What’s next?

Tags

Change your life, escape the matrix, Minimalism, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

Okay so we’ve bought the flights home and have five weeks left of this trip, so I’m allowing myself a look at ‘What happens next?’ whilst otherwise staying in the trip, being open to possibilities, and knowing that we don’t ever really know what’s going to happen…

Our flight arrives in the evening so we will stay a night or two in London then get a morning train to Northampton, then a bus to our village.  That way we have time to get coal, kindling, firelighters, water, food, etc.

Food and smaller items can be got from the local shop which is walking distance, and near the bus stop.  We think we have some coal, but if not there is a yard over the road we can walk to and bring back using a wheelbarrow.  (Must ensure we don’t arrive back on a Sunday when yard will be closed…)

Our clothes and bedding have been left on the boat for a year, so we’re hoping that everything is not mouldy…

We’ll need to get the car MOTd, we will ask our landlord to recommend a garage and book it in in advance.

As soon as the car is MOTd and the boat is basically set up i.e. dusted and warmed and bedding aired/at worst replaced, we will go to London to see my husband’s kids, bring one back who wants to come and stay; go to Norwich to see my son, and see the rest of family and friends.

There’ll be several trips to Norfolk and London and some longer trips over the coming months to visit people further afield.

And amongst all that: job applications/agency sign up; sell India stuff (we sent some stuff back to sell); finish the book, and maintain the blog.

I’m looking forward to being home on the boat and cooking proper meals from scratch in my own kitchen.  In the two weeks that we lived on the boat before we left, I really enjoyed that.

I’d also like to make my own natural cleaning products; and also toothpaste, shampoo, hand/body wash, hand cream, face moisturiser and body lotion, to reduce plastic waste and chemical use.  If I do a couple of products, I’ll be pleased.

There’s some activities/organisations/online movements that can support our lifestyle: meditation; going to classes/getting involved at the local Buddhist centre; LETS schemes; Vegan events; the Buy nothing, Minimalism and Voluntary simplicity movements, should we need/want.

I feel that our return to the UK and our new life on the boat will be a whole new adventure.

Thank you very much for reading

For pictures of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Living the Dream

Tags

Feminism, happiness, love, marriage, Netflix

‘I’m doing something for the first time,’ I said to my husband, ‘Guess what it is.’

‘You’re stewing apples,’ he said.

‘It’s not so much what I am actually doing, it’s about what I am doing.’  I said.

It was Friday morning and I was making something from a recipe that I had just read in a post on the internet.  I read it, and I thought, we have apples, we have oats, we have apple juice.  I can do it.  I can do it right now.

I have never done this before.  Funnily enough, a few days ago, I had been thinking that I did want to start doing this.  Lisa Anniesette posts some lovely looking recipes, but I have never once tried making them.  I don’t know what’s stopping me from actually trying to make Lisa’s or anyone else’s recipes.  Am I intimidated because the food looks so lovely, the photographs make everything look so glamorous, so that I somehow think that it isn’t for me?  Am I waiting for some mythical time in the future when I become the kind of person who makes things like that?  Or am I just too lazy to go and shop specially/shop for new things?  This is no one’s issue but my own but I decided that I wanted this to change.

Anyway, on Friday morning after writing the draft of my previous post, I was catching up on Behcets and Borderline posts, having realised that she hadn’t gone quiet, I hadn’t actually been following her, and I came across one with a recipe in.  No photo, just a recipe tacked quietly onto the end of a personal blog, with a little note saying, if you do try it, let me know how you get on.  Those few little words gave me all the encouragement I needed.

Of course food posts look nice, otherwise we wouldn’t want to make whatever it was.  (This isn’t a food post by the way.)  But no one ever puts pictures of themselves sobbing on Facebook (not usually anyway) and they don’t tend to post pictures of their houses looking a mess.

This is what my kitchen actually looked like on Friday morning when I came downstairs and started making the apple oaty breakfast:

See, no shame.  My friend and I used to joke about sending a realistic round robin letter (you know those Christmas letters people send out to everyone that only have the good things), about our kids truanting from school and getting arrested.

