As we gained altitude, it got very cold very quickly (-15 degrees according to my instructor). For some reason, I’d imagined the plane would be heated inside. It most certainly was not.

Twenty minutes came and went before we reached our jumping altitude of 12,500 feet. We got buckled up and I popped my special goggles over my prescription glasses. Until this point, I’d been unusually relaxed. I’d been shivering, yes, but more from the cold than anything else. That changed when the sliding door came up and I was hit by a barrage of wind and sound. Suddenly everything was out of my control. The confident façade I’d been wearing was ripped off me and whisked away out the open door. The roaring wind filled my head, disrupting my thoughts like static. I heard faint shouting but couldn’t piece any of it together. I watched as if from a third-person perspective – detached from reality – as three pairs (my mate Angelo included) careened out of the aircraft. Then, with a bang, the door shut and everything was quiet again.

Holy shit, I’m really about to jump out of this plane.

I felt like I was being held for ransom and my kidnappers had just shot three other hostages to prove they weren’t messing around. For the first time, I was nervous. A younger version of me may have started to panic at this point. To my delight though, I simply let all my worry go. Having done some crazy things for this blog, I’ve developed a hardened “fuck it” mechanism. As my instructor pushed us over to sit next to the unopened roller door, I thought yep, this is going to be insane, but it’s happening no matter what and that’s okay.

The plane circled for a minute, then the roller door was back up and my face was outside the plane. I swung my legs out and the only things preventing me from falling to my death were a couple of clips on my harness. I was looking straight up (as we were asked to do) and could see my instructor’s hand holding the railing. I dangled there – surprisingly calm – for about 20 seconds, entering a trancelike state as I tried to clear my mind. Then, in a move that instantly jolted me out of my daze, my instructor’s hand came off the railing and showed a thumbs up to the pilot. Before I had a chance to process, I felt a small shove from behind and was sent hurtling sideways out of the plane.

Nothing.

Nothing can prepare you for that feeling.

I’ve never been so paradoxically present yet completely out of it as I was during the freefall. The world became a choppy blur of blue and white. I struggled for air. I couldn’t muster a sound or form a coherent thought, like the oppressive dual forces of gravity and wind resistance had suppressed my consciousness down to some primal, read-only version. Talk about a total lack of control.

After about 45 seconds, there was a jolt, and everything stopped (fortunately that was the parachute being pulled and not me hitting the ground). My soul and spirit came rushing back in to fill the hollow husk of a body I had been during the freefall. I could see, hear, feel, and think again. I took a deep breath and looked around, attentively this time, at the incredible view we had. Bloody hell, I thought, that was something else.

We glided down slowly over the miraculously blue water, waving at people going for their morning walks. I landed smoothly and went over to hug Ange. We went out for brunch, starting to come down from our adrenaline high, and traded thoughts on the experience. When I dropped him home, I asked what he was going to do for the rest of the day (after all, how does one simply have a regular day after doing what we’d just done?). He joked that he might sit down in a hot shower and cry, and that sounded pretty good to me.

It’s almost a week later as I write this, and I’ve had some time to process. As you might expect, I’ve had many thoughts, but the one that’s kept returning to me all week is that I have, truly, become a skydiver. I don’t just say that because I’ve now been skydiving; I mean I’ve become the type of person who goes skydiving. Doing this blog week after week, it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. To focus on each individual post and not see the overall growth I’ve had. But when you do something extreme like I did this week, you zoom out and things snap into focus. I can see now that in just a few months, I’ve changed palpably – the somewhat risk-averse kid who started this blog just went skydiving like it was the most normal thing in the world. I always told myself I could do anything, but it was a wishy-washy thought that mostly served to get me through the day with my ego intact. Now, however, I see that it’s become true. The past twenty weeks are a testament to that. Not only can I do anything, I am doing everything.

Skydiving didn’t change my life; it made me realise that my life had already changed.

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Thanks for reading my latest post! I’ve got my major mid-year assignment due this week for uni and need all the time I can get to work on it, so unfortunately there will be no new blog next week. I’ll leave you for now with the following thoughts.

I think Nike’s had the secret formula all along: just do it. Skydiving is one of those things on almost everyone’s bucket list, but it too often gets the “one day” treatment. “I’ll do it one day”. I’ve never felt comfortable using this blog to preach any message, but I will this week: get out and do that thing you’ve always wanted to do. Make it happen. I realised there was nothing technically stopping me from going skydiving on a random Thursday morning, and I pulled the trigger. Waiting for the “right time” is putting your fate in the hands of an uncertain future, and the future sure feels uncertain right now. There are always a thousand reasons not to do something; you’ve gotta focus on the one good reason why you should.