13.03.14

Today is the day.

The day I spend the most money I ever have in such a swift, easy transaction. I even walk out the door with nothing notably new or improved.

But the invisible reward? One perfect pair of 'better than' 20/20 eyes.

Un-priceable.

I am so excited.

A hefty price tag, but no threat of it staying in the back of my closet, of it becoming too small, old or rusty.

A unique, personally tailored set of purchasable perfection.

And a full day listening my way through the 'Hamish and Andy' set of podcasts.

Synchronicity.

x6000.

All smiles. All heart.

Love.

Remember.

Michaela's scrapbook: a book filled with TopDeck maps. 

Me: "Why don't you just stick all the maps together?"

Flapjack: "Why don't you just use an Atlas?"

Jordan: "Cross out all the places you haven't been."

Michaela giving the scrapbook to us to look at. Having trouble finding the beginning. 

Jordan (being Michaela) : "Don't know where this thing opens, I've never used it before."

A Step Back. To London Time.

Goodbye's.

It is after an emotional day of dragging out farewells that I perhaps more fully understand why loners exist. Surely, it is easier to not make new friends altogether than to say goodbye. To be emotionally drained and saddened by the constant, overwhelming good times that always appear when you realise there won't be any more (at least for a couple of weeks). 

But then again, the brutality of leaving is only so great because of all the good times. Remove them, and the experiences, the adventures, the memories, and there is nothing. No fun. No smiles, laughs and late night chats. No hurried rushes to Sainsbury's and trips to the park armed with frisbee's and picnic blankets. 

It is these experiences that make the goodbye's hard and therefore validate the emotional roller coaster and tumultuous experience that is in the act of the goodbye itself. 

So really its not about the goodbye, its about celebrating the experiences and memories you've made together. It's about enjoying the time spent together and moving on, the moments treasured and never taken for granted. 

You had me at "Hello".

Maybe you're running late. You have to pick the children up from school, attend a dentist appointment or race through traffic to get to work.

Maybe you're not feeling so great. A little ill, grumpy or worse, hungry.

Maybe you just have a thousand things on your mind, trying to formulate a way to filter through your to-do list with only a limited number of hours in your busy day.

Whatever the case, your mind is elsewhere.

Then I come along. I'm walking, probably meandering, with little to no time constraints. Nowhere to be, nothing pressing to fill my next few hours. I am content in the moment, dragging one foot forward followed by another. Perhaps admiring the shining sun, the foreboding clouds.

I am your antithesis. The calm to your storm.

I see you coming, but you don't see me. Your head is down but I can see your furrowed brow. You don't have enough hands to carry all your items and your hair is dishevelled.

Then we are close. We are in each others path and I try to position myself outside of yours but you're looking down, thinking of something else, placing yourself a couple of hours ahead. At the last moment you look up. I think my foot entered your downward vision and a quick glance up has you realising that if we keep walking we will collide. I, the stroller, you, the rushed.

At this close distance I can see that you're tired. You have light lines around your eyes and a hint more than a five o'clock shadow. Your glasses are on you head, perched at an odd angle, as if you placed them there hours ago and have long since forgotten. Your bag looks like its about to self combust and you have files jammed haphazardly into a folder they have long since outgrown.

You look at me in the eyes and I wonder what you're thinking. That I so clearly have nowhere to be and you long for that? Or that I look bored with no urgent destination? Maybe you just want to question why I'm standing right in front of you, blocking a path you so desperately need to get past.

You look at me in the eyes, and you smile. "Hello" you say, your eyes glistening with compassion, with an unspoken understanding.

Then you're walking past me, your brow furrowed once more, your files spilling out of your hands and your glasses teetering dangerously close to the edge of your head. I notice that you're wearing a suit and dress shoes. You're almost stumbling under the weight of your obstacles.

"Hello" I say, to your disappearing back. And then you're gone.

Sunday. February.

Productive weekend.

I didn't do much, physically. But I kind of got my brain in order after suffering a mid-morning demise on the crux of my future.