A few weeks ago a friend was telling me about a recently separated man she had just met.  He showed her pictures of the inside of his wife’s fridge, to show what a slob she was.  I thought, wow, that’s mean, I’d hate it if someone did that to me.  It seemed so personal.  Isn’t it a kind of slut shaming, but about housekeeping?  But then I thought, why should the woman be ashamed if the fridge is dirty?  Why her and not the man, and why feel ashamed, I mean, it’s only a dirty fridge, you haven’t hit a dog whilst speeding.

I had a day off on Friday and so did my husband.  Breakfast, cold left over Indian takeaway (my favourite) followed by the hot apple oaty breakfast which was very nice, even better cold the next day (today).  My husband played my favourite songs on the ipod.  Then we wrapped up warm and went to Lowestoft, had a walk on the beautiful beach and then went to the lovely new vegan deli VeGee to eat, drink and warm up.  A well dressed, well to do woman customer looked me up and down, looking at my clothes.  I really wanted to say to her, it’s okay, none of that stuff matters.  I didn’t mind at all.  Then home, a bit of yoga, then more quality time with my husband:  we watched (the original) Bladerunner:  The Director’s Cut* followed by BoJack Horseman.  It was one of the nicest days I have ever had.

This is what we listened to in the car, parked up, watching a seagull dancing on the ground and eating worms.  (The seagull, not us, we’re vegans)

* They implanted the replicants (conscious, emotion feeling ‘robots’ that the humans had built and enslaved) with a memory stream containing a history, a family, so that they’d be easier to control.  Spooky, huh?

 

Thank you for reading.

BoJack Horseman

Tags

Bojack Horseman, Feminism, Netflix, Vegan, veganism

This is for anyone who has not yet discovered this show.  It is a Netflix original, four seasons out on there now with a fifth having been commissioned, so you can relax, tune in, turn on and drop into the wonderful world that Raphael Bob Waksberg and team have created for us.  What have we done to deserve such a thing?  Who knows.  Just sit back and Enjoy!

What is it about?  Well, it’s a cartoon.  It is for adults.  It is very, very funny, funny enough to cause actual physical pain.  It is about Hollywood and fame and consumerism.  It is about depression, alcoholism and addictions.  Sometimes it is very moving, sometimes sad.  It contains layer upon layer of perfectly written (and drawn) jokes, observations and social commentary.  The opening credits, the backgrounds, no effort has been spared to make every little detail rich and full of depth.  To do it justice I’d have to re watch it all from the beginning, notepad in hand, as there will be much I have missed.  However, I know there’s a good chance I won’t do that, so this will have to do.

I forgot to mention that it has animals and people in it.  So a dog might go out with a human, a cat with a mouse.  I almost missed this bit out because it doesn’t really help convey what it is actually like to watch it.

Oh, and Raphael Bob Waksberg,  the creator of the show, is a feminist and a vegan.  This means that he is aware of gender bias in comedy and so you will see things such as a ship’s captain being a woman.  Not because it’s a story about how a ship’s captain is a woman, but because there’s a ship in the story, it needs a captain, and ship captains can be men or women.  This shouldn’t be remarkable, but it is.

Re the vegan bit, in the chicken episode (I am a vegan, so that’s the clip I’ll be including) there’s a line that goes: (describing the conditions that food chickens are kept and killed in) WHAT IF WE’RE IN SOME DYSTOPIAN NIGHTMARE AND WE’RE THE MONSTERS?

Did I mention the amazing writing?  A male character is confronted by a woman crying:  As a typical American male I am woefully ill prepared to handle a woman’s emotions.  I was not taught, and I refuse to learn.

It’s not just the big stuff that resonates.  In the middle of a spaghetti disaster, someone shouts, if only we had some olive oil to stop it sticking.  Another character shouts back, olive oil doesn’t actually prevent spaghetti from sticking, that’s just a myth.

Sublime.

