The opener of my book!

Tags

Burn out, Change your life, escape the matrix, Midlife awakening, Minimalism, Travel memoir

I fell in love with you and I cried

Rachel Hill

‘We look down on people who choose themselves first, people who make the most of the lives they’ve been given.’ Natalie Swift, The Darkest Tunnel, WordPress

“The coop is guarded from the inside.” Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

 

Chapter One Following the white rabbit

April 2017, Harleston, Norfolk, UK

It was a weekend morning, I was standing in the hallway between the bedroom and the bathroom, John, my husband was in bed. He said, ‘What kind of people would we have to be to sell the house and just leave everything and everyone and go off on an adventure?’

‘Strong’, I said, ‘We’d have to be so strong’. Electricity ran up the length of my spine.
‘Wow,’ John said, ‘I just felt a tingle go right through my body.’

I was forty-seven years old. In terms of career and property, I had gone as far as I could and as far as I wanted to. Head of Occupational Therapy at a specialist secure hospital and living in a three bedroom semi detached house in a pleasant little town on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. But now what? Was I just going to keep on working and living there until I retired, grew old and died (and that was if I was lucky/the best case scenario)?

The house was perfect, a solidly built three bedroom 1950s ex council house with a huge garden. It was near my job, near my mother. We were happy there, and with me no longer having a long drive to work I began to relax, to be happy, and we both began to dream. Just over a year after we had moved in and supposedly settled for life, we began to roll around the idea of dismantling it all, selling the house, buying a camper van and travelling the world or going to live in a healing centre in Mexico run by an old friend of John’s.

Work had got the point where I was bored and looking for progression or development that never materialised whilst simultaneously feeling exhausted from the pressures of modern healthcare and emotionally burned out from the heart breaking and shocking stories of abuse and sexual offending. I couldn’t face the idea of doing it for another twenty years. Funnily enough I got a new manager who actually asked me, apropos of nothing, if I were planning to carry on working until I retired, ‘Or was I going to go off to India or something?’

I began to ask myself, what would I do if I didn’t have to do anything? What would I do if anything was possible? What would I do if I could do whatever I wanted?

When we first had the conversation and I experienced the glittering thrill of possibility, it was the first time in recent memory that I had allowed myself to think about what I actually might want. Since becoming pregnant at the age of eighteen my life had revolved around my son in one way or another. Even though he was now twenty-seven years old, I hadn’t seriously thought about leaving Norfolk until very recently, when an advertisement had jumped out at me for a job in Guernsey.

We went to Guernsey for two nights, the job sounded amazing, the interview went perfectly, but we didn’t want to move to Guernsey. Looking back, this was practical action that shifted us. It got us both wondering if we could live away from our kids. The initial weekend morning conversation was in April, the Guernsey trip was in June and in September my manager, realising I was burning out, allowed me to drop down to four days week. So really, those two nights in Guernsey marked the start of a shift in mental attitude that ultimately was to propel us all the way to India.

Ironically, for the first time in years, John had a job he loved, caring for people with learning disabilities as part of a lovely team, several of whom became friends. His two children lived with their mother in London and were now teenagers and rarely came to stay with us anymore. Both our mums had downsized and we had ended up having the biggest house in both families, yet no one came up, hardly anyone came to visit, and anyway we never were huge entertainers.

Our previous house had been a small two bedroom house in the same village as John’s mum and sister and when the kids were younger we’d had a lot of fun there. The new house was bigger and his daughter had her own room at last but she never even put a picture up. It became really obvious that it wasn’t their home, much more so than the previous house. That house, although smaller was about everyone, this one, although bigger, was just us. Like most parents, we misjudged how fast the kids grew up.

We had bought the house in Harleston from a widow who had lived in it with her husband from when it was first built in 1952, with many of the original features and it hadn’t been decorated since he last did it in the 1980s. I was besotted with the original glass lampshades, small chandeliers and old garden ornaments. John and I talked about getting old and dying there; the conveniences of the shops, doctors, dentists etc were much better than where we’d lived previously, all within easy walking distance or range of a mobility scooter.

On evening just after we’d moved in, sitting by the fireplace we had a premonition of sitting there as old people and at the same time felt as if we’d always been there through all the time of the house. I saw us sitting by the fireplace through the 1980s, and then later John old and with a beard. We realised that if we didn’t do anything we’d get old and die there.

I thought about old people whose homes haven’t been decorated for years and who have had the same things around them for decades. As they do less outside the home and spend more time inside, maybe the wallpaper, the furniture, the ornaments all loom larger because those things are given more attention and are tied with the memories they hold. People say that possessions and objects are important because they hold our memories. When people customise their homes they say they put something of themselves into it.

