The last few months of the year seem to have sped towards me with cliched swiftness and its often felt like I've had little time to mark things down. That is never a good thing as you end up forgetting little details and losing track of where you are. This is my attempt to catch up a little bit.
Since last I blogged, Russ and I returned once more to Brighton, for a day trip this time which happened to coincide with the Labour Party conference. The crowds neatly divided between bemused tourists, angry protesters and heavily armed security but the sun still shone on chav peir and we bravely removed our shoes to dip our feet in the English channel. My advice to you is don't do it, its just water and the stones, they hurt your feet. We made the trek once more to the Cowley club and explored the lanes more thoroughly as well as doing a little more caching, which is markedly more nerve wracking when you're surrounded by armed police officers.
In the middle of all of this I was finding somewhere new to live, somewhat inopportunely considering the Australia trip was looming at the end of November. I ran around like a mad woman seeing places every night and working during the day. Fretting about whether I could find something in time and if I did, how I would go leaving all my things with relative strangers, until finally I found somewhere in Richmond. Its about a 10 min walk from the centre of Richmond and about the same distance from Kew Gardens tube station. The house is beautiful as are the people, another lesson in trusting the universe I guess.
Work has also moved out to the Sky campus at Osterley as well which has lessened the commute somewhat even though there's no where interesting to walk to at lunchtime now.
All that running around and crisis gave rise to a subsequent period of relative calm which always makes me panic. And so I did. Ever so slightly, having one of those “how did I get there moments”.
In the last year I've done more things that I always wanted to do than I thought possible in such a sort space of time. I went to the icehotel, sleeping in minus eight degrees and went to Italy and partied at Balmoral castle. Lived in London and fell in love with one of its natives. Everything had been so amazing that for a second I kept expecting that at some point I'd have to wake up and return to reality. When I left Australia last year I had a return ticket and I gave myself a year. A year to have adventures and do whatever I liked, a year where I let myself do the things I always wanted without needing more reason than just wanting. As this gift of a year draws to a close I had to evaluate what it is that I want to do next, how I saw my life.
What I asked myself was why should it end? Why shouldn't life be a series of adventures. I took a risk leaving work and my home in Australia but I have to say that its one that has paid off.
I have plans for what I will do with myself for the next year, the next three years, the next five years, these are preferences rather than anything set in stone as I think if you get too attached to plans and make them to far ahead you end up being disappointed when they change. When they come to fruition I'll let you know. What has changed fundamentally for me over the last year though is the belief that if you want to do something then you should, and more often than not if you don't stand in your own way there is no reason why you cant do the things you dream of.
In my next update: What do you do when you're on a 7 hour flight and the entertainment system fails or how I almost learnt german.
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