Yes, I'm still at home. Applying for jobs from afar and getting little to nowhere. (Now is definitely not the time to throw the "You have as many hours in your day as Beyonce" line at me. I cannot control the outcome of my emotions, or fists for that matter, if so.)

I knew the imbalance of applications to responses would soon get to me, deflating my forced posivibes, but I didn't realise that it would kind of be a good thing. What do they say? It is how we perform at our lowest, that truly defines us? Probably not that, at all. But you get the gist. I had to feel desolate, despondent and contemplative to understand what I wanted, and to really know whether I was willing to fight for what I wanted.

Ridiculous, or not. Pure stupidity, or not. I am ready. I am ready and willing and able and excited.

It led me to the concept of risks. It will be a risk. Perhaps my biggest. I have never been less set up in a new city of intended dwelling.

But I do think it is our risks that define us. How we risk, what we do for our risks, whether we risk at all. Our risks can be the worst thing that ever happens to us, and they can be the best. Either way, taking the risk - the biggest step, will allow us piece of mind. We will find out one way or another if our risk was the right thing to do.

Life is full of little risks.

I am excited for my next one. It may be a terrible idea; action lacking plan or a misstep, a blimp in intention, founded on a whimsical wish or a dream without sense.

Risks are different, for everyone, but the important thing is that we face them instead of running away, or turning our back. Life is risks. Sometimes they are the basis for our finest moments, our best memories, those tales we pass down to any willing ears.

At least for me, if this risk fails; it is merely a three hour flight home.

Remind me never to get into extreme sports.

Human Fate.

Have you ever been at that stage where you don't know what to do?

I'm not talking standing in front of the fridge with a multitude of food choices. Nor am I talking about that moment when your wife/husband/partner/loved de facto asks you where you've been and you don't know whether to tell the truth that you've been at the pub/bar/watching reality TV or lie and say work/friend's/library. 

I mean when your life literally comes to a standstill. You've moved back in with your parents, quit your job or stopped travelling. Or you've moved out of your parents, got a job or started travelling. I'm talking about those phases of life that feel like the end of an era but envisioning the next phase of life seems near impossible. Like a world without Twitter. 

That phase happened to me. Perhaps it happens to all of us, at some time or other. If the earth conspires to help us get what we want, then I needed to be more clear. Unemployed and homeless was never the plan. I had signed off on the travelling part of my life. Not completely, just to show my parents that I did have long term goals, career plans and a focus on the future beyond what country I'd be in tomorrow, or where I was going to find dinner. 

Thinking ahead as a twenty something is a daunting prospect. The 20's are a mindfield of selfishness. We don't have children, mortgages or long term investments. We are animal free, rent any appliances we need and even our plants don't make it through winter. It is a decade of 'me', 'I' and pure focus on the 'self'. It feels like an entitlement. 30 year olds will look at us with toddlers running round their feet, their eyes glistening with the promise of freedom, of nights without tantrums and collapsing into bed fully clothed. We are told to make the most of it, that it won't be like this forever. 

So we do. We travel spontaneously, dance with our eyes closed, stumble through streets, tell stories as the sun rises and laugh, cry and love unabashedly free, fiercely young and living the moment. 

But after awhile we discover this isn't the way we'll live forever. We need to stop, slow down, look ahead. No one but the members of Jackass can continue in this pattern. 

And here I lie. 

I'm contemptuously searching for jobs, trying to come with words I like to put into a search box I've seen too much of. I need experience, but can't find it. I feel like a ballet dancer who's been told that the only spots going are for boxers. I'm competing against thousands with more experience, better backgrounds/grades/work attire. I'm sending my CV to another island where a skim-reading 9 to 5'er makes flippant decisions on my future. Thousands of miles away I think of the suit wearing individual who will decide my fate on the construction of my words. Is he married? A rugby fan? Does he like camping? Have children? Drive a Ford? Is he happy? 

I can't see his face and he can't see mine. I am a collation of letters and he is my God. 

I still don't know what to do. It's not up to me. 

Yes. Yes, exactly.

Thought.

We lose ourselves when we travel. We often find ourselves too.