It was at this time that we began to discuss what we needed, something big enough and no bigger, a one bedroom flat, a caravan, a boat. To have a solid shelter, with heat that comes on with the flick of a switch, clean drinking water and hot running water with the turn of a tap, comfortable seating and sleeping areas, plenty of bedding and warm clothes, a washing machine. These things are denied to many. Even one thing off this list would represent enormous progress, even luxury, to some. Many of us who have these things do not fully appreciate them.

Not only that, the progress and comfort they represent and provide becomes grossly extended, with people changing their furniture before it has even worn out, and painting the inside of their homes a different colour according to what is deemed fashionable that season. ‘Needs updating,’ such a spurious phrase that has helped give rise to the largely unnecessary industries of producing new ‘kitchens’ and ‘bathrooms’ and the mind boggling array of paint colours on offer.

Of course, we need to have shelter but there’s probably an optimum level of comfort. If things are too hard, that takes so much time and energy that there’s no space for creativity. If things get too comfortable, one can be lulled into a false sense of security. Somehow by being too comfortable we become less aware: in our centrally heated comfort zones it’s easy to fall back to sleep.

Everything is arranged so that our biggest and best experiences are early in our lives and this, plus the emphasis on youth in film, television shows and advertising means that people spend most of their lives looking back to ‘the good old days,’ and taking their power and energy away from the present. You can see this in young people’s gap year travels before they ‘settle down’ to work, marry, have children… and in big event weddings, ‘the best day of your life’ with just the photographs on the mantelpiece to sustain you for the rest of your ‘less good’ life.

We had met eight years previously. Meeting John and falling in love had triggered a full on tripped out spiritual awakening for me. Because his children were still young and my son still needed quite a bit of support, we explored ideas of spirituality, personal growth etc from the comfort of our living room. We were lucky, that we both had the same ideas.

At the start it wasn’t even about selling the house and leaving the kids (that was too scary at first) it was just about getting to a position where we could. The decluttering came first, before the travelling was a solid plan and caused the mental shifts required in order for the travel to become a solid plan. I had to declutter in order to go and the decluttering helped me to go.

I was petrified of the idea of doing something so unthinkable, of giving up the security of property. Yet at the same time I was really excited about the idea of letting go of possessions and leaving with just a backpack each and no keys. I wrote: ‘For me it’s not really about travelling per se, it’s about testing my long felt urge to trust-fall into the universe, to let my fingertips peel from the cliff face and slip into the unknown. Mainly, it is about freedom; about realising where I am, what I have and therefore what I am able to do, with a bit of guts and imagination. The thought of just going off for a while with no plan other than to go travelling and keep writing is thrilling.’

In the UK, there’s such a drive towards home ownership as a goal that selling a property goes so much against the grain; family and home owning friends were dead against the idea. We had to sell up to liquidate capital, to have sufficient money for the trip. Not only that, we wanted to simplify, practise minimalism. Renting out the house and returning wasn’t what I had in mind, even if we could have afforded to do that. I didn’t want to have, as an acquaintance at work had had, a life changing experience in South East Asia for a year only to return to the same life. I might not have known what I wanted, but I was very sure about what I didn’t want.

Because you are choosing to have less, and no matter what all the memes etc. say you are going completely against the herd, who are all focused on getting more, so it feels weird and hard. You are going against the conditioning of the society you have been brought up in. That was why, during the several months of thinking, planning and putting the house on market, I was mentally quite aggressive. I said to myself, ‘I need to smash this down with a sledgehammer; I need to tear it up by the roots.’

I ruthlessly decluttered sentimental items. The bigger the action, the stronger I felt. It took a lot more energy than I had anticipated. I found that I did a splurge on something then had to stop for a bit. It was like going up steps or stages. We got tired. At other times, decluttering would seem to release a spurt of energy that propelled us forward. It was a balance between theory and practical steps, between wrapping our minds around it and then taking the necessary steps, interspersed with rest. And of course all the time we were going to work and doing the normal stuff of life.

The more I got rid of the lighter I felt, the more energy I had and the more I began to feel like a traveller. As the objects from my old life were left behind, I felt that I could become someone new, the kind of person who can do this.

What do you think?  Would you keep on reading?

Thank you very much for visiting

Rachel

the end and the beginning

Tags

Anything is possible, escape the matrix, Minimalism, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

In April 2017 we asked ourselves, what would we do if we could do anything?  The answer was stop working and go off travelling.
Just less than a year later, in March 2018, we left good jobs, sold our house, gave away most of our possessions and went to South East Asia, mainly India, for a year.  Here are my India highlights.