No more potatoes

Tags

awareness, escape the matrix, Law of Attraction, reality

One of my favourite lines from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is when Xander comments on what someone else is doing and is told not to be judgemental.  His reply, no, not judgy, observy, is both accurate and inspiring.  One of the ways we learn and grow is by looking at what other people are doing, but there is a fine line between judgy and observy.  I hope I’m just about staying on the correct side when I say that a lot of people who talk and write about the law of attraction and raising their frequency do so in the context of wanting success in life, be that in business, attracting a romantic partner, needing ready money or even just a parking space.  The focus is on raising their frequency in order to attract good things to them.  Although I agree that that works, for me it’s more the other way around.

For me right now the raising of the frequency is the thing.  Everything I do, everything that happens to me, is an opportunity for my frequency to rise (or to drop).  That’s my focus.

This (illusionary) world is there for us to interact with, to find out who we are through the way we respond and the actions we take.  The experiences are a vehicle rather than the thing itself.  Our mission here isn’t the actual achievements, the extraordinary and the everyday adventures; these are the how, rather than the what.  Our mission is to find out who we really are.

And who are you?  A powerful creator, the centre of your universe.  You were asleep, and now you are awake.

I had this perfect little snapshot earlier:  in bed in the spare/my room which is all cream and more or less clutter free, just a few essentials, a portable electric radiator, and my tablet propped up on two lilac yoga blocks, the opening credits of BoJack Horseman, all warm toffee and pink colours, like Neopolitan ice cream, that lovely woozy music, with BoJack the horse sitting up in bed, waking up…  A momentary snapshot of ‘yes’.  Yes, okay, yes, I created this.

So I can believe in my room.  Can I extend this to advice I have miraculously come across on WordPress, and the teachings of my awareness guru?  What if everything is there to tell us exactly what we need to hear?  What if all I need to do is face down the complexity of it all and distil it into something so simple (and so amazing) that it would trip a switch right now and the light would come on?

I think maybe we arrived here as adults, and were children only in a previous life.  What if all my childhood memories are just deja vu, memories leaking in from another life?  One night when we had just moved in my husband and I were sitting by the fireplace and I had this vision of us being old sitting there, or sitting there in a previous decade.  I looked at him and said, don’t you see, we’ve always been here.  So this time around we must do something different, and leave.

So I can give up potatoes and cutting my hair easily enough.  I can keep on working on staying in my now day and not being judgemental.  I can reduce and restrict the amount of sex and orgasms I have.  I can do all of that, with the intention of frequency raising.  One day maybe I will completely give up the low frequency activities, but right now just as I occasionally eat co op donuts (vegan) but overall believe myself to have a healthy diet, I still want to have the occasional wild night.

This is where I am right now.  The message that has been circling at the outer edges of my consciousness all week is this:  There are no rules, except those I set myself.

There are no rules, except those I set myself.

There’s just one tiny flaw in today’s, or rather yesterday’s revelations.  If everything is a creation of my own mind, that is at times hard to believe.  Like whilst watching the amazing, incredible, completely original show that is BoJack Horseman*, for example.  But it isn’t that I literally created everything out of my own mind, it is that I pulled it towards me.  I drew what I needed to me.  The teachings of my awareness guru.  Advice and insights from WordPress.  Like in The Field, all possibilities exist for us to then create our reality from.  But, and this is where we come back to the beginning again, as a happy by product of raising one’s frequency, good things do arrive.

And it doesn’t matter whether I’ve been walking and blogging like last weekend, or cleaning and decorating and overdoing it like during this week, or being laid up in bed with a cold watching Netflix like this weekend, it’s all me, it’s all life.  Learning has still gone on and progress has been maintained, even if I haven’t realised it until later.

*Shines a light on everything and shows just how f***ed up most media, consumer society etc is, not by being negative but by being a beacon of light.  Really interesting reading interviews with the show’s creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg.

I just feel amazing all the time*

Tags

escape the matrix, happiness, reality, veganism

https://youtu.be/WANNqr-vcx0

Slowing down… a weekend and then another evening to myself with no plans and nothing particular to do…  Even trying to move slowly.  Making coffee slowly.  Making my NutriBullet smoothie slowly.  Realising how much I rush usually.  How my default speed is rush.  Why am I rushing?  There’s nothing I have to do.  Even typing that gives me a little thrill.  As an occupational therapist, obsessed with human occupation and activity; the balance between work, rest and play; make the most of every day a motto:  to do nothing, to have nothing to do, seems deliciously rebellious.