You are here.

When I was fifteen I imagined my eighteen year old self; I had moved out of home, I had a job, a credit card bill and a long term boyfriend. Then before I knew it, I was blowing out eighteen candles on a delicious chocolate cake and yet I still lived at home, I was still at school with a part time cafe job, I didn't have a credit card let alone the bill and I was definitely still single. It was almost hard to adjust my eyes to the vision of myself I'd imagined just three years earlier.

I can't think what my fifteen year old self would have imagined for my 'twenty-something's'. It seemed so far off. I'm sure a husband, a child or my own home was in there somewhere. That's certainly not a tale of the reality.

I also don't think my fifteen year old self would have imagined every thing I have done either. It would have been hard to believe if I had pre-eminated that I would have lived in both Paris and London for over two years, that I had circumnavigated Europe and visited numerous new countries with the change of each season. I'm sure I wouldn't have believed that someone could single handedly spend so much time at an airport.

At fifteen I kept looking up. I wanted those numbers to climb higher, I wanted to be the eighteen year old vision I had glistening in my mind. I wanted to be independent, know who I was, and what I wanted to be; eighteen would do this.

Now I'm 'twenty-something' and I keep looking across.

Engagements are filling my news feed. I find myself thinking of appropriate wedding gifts, baby shower presents and watching people I learnt algebra with suddenly start to expand with new life inside them. I look across at people wearing corporate suits and designer dresses toting briefcases and multi million dollar contracts. I see their expensive cars glide into freshly purchased homes. I see their lives cascading in front of them, their Saturday night dinner parties breaking up their Monday to Friday, 9-5. I look across, and I see everything I'm not. Everything I don't have. Everything that's different. How is their 'twenty-something', also mine? Where did our paths stop, and go in different directions? Did I miss a turn-off?

I was walking with my friends the other day and stumbled upon an old school friend who we hadn't seen in a few years. Sure, we can kept up to date virtually, through the wonders of social media, but a face-to-face catch up is better. Home for the summer, and unemployed after a long time spent travelling, she gazed in awe and amazement as we regaled our tales of travel. She'd never heard of Dubrovnik and she certainly didn't know the majestic feeling of walking through Paris at dusk on a mild summer evening. Then we listened intently as she enlightened us on the magic of her wedding day, the dress she wore, the things that went perfectly and the things that didn't. She showed us her ring and glanced at our naked fingers, empty of jewellery yet filled with experience. The places these fingers have been.

We told her of the frustration of being unable to speak a foreign language, of being close to an empty bank account or being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a large pack and no map. She told us of the struggle of marriage, the downs that accompany the ups, the compromising, the understanding, the collective independence.

Her Facebook page doesn't tell us that. It shows pure harmony, abundant smiles and perfect pose. Our Facebook pages show glittering sunsets, wide eyed laughter and new friends. Social media is a highlights reel of the movie of your life, the background moments are deleted scenes, hidden from view.

Looking across doesn't help. Comparison is irrelevant.

I might have expected to have a family or a mortgage or a corporate job by this age, but instead I have the ability to speak French, to navigate a new, big city and a camera full of memories from different parts of the world. I have friends in numerous countries and a wallet full of various currencies.

There isn't any worth in expecting the future, looking ahead to an assumed vision of your life or looking across to someone else's in a judgement of where you are.

At fifteen, I looked up. I looked up to eighteen, to independence, to assumed responsibility. I saw eighteen as the answer to my fifteen year old questions. Who I was, what I wanted, what I could become.

At twenty, I looked across. I looked across to others my age, to see what they had done, what they had accomplished. To compare my life experience to theirs in an assessment of whether I was in the right place whether I had done enough in life. Whether I had done the right things or whether I was falling behind the pack and letting my life slip by.

When I'm eighty, I'll probably look down. I'll look down on everything I've done and everything I haven't. I'll remember the memories, and the mistakes. I'll think back to when I was young and wild and free and able. I'll relive the last minute airport check-ins, the barefoot dancing under the glare of the moonlight, chasing the boy I liked over Parisian cobblestones and uninhibited laughter in the comfort of friends.