Getting from April 2017 to March 2018 was scary at times.  B, a fellow blogger and now friend who I met here on WP, sent me the Rilke quote above which is useful now too.

Before we left the UK we bought a narrowboat to live on when we get back.  It is moored in an area that was unfamiliar to either of us, we spent two very happy weeks on it before we left.

It’s natural to feel some anxiety about our return home (in less than a week!) and there have been times when it has tipped into fear.  With regular meditation helping I have recently experienced it as excitement rather than anxiety, and the future being unmapped as seeming expansive and joyful rather than scary.

I’ve channelled my anxiety into getting this week’s and next week’s blog posts prepared and scheduled.  The following week I hope to be back with an update re life back in the UK and on the boat.

I am not full of doom and gloom about returning to the UK, I’m excited about seeing friends and family.  My son has done amazingly well since we’ve been away, as well as facing his fears and getting his teeth done, his career as an artist has taken off, and his work is being exhibited in New York in May, see flier below!

Thank you very much for reading

For photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

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

Throwback Thursday

Tags

creativity, Decluttering, religion, spirituality

Decluttering:  I still stand by its therapeutic powers.  Losing my sports massage virginity (therapy without words).  Maybe overdoing the spiritual searching (still have a tendency to do that sometimes). Definitely catastrophising (nothing’s changed there either).

‘I long for the days when everything I owned fitted into the boot of a Fiat Uno’*  (First published in July 2014)

It is no way news that de cluttering is therapeutic.  Last week I did my clothes and shoes, even quite happily throwing away the (too high) gold sandals I got married in only last year.  Today I tackled the really hard stuff: the art and craft stuff under the stairs.  The wire mesh I made handmade paper with fifteen years ago and that I kind of always thought I might do again with my step daughter but haven’t.  The little cardboard pot of sequins I used to make cards with.  Coloured pencils I have had for years, little paintbrushes.

This stuff is hard because on the one hand it seems to reproach me for having abandoned that side of things- I no longer make cards or sew- but it also forces me to realise that I am not the same person I was.  That can be viewed sadly or perhaps it can be viewed happily: Wow, what an amazing creative person I used to be, even when I had no money and a little child and was a single parent and was probably a bit depressed, how cool was I?  I remind myself that that cool young woman helped lay the foundations for me to grow into the calm**, centred, super happy person that I am today.

This week I had an experience that I couldn’t describe in words (a challenge for a writer): a sports massage.  As she twanged the big tendons of my neck my mind skated over how to describe the feeling this induced: it was not at all a sexual feeling but it shook though my body like an orgasm.  It was a feeling like a loss of control and yet not.  The feeling of stress leaving the body, or leaving via the body, was like a spiritual experience (except that it was physical not spiritual).  As she went over and over an area of my back, working out a knot, I experienced it like a rollercoaster, up, up and over and each time me trying to relax and let it wash over me and not fight against it.  The feeling of rebirth afterwards, a mild euphoria, and the next morning, skipping, singing, even my voice sounded better.

In the pool this week there was some kind of gala going on in one half and there was a PA system, plugged into the mains, on a stand inches away from the pool.  I thought of people being electrocuted when their hairdryer falls into the bath.  I wondered if such a big amount of water would dilute it or would we all die.  Would it hurt?  Okay, I thought, everyone’s okay.  There would probably be compensation.  I wrote my book.  And my blog.  I found God.  I was happy.  I wouldn’t have to worry about or deal with old age or illness.  I accepted it.  They unplugged it.  Oh well, not my time.

I read a blog about blogging, in which the advice given was, that you need to do it for a year before you know if it’s worth doing.  That advice could also apply to spiritual practice.  Although I already know it’s worth doing, it’s more about a test of my commitment, much like how healing training takes two years.

After a weekend of complete R&R I realised I wasn’t going mad or embarking on a dangerous course, risking losing connection with my husband; I was just tired that’s all.  A week of staying up too late, working late and getting up early to go to a conference, that was all.  I do like to catastrophise (have I said that before?)  In bed one night, my husband enfolded me into his arms and I felt our breathing merge, felt myself merging into him at each contact point.  This long, no sex cuddle was like being in a cocoon or having steel bands of love wrapped around me, and the next morning I realised, not only can I love God through loving my husband but God can love me through the love my husband gives to me.

*our good friend DW
**on a good day, anyway

How not to pack and an imaginary interview with Eminem

Tags

Chennai, India, Kochi, Travel, writing

What’s on top?

