I get bored quickly, and so I tend to move around a lot, both physically and metaphorically. Staying still is falling behind in my book - it's missing out and wasting what precious little time we have .... and I've already done enough of that in my life.
So, although, I'm only just back from Africa, and the dust has barely settled (sometimes literally when I empty out something else that came on the trip with me and find yet more sand appearing on the floor!), I'm already well into planning the next Grand Adventure. If I'm really honest, I've been musing over the planning of it for months now - planning the planning, so to speak - but now I can finally crack on with it.
And to that end, this is how I'm spending my Sunday afternoon:
Yep - French homework. With cake, because I haven't done French for a very long time and my head feels like it's exploding very gently. It's a long story as to how I arrived at this point, but suffice to say it's both exciting and scary in equal measures.
You see, I'm thinking of jacking in my job, or at least putting it on hold for 6 months, and prancing off to Europe to spend a season on the slopes.
Yes. Eeeeek, indeed.
In short, this is born of a number of different factors. I love travelling, and feel most contented when I'm out there in the big wide world. On my life list (what do you mean I haven't posted that up here yet?? I keep meaning to, and will do so shortly), I have a goal to live abroad for at least 4 months. Also on that list is learning to ski a black run competently and learning a foreign language properly.
My life list got written a year or more ago, and has been sitting in my drafts folder as a work in progress ever since - intermittently added to, but for some reason never published. But since I drafted it, I started to focus on what I wanted in life, and more importantly what I could do to achieve the goals I can influence.
Rewind a couple of years to 2010, to when I finally decided to do something about my unhappiness with my life, and get someone qualified to help me understand it. One of the biggest things I took away from my counselling sessions was that I needed to stop comparing myself to other people and just be me. A hard thing to be, when I wasn't entirely sure who "me" was. So I went to Costa Rica a week later and just enjoyed it, and "was", and it was that trip that crystallised that feeling I now constantly seek of just being in the moment and soaking up the foreign, beautiful, exotic different-ness around me.
When I got back, I made the leap of moving to Bristol because it was what I needed - to be on my own and discover what I wanted and needed. A roller coaster couple of years later, I'm starting to understand what makes me happy in life. I can't remember if my counsellor ever explicitly said to me that it was quite ok to be me and be different, if that what was what I wanted, but it was certainly the direction she sent me off in. So while many of my friends back home are busy getting engaged, married, decorating homes, trying for children and generally living and loving the middle class ideal, I'm slowly becoming more adventurous and less tied down. They are genuinely happy, which is all I want for them, and I've stopped trying to be them and not being happy with it. Maybe that's all in my future, but I'm not ready for it yet.
The funny thing is that, in not following the crowd, I've discovered there are so many other people out there doing the same, that they're a veritable crowd of their own!
Back to the topic of French lessons. It turns out that moving to bristol bought me into contact with a lot of people who'd all done ski seasons, and quite without realising it, I realised it was something I was very keen to do myself. Of course, being me, I want to do it on my own terms, so no chalet hosting or repping for me - what I'm after is slightly different, so we'll have to see if I'm lucky enough to land the job I want . I've seen a couple advertised from previous seasons that would be perfect, so now I just have to make myself as qualified and appealing as possible to try and land one. I figured brushing up my French would be a good start. Plus it's fun to be learning again.
And since this blog also focuses on my health, eating hasn't been too shabby this weekend either, lots of sleep, and I'm pleased to report that my back's feeling a little better today, which leads me to hope the physio was wrong on Friday (or at least overly pessimistic) and that it won't take months to settle down. Because I'd quite like a summer spent outside and having fun!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment