About Rodney

My name is Rodney Goodall.

I'm a writer, walker, and pretend to be a photographer.

I discuss the systems that shape the life of most people, myself included, and what it means to live deliberately inside, against, and eventually beyond societal systems.

This project is not activism.
It is not a call for revolution.
It is not a man claiming to have escaped everything and found all the answers.

It is consciousness raising.

It is an attempt to look clearly at the life we were trained for, listen more carefully to the world around us, and live with more honesty than habit.

The Life We Were Trained For

Most of us are handed a script before we're old enough to question it.

Go to school.
Learn to sit still.
Follow instructions.
Get a job.
Work hard.
Buy the house if you can.
Raise children if you have them.
Stay busy.
Stay tired.
Save for retirement.
Hope there is enough life left at the end.

Some people thrive inside that script. Many survive inside it. Most people quietly feel something is wrong but can't name it.

I am interested in that feeling.

The unease.
The exhaustion.
The sense that ordinary life has become strangely difficult.
The suspicion that the systems around us are not neutral, natural, or inevitable.

Schooling, work, money, class, debt, housing, status, consumption, technology... these things shape us. They train us. They reward certain behaviours and punish others. They tell us what a successful life is supposed to look like.

But very few of us were ever asked a simple question:

Is this actually the life you want to live?

Why I Am Doing This Now

I'm 58 years old.

That matters.

I'm not beginning this from the clean, romantic starting point of youth. I've lived a normal, complicated, difficult human life.

I've worked bad jobs. I was divorced and lost almost everything. I remarried, and my marriage went through serious trouble before we found our way through it. I spent ten years caring for my ageing parents until they died.

Those things shaped me. They delayed me. They narrowed my choices.

But they are not excuses.

That is life.

Most people don't get a perfect, uninterrupted path. Most people carry responsibilities, losses, compromises, mistakes, duties, grief, fear and fatigue. Most people have periods where they are not building the dream. They are simply trying to get through the day.

I understand that.

But I also believe this:

Being late is not the same as being finished.

And it is never too early to start.

The system took time from me. Life took time from me. Responsibility took time from me. But none of that means the rest of my life belongs to the script.

I'm starting from where I am.

Not where I wish I had been.
Not where a younger man might have started.
Here.

My Sons

A large part of this work is for my sons.

I don't want them to inherit the standard life script without questioning it. I don't want them to believe their lives should be handed over to schools, employers, banks, algorithms, social expectations, or frightened adults who forgot they had choices.

I want them to ask better questions earlier than I did.

What does a good life look like?
Who benefits from the version of life we are told to chase?
What are we giving away in exchange for comfort, approval and security?
How much of our life is actually ours?
What would it mean to live deliberately?

This project is one way of asking those questions in public.

It is also one way of showing my sons that a life can still be redirected. Even late. Even imperfectly. Even after loss.

Walking as Philosophy

Walking is central to this work, but walking is not the point.

Walking is the vehicle.

To walk is to slow down in a world built for speed. It is to move at human pace. It is to notice things that disappear when life is lived through windscreens, screens, schedules and obligations.

A walk is simple.
A walk is physical.
A walk is deliberate.
A walk is a refusal, however small, to be carried everywhere by systems designed for efficiency.

Over the next few years, I will walk Australia bit by bit, write, photograph, and build this project one step at a time.

In 2028, I plan to walk from Melbourne to London.

That walk will be the public demonstration of the philosophy: a long, difficult, visible act of stepping outside the expected path.

Not because walking is heroic.

Because walking makes the question impossible to avoid:

What kind of life are we actually living?

Photography

My photography focuses on things people often walk past without seeing.

Mushrooms.
Graffiti.
Road signs.
Bark.
Texture.
Small details.
Weathered surfaces.
The overlooked edges of ordinary places.

That is not separate from the writing. It is the same act.

We walk past small things without noticing them.
We also live inside large systems without questioning them.

Photography trains attention.

It asks us to look again. It says the world is not as blank or ordinary as we have been trained to believe. It reminds us that seeing differently is the first step toward living differently.

What I Write About

The writing here is about ordinary life and the systems beneath it.

I write about schooling as training for compliance.
Work and wage dependency.
Class and the difficulty of leaving the place you were born into.
Money, housing, debt and economic pressure.
The life script of school, work, marry, buy, retire.
Simple living in an unequal world.
Walking as a deliberate act.
Unconventional living.
The question of what a good life actually is.

I'm not writing as an academic. I'm not writing as a politician. I'm not writing as a guru.

I'm writing as a man trying to understand the shape of his own life, and the shape of the world that produced it.

Samoa

Eventually, after walking and writing for the next few years, I intend to move permanently to Samoa.

For me, that is not a fantasy escape. It is part of the same life arc.

The work begins with questioning the script.
It continues with walking out of it in public.
It ends, or at least changes form, with building a simpler life elsewhere.

The point is not to disappear from the world.

The point is to live in a way that is more aligned with what I believe.

And when I move there, I will continue this work.

This Site

This website is the home of the work.

Here you'll find essays, walking updates, photography, books, newsletters and reflections on the systems that shape our lives.

The main sections are:

Observations — essays on systems, life, work, money, schooling, walking and deliberate living.

The Walks — shorter walks through Victoria now, building up to the long road from Melbourne to London in 2028.

Books — narrative non-fiction books created from the walks, combining journey, philosophy, what people tell me, and systems critique.

Newsletter — weekly updates, essays, photographs and notes from the road.

Membership — a simple way to support the work if you want it to continue.

Membership

The walks, writing and photography are free to follow.

Membership is not a list of manufactured perks. I don't want to pretend that support is a transaction when it is really something simpler.

If this work means something to you, and you want to help make it sustainable, membership is how that happens.

It helps fund the walking, the writing, the photography, the books and the time needed to keep this moving.

That is all.

Simple. Honest. Useful.

The Point

I'm not trying to tell anyone how to live.

I'm trying to ask why so many of us live in ways we never consciously chose.

I'm trying to notice what we are trained not to notice.
I'm trying to question what we are told is normal.
I'm trying to step outside the script, slowly and publicly, and document what happens.

This is the work.

Look.
Listen.
Live.