Too many clothes, nothing to wear!

Over the next two months I will be in India (modest dress) then Thailand (beach dress) then Tokyo (smart summer dress (or so I imagine)) then back to India (modest dress) via travel with limited weight hand luggage…

I left a bag of things for our guesthouse manager in Varkala to take to the orphanage he helps at (my kurta (long top) that I bought from the khadi shop that is rather thick and doesn’t look that nice on me; some thick fawn coloured leggins that are too hot and look like I’m not wearing anything- rather defeating the object; a new pink Indian dress that is really tight across the bust; two scarves that have proved unsuitable, wrong colour, wrong material.  I binned a much loved spaghetti- strapped black vest top that the elastic had gone in and looked worn out and, with much sadness, a black skirt bought from an expensive outdoor shop in the UK that went bobbly and extremely tatty-looking very fast.  It was just right, stretchy, soft and comfortable and it even had a tiny zipped pocket inside.

This is what I have:

Six dresses- one long with long sleeves, three that can be worn without trousers depending on where we are, two with side slits so that they can only be worn over trousers; 3 pairs of loose black trousers; 1 long-sleeved tunic top; two comfy t-shirts (that have holes in them- they were bought from poor quality tourist trap stall) to chill out in room in and sleep in hostel dorm in (although for travelling and in Chennai I have been wearing them outdoors with a scarf as they are so comfortable); one sun top for Thailand; five scarves- to wear over shoulders to protect from sun and/or to cover up/for evenings, and to wear as sarongs in Thailand or for chilling out in room in.  Two lungis (2 metres of green/purple and gold material) useful as bed sheets or to maybe get made into dresses.  One white ‘scarf of freedom’ given to me by a shaman; 3 pairs of socks; two bras; four pairs of knickers -two pairs of old comfy cotton; one pair of fitted cotton lycra; one (relatively) ‘sexy’ silky material.

The downside is that three out of the six dresses are slightly too tight across the bust; it has been hard to find dresses to fit, even though one of them (the green check) was made for me.  The dark red dress with navy sides and flowers has been made for me out of a lungi I bought for the fabric.  I have had it made/remade five times so far!  First it was far too tight, sexy across the hips but boob-crushingly tight at the top, then remade far too big, then remade with armholes too tight and still too big, then to a different tailor, too tight under bust, now (fifth time) it is more or less okay except that the armholes are slightly loose and stick out and are too high at the same time.  Maybe I will try again in Chennai, sixth time lucky!

On a positive note, I am very pleased with the scarf-as-sarong with sun-top look for Thailand.

An imaginary interview with Eminem

What would you do if you suddenly found yourself backstage with Eminem?  What possible conversation topics or questions could there be that wouldn’t sound lame?  This was a situation that confronted my husband recently in a dream.

‘I had this dream where I found myself backstage with Eminen, just hanging out.  I asked him about American music venues, I said that in the UK we’ve only really heard of CBGB’s.  He kind of sneered at that but I explained to him that we just don’t get told about the others.’

‘Well I would never have thought to ask him about that,’ I said, ‘That’s really good.’

‘Well I don’t know how well it would prepare me for a real life meeting…  In the dream everyone was smoking weed and I remember making sure not to have too much, I didn’t want to get really stoned, I thought I need to keep it together, I’m talking to Eminem!’

‘I can’t think of anything,’ I said, ‘Everything I can think of to ask him he’ll have been asked a million times:  ‘How is your daughter, what does she do; Do you still have problems with your ex wife; What’s it like getting old and having younger people coming up; What’s it like being famous?’’

‘You can’t ask him what it’s like being famous, that’s too broad, you have to break it down,’ my husband said.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Well what do you do when you run out of food?’

‘What would he do when he ran out of food?!’  My husband said, ‘Sack the housekeeper, probably.’

‘But can you go to a shop and buy food?  Is there a restaurant you can go to where you can just eat and not get hassled?  Do you ever just go and buy a loaf of sliced bread and make yourself some toast?’  I think I was almost crying with laughter by this point.

‘Really?’ my husband said, ‘That’s what you want to know?  I’d ask him about the nature of reality.  He’d probably say, ‘What do you mean,’ so I’d say, ‘Well, do you believe that what you see is all that there is; or do you believe in anything else, anything mystical, or spiritual?  Do you believe that this world is an illusion?  Do you believe that we live in a matrix and that this is a computer simulation?  Or do you believe that it’s all an illusion of the mind?  Or that the dream world is the real world and the waking world is a dream?’