It's living the moment. Feeling the now. And appreciating that each second holds the chance for another risk, another adventure, another breath. It's about knowing that soon our knees will feel different, our eyes won't see the same, we won't move as fast or as much or as far. It's knowing that the memories will count.

One life cannot be compared to another. There is no right or wrong.

Live your own, just, live it. And live it well.

Flight or Flight.

There is no such thing as running away. 

We're always running to something aren't we? I remember being eight years old and being told by my older brother that I couldn't join in a game of soccer with him and his friends. I was so angry I put a pair of socks, an apple, a notebook and pen and binoculars in a backpack and set off into the street. From the outside this probably looked like running away, to me it was finding a new brother. Someone with whom I could play. 

I have done this countless times since then. I've usually packed a bit more and I haven't since been in search of a new brother (I've consented to the fact that I'm stuck with the one I've got,) but I've always thought that if I got sad, angry, sick or bored of my current circumstances, then it's necessary to change them. 

Just like my teen magazines told me to never put up with a boyfriend that doesn't treat you well, the same goes for life. If it's not working out, strive for something more, something different. We all have the power to chase what we want. When you're eight years older it can seem a lot easier, but it's just as important when you're 25, 54 or 73. 

I am definitely 'flight'. I don't think I have an ounce of 'fight' in me. I found myself in bed during a huge earthquake and I was under the nearest door frame before I even opened my eyes. I even have the hip bruises courtesy of my door-grazing desk to prove it. I am trained in 'flight'. When my city literally collapsed around me, I was on a one way bound plane to Paris within months. 

I wasn't running away from my beloved home, I was running to safety, freedom, youth and experience; in my eyes this came in the form of an adventurous, action packed, exciting year in the city of romance. I was running smack bang into my twenty's, taking a leap of faith into the unknown, a blind step into a new life. I was running into my future, when I had previously seen it crumble around me. 

I love airports. Sometimes I feel like I live at them for large periods of time. As if each new arrivals gate is another room in my travelling home; different languages signifying the diversity of an ever-changing abode. 

I recently personally overheard an exclamation from a middle aged denim clad couple with pastel shirts and loafers standing close together and far from others remark on a tramping pack toting thirty-something striding through the arrivals, "I wonder what he's running from?"

Her manicured hands grabbed a shiny purse as her husband peered at the man, judgement seeping through his wide brimmed frames. I watched him stride through the shiny doors, his eager eyes searching the crowd. I watched as his tramping boots moved across the acrylic floor, past the tourist information office, the nearest ATM and the taxi stand sign. He swept past me and later, the designer couple, leaving a scent of pine, thistle and adventure, before bending down still wearing his pack, as a young toddler with a bright smile and a head covered in thick blonde curls ran clumsily into his arms. An older boy and a thirty-something wife followed eagerly with matching smiles ready across their faces. 

We're not all running away from something, we're almost always running to it. 

Always.

Can I travel again already? 

Endlessly excited to explore the unknown. 

I love this world. 

Numbers.

The bigger it gets, the less you look forward to it.

Remember when you're 6 years old and you look forward to your birthday for weeks? Months even. It's like it can't come fast enough. You repeatedly ask your Mum how many more days. Tell your Father incessantly what your plans are for the day. How you're going to have the biggest cake, eat the most food, play the coolest games. How all your friends will come around and those 3 hours when you're all together will be fun and action packed and adventurous. Your birthday was the best day, filled with excitement and joy.

Well, it used to be.

Then those numbers turned to double digits, you left your teens and the prospect of starting your age with 'twenty something' seemed like the start of a downhill track. As if the 20's slide into 40's before you even have a chance to enjoy the view, feel the moment and live the right now.