I read a post on the internet forum Out of Mind about how stress is a matrix weapon.  Yes, and so is being busy all the time and rushing about.  Always rushing from one task to the next, always thinking about what is next.  Berating oneself for the things not done or thinking that one should be doing something else…

Why do I do it?  To burn calories?  So that people don’t think I’m lazy?  But there’s only the cats here?!  (Mind you, in the timeless otherworldly stillness of the present moment, I almost put the NutriBullet on with no liquid in it, which could have resulted in a minor kitchen disaster)

In The Walking Dead the people sometimes cover themselves in zombie blood and guts and are then able, as long as they move slowly and calmly, to walk through herds of zombies without attracting any attention at all, let alone getting eaten.  I find this to be a useful metaphor for going about daily life:  control thoughts, control emotions, no matter what happens, thereby making you impervious to anything that gets thrown at you and preventing your energy from being drained.  It helps to stay below the radar:  no flower painted hippy vehicles, no dreads, no ferrets on leads, nothing to draw attention or drama.  Even extending to little things like getting reports done ahead of time to prevent a stressful last minute rush and shopping for Oil of Olay before it runs out.  Anything to help life run smoothly.

The stay neutral philosophy is where it all parts company from the ‘love everyone’ philosophy.  It’s not about loving everyone and having your energy leak out all over the place.  It’s about being a self contained little avatar who keeps her feet on the ground (even though there is no ground), stays upright (even though there is no ‘up’ or ‘down’) and puts her best foot forward, even though there is no best, no forward, and no back.

As everything falls away, as everything goes around in a loop, as everything goes to hell in a handcart, can you stay calm and neutral?  In the little pocket of stillness that arrives with the doing of one thing at a time and only that, and thinking of nothing else…  can you let it expand?  Can you begin to slowly move and find you can take it with you?  Can you maintain it, even whilst you change position?

One has to have space in order to go up another rung.  To rest for a bit, almost bored, until inspiration strikes again, a new conversation, a thought is sparked: and awareness spirals up another level.

I used to be so unhappy, it’s hard to even describe it now.  Now, my life is a rose-petal-strewn-fantasy-fairyland of joy in comparison.  On Friday evening a friend came round, spontaneously.  I made it to the off licence just before it closed and we all drank wine and ate left over Chinese food (I believe this is called ‘scruffy hospitality’).  The next morning (yesterday), I woke up slightly hung over, my husband and I decided on impulse to drive to Norwich and go to the vegan market stall for breakfast.  I washed my face but otherwise went out in more or less last night’s clothes and yoga pants and after getting a miraculous parking space we headed for breakfast.

I was slightly insulated from the night before, but also, I believe, doing better having had my quiet space as described above.  I usually find the city so draining, all the people, the obscene shopping etc, but yesterday, as we walked along the high street, my husband said, have you ever noticed how sometimes the city is so quiet, like there’s little pockets where no one is speaking?  I wondered if we could turn down the volume of the crowds with intention, but like with tinnitus, its best not to give sounds attention if you don’t want them to amplify, and hope instead to create a little pocket of stillness around us.  So as we walked though Chappelfield Shopping Mall at midday on a Saturday, I walked slowly and calmly, all my attention on me and my husband (and the vegan breakfast that awaited us).  I didn’t look at anyone, I didn’t think, oh she’s pretty, or, I love her outfit, or, why can’t I look like  that, oh I probably look too scruffy to be out, they probably think I look like crap, oh my God, there’s too many people.  I didn’t think any of those things, and I walked through the mall, twice, without feeling any significant drop of energy.  Okay, on the way back I felt a little tired, but, like the zombie-blood-and-guts-shield-method, maybe it only lasts a certain amount of time.

