I guess one could say that there are two types of people in the world; those whose souls are of the islander type and those for whom the island life is only good for an annual getaway. Okay, so there are so many other different ways of classifying people, but I guess you catch my drift since I do indeed enjoy the life of a traveler.

Anyway, islander souls are chilled out folk who are not in any particular hurry – my kind of people. These types of people ideally follow career paths that fit right in with their personality and character, i.e. jobs that are nothing like those which require one to wake up very early every single morning to navigate the morning traffic and spend the next eight hours slaving away at some cubicle.

One such chilled out islander soul I had the pleasure of meeting is bloke from Sri Lanka who incidentally was in the Cayman Islands on one of his many gigs. This scuba diving instructor is living the life, in my opinion, to the extent that he had me thinking if I couldn’t perhaps add Certified Scuba instructor to my own repertoire and partially live out my life as an instructor. I mean I already love diving just for the fun of it and since I naturally had to take a course in order to get certified as a diver and get my license, I guess I already know what the instruction thereof entails.

You have to be certified as an instructor in order to teach it though, so that’s definitely something to look into.

Otherwise the life of a scuba diving instructor is indeed a very interesting one because this lad from Sri Lanka basically lives in a location primed for scuba diving, from which he basically just visits other prime scuba diving locations when duty calls. He doesn’t even have a website – all the scuba diving instruction gigs he gets are purely by word-of-mouth referrals.

One day he can be kicking it like the local he is back in his native country of Sri Lanka and within 24 hours he could be on the other side of the world, giving scuba diving lessons in the likes of the Cayman Islands and Jamaica.

Most of his clients are happy to cover his airfare as well, so the early flights he sometimes has to catch to make it to the next destination make for somewhat of a source of pain since he absolutely hates having to set an alarm.

In my opinion this just about sums up the most desirable life of a scuba diving instructor, but it’s a choice one has to make. Most instructors are not independent in this way, choosing to enjoy a bit more stability in the gigs they land and their subsequent salaries, so they elect to work out of a fixed location for an establishment which amongst other things offers scuba diving lessons and certifications.

I’d certainly go independent if I ever got my instructor’s license.