The beauty of the early digits is not in the small numbers, but in our unyielding ability to appreciate the moment. Our innocence, our naivety perhaps, allowed us to feel the thrill of the current pursuit, to know that the most important time is the current. Place yourselves in the shoes of your six year old self for a second, those bright, glittery ones, or the ones that had compasses on them, or even those multi coloured ones that kind of looked like bowling shoes. Place yourself in the time when birthday parties seemed to last all day, where so much happened and when your parents came to pick you up there was so much to tell. Remember that these parties mostly lasted two to three hours, but every single moment you thought about the moment you were living. You enjoyed the taste of the cake, the thrill of the chase in tag, the suspense of opening the presents and the constant chatter and giggling of being surrounded by your favourite friends.

You didn't think about next week's rent or the essay that needed to be handed in. You didn't think about the boyfriend who might be cheating on you or the flatmate that never cleaned. You didn't think past the hour, let alone past the day. You knew that now was good.

The moment makes the memory. And everything becomes a memory. We have no control over that. It has already been decided, prescribed and layed out, unchangeable. What we can control is the memory itself. We all want good ones. The memories like those 6 year old birthday parties.

We may have more to worry about as we grow older, I'm certainly not advising you skip out on rent, dump your boyfriend, drop out of school and quit your job in an attempt to make friends with 6 year olds and attempt to fit into those tiny ball pits and miniature playgrounds. But every moment can be lived, regardless of the number that society deems to define you.

Youth shouldn't define the way you live. A number shouldn't tell us how we should be, look or behave. Every day is another series of moments to be lived. Every day we get to choose what we store in that memory bank and every day we should take a little a bit of our 6 six year old self with us. That live in the moment, appreciate the now, nonchalant kind of mentality. That way the next birthday will roll around and you'll look back on the year that's passed and think about how long it felt, and how much you did, and how many moments you really lived.

You certainly can't stop the numbers climbing up, many a celebrity has attempted to physically reverse the inevitable and has merely ended up with less money in the bank and a better relationship with their surgeon. But you can decide whether that rising number really defines you, or whether you'll live like Abraham Lincoln where "it's not the years in your life that counts. It's the life in your years."

2.0.1.4.

2014, they say.

To be honest, the day just ticked over for me. Normality. Regularity. Mundanity (?)

I looked out the window as the numbers changed and the 2013 became nothing more than a memory. My vision was littered with escalating light; blue, green and red was shooting up at dizzying speeds wide across the city. I let it burn into my eyes until all that was left was the empty darkness, like a blanket dropped on the city. The madness, revelry and inevitable chaos dissolved by silence.

I stood and watched, and wondered. What will this year bring?

Seeing it in with my Mum (and father by absence, he was there in dreamland) wasn't even depressing. It took being invited to a party that I didn't want to go to for me to know that I didn't want to feel like Harry Potter in a sea of muggles. My preference lay in being with people who's space I appreciated, rather than wondering why I was surrounded by people that, just like 2013, would soon be only a memory. I wanted to know that 2014 would be entered into through my own choices, that I would chose the fate I could control in the way I wanted.

Resolutions are silly, we all know that. But it is the distinct feeling that merely by making any, by simply putting a couple of words, a few bullet points down on a piece of paper, that we are halfway to achieving them. As if that act itself is part of the resolution. I can only imagine that 90% of people have "make new years resolutions at the top of their to-do list". Many will fail.

I make them every year.

Unaware why, and with only a half hearted attempt to really think what I want another year in the unknown to bring, I charter on with pen and paper. Wondering if the words I put together will still mean anything in months, even weeks. An amalgamation of a moment, an attempt to predict my attitude to the future.

This year, simplicity. No, that's not a resolution, that's literally my approach to the task. I felt bullet points were relevant - quick, easy, and its easier to stick to the task when you draw the bullet point and then feel the daunting obligation to fill it.

- confidence.
- daring.
- ambition.
- opportunity.
- gratitude.

Why is life divided into moments? Why do we insist on choosing one day to collate all our aspirations for 365 days?

Live each day. Make constant and consistent choices to be a better person, live the life you desire. Don't wait for the one day of the year where you are most likely to be hungover, feel like not moving and eating yourself through the bakery section of the supermarket, to make impacting decisions about the rest of the year.

Push forward and make every moment count. Live in the now, and live it up.