Afterwards we went to Tofurei the wonderful vegan deli  and bought sausage rolls, a cheeseburger, three different types of cakes, ice cream, and white chocolate hot chocolate (which is about the closest thing to food and drink heaven I know).  No painting, housework or any responsible tasks whatsoever were going to get done yesterday, the centrepiece of a rare weekend off together.

*Vegan snooker player

Haven’t I been dreaming of a white room, silence and simplicity?*

Tags

escape the matrix, Menstruation, reality, veganism

Everything you see, hear and do in ‘the matrix’ is an opportunity for you to ‘wake up’ or for you to increase your awareness.

And everything you see, hear and do in the matrix also has the potential to suck you right back into it emotionally, mentally, psychologically and even physically.  The most obvious example is 9/11, but it applies to everything: signs you see, people you meet, interactions you have.

My personal one is animal cruelty.** I use it as a mindfulness bell to remind me that none of this is real.  Because how could such horror be real?  That said, even if it is an illusion, I still don’t want any part of the hurting of the animals.  I don’t play video games but if I did, I wouldn’t be raping and killing in GTA.  Remembering this isn’t real helps me cope emotionally on a personal level, as well as stopping me getting involved on a matrix level e.g. giving it any more attention than it already has.  (This morning on the way to work I passed a truck carrying chickens two or three to a crate, and another truck full of pigs.  We all know where they were going and exactly what was going to happen to them when they got there.)

On a more personal level, hiding from one’s own blood or dreading one’s period which comes without fail every month does seem like a bit of a matrix trap/waste of energy.  I recently got converted to the idea of the moon cup (like a small silicone eggcup that collects the blood) and cloth sanitary pads, which are often handmade and sold by individual women on Etsy.  As well as the benefits of giving up putting bleached fibres inside oneself; the environmental considerations; the live-simply ethos of it, it was also the physical experience of getting up close and personal with what is only my own blood after all.  And realising, hey, maybe it’s not surprising I feel tired after my period, that’s a lot of blood , a whole cup in three hours, maybe I should take on some extra iron…

I reduced my pension contributions to the minimum allowed.  At the same time I called and cancelled two life insurance policies, putting into practice the hard-to-believe-belief that it is only ever now.  Things like life insurance policies come from a place of fear and worry and projection about the future; they add another layer of complexity to finances and life and letting go of them is another step towards freedom.  As soon as I had made all these calls, I looked at the clock:  10:10.

Compared to committing suicide, which is an option that everyone is always aware of, what I am doing isn’t really all that frightening or radical.  Or to lighten things a little, compare it to Regi Perrin faking his death to get away from his stiflingly boring existence or Robert De Niro’s character in Heat: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”

Just as I had finished my last blog and was feeling rather smug about all the de-cluttering and letting go I’d been doing, I lost my dearly beloved yoga mat.  Bought for me this birthday by my lovely team at work:  purple, sumptuously thick so I don’t need a blanket under my knees, not stained so I could take it to classes without being ashamed, and with its own smart black carry case.  Anyway, I’d been thinking about what to do with all the yoga mats (I’m also really fond of my old ones).  I was packing up the car early one morning, ready to go and stay at my mum’s, and must have put it down near the car.  I realised later that it wasn’t at my mum’s or at home, and then I remembered that it was bin day…  My first thought was, well at least that takes care of that, I don’t have to sort out what I’m going to do with it.  Even if later I did have a few wistful feelings…

The lesson is, appreciate things, use things while you have them.  I didn’t always use my mat even at home, saving it for classes and using my old thin one.  I chucked out my warm-but-ugly-on-me charity shop fleeces and now I recklessly wear my three nice Oliver Bonas jumpers at weekends, not keeping them only for work as I had bought them for.  Let them be used, let them wear out. (I do wear old things to sit and watch Netflix and cuddle the cats though, that’s only practical.)

*The living room, once delicious red, lit with vintage lamps, is now a ‘neutralised’ off white, ready for renting.

** I don’t just mean sad donkey pictures on facebook, I mean the piteous cows and calves of the dairy industry and the fact that people actually think it’s normal to eat animals and birds.