You know, that kind of thing.’  I guess we’ve both got too much time on our hands…

Travel update

On Friday we went to Kochi, a four hour train journey from Varkala where we were.  On Sunday we went by train from Kochi (in the state of Kerala) to Chennai (in the state of Tamil Nadu) a fifteen hour journey, we arrived in Chennai on Monday morning.

See my husband’s Instagram travelswithanthony for good photos of Kochi and Chennai

Writing update

Before we left Varkala I had a burst of working on the Kerala Chapter, looking at the period we spent at Osho’s guesthouse which included a big spiritual and emotional upheaval.  It was tiring and a bit intense, mirroring, as writing often does, current feelings.  Still, I am pleased with the progress made on this chapter.

Right now, I am working on ‘Kochi’ and plan to publish the draft or part of it on the blog next week.  I am also handwriting and typing notes about my Chennai experience.

At some point I will need to go back to ‘Kerala’ and finish that draft, as well as going back over the other chapters but right now, stuff just keeps happening that I need to capture!

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

I know what to do

Tags

amwriting, India, Kovalam Beach, Papanasam Beach, Patricia Lockwood, Stranger in a Strange Land, Varkala, writing

What’s on top?

During random blog reading I came across a beautiful piece of writing, my favourite quote from it and a link to the original piece below:

Stand exactly in a doorway like a cat and try to feel the religious feeling that a cat clearly feels when it stands in a doorway.  Patricia Lockwood

I am reading Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein.  (The reading of this has to be prioritised as it is our biggest and heaviest book and my husband is sick of carrying it.)  Written in 1961, if you can ignore the awful sexism, the intellectual, metaphysical and spiritual ideas in it are very interesting.

Discussions continue about the nature of reality (too in depth to explore here, also whatever theories I believe this week will probably change again by next week); whilst at the same time feeling lively and vibrant within this current reality.

Travel update 

We went to Kovalam beach for two nights, an hour’s train journey away.  There were lots of Indian tourists, it is vacation time here, and a very few foreign tourists.  We got lots of pressure from stall holders and street sellers:  tailors services, clothes, scarves, drums, ornaments and fruit.  We even got followed down the road by a man who looked well into his seventies trying to sell us marijuana.

The beach was nice:  black sand, the sea shiny, glassy looking with the reflected light of the setting sun, with big frothy white waves.  Our room was white, clean, with white bed linen, towels* and a top sheet** and was probably the nicest room we’ve stayed in so far.

In the evening we walked out of the tourist area, past chai stalls and tiny little shops which are absolutely packed with everything you could need compressed into the smallest of spaces, some not much bigger than a cupboard.

The train was easy, we bought tickets on the day and travelled in normal non ac carriages.  On the way we had to stand but it wasn’t a long journey.  We had breakfast (masala dosas) in a canteen style restaurant on the station.  We were unsure of what to do but an Indian man came and explained how it worked and even came to check we had got our food okay.

It was very nice to return to Varkala.  We were welcomed warmly and came back to the same room, where we had been able to leave the big backpack and lighten our load.  As much as possible we intend to stay here and just go off to other places in Kerala for a few days at a time.

Photo:  Crow at the edge of the Osho guesthouse’s rooftop yoga space. She/he appeared after my yoga session, stayed quite close and waited patiently whilst I took their photo.  The caw caw of crows is a constant background noise.  On Papanasam beach there are usually lots of crows; they eat rice off banana leaves left from pujas.  However, returning ‘home’ after two days away, there were very few crows but lots of dark grey pigeons.  ‘Look, the crows have been replaced by pigeons,’ I said.  ‘Perhaps there’s been some kind of coo’, my husband said.

A few days ago, on Papanasam beach, during a little walk and a look at the sea after dinner, a man came up to us, ordinary, well dressed, with friends.  He said hello then said: ‘Look, look at the sea, close your eyes, breathe into your chest, hold…  Hear only the sea…  my voice.  There, do you feel comfort?’ I love that this kind of thing happens here.

This week has been about setting and sticking to a strict budget, which  is easy to do whilst we’re based in Varkala as the guesthouse and the local cafe are both cheap.  We’ve been eating masala dosas for breakfast, lunch and dinner, interspersed with channa masala (chickpea curry, good for vegans), beans on toast** (likewise), porridge and banana and fresh fruit and vegetable juices.  We both feel much better for not overeating (and not overspending).

Writing update

Saturday, session one typing up new ‘meaning of life’ type ideas, session two, typing up Varkala notes from notebook; Sunday, two sessions on Delhi section.  By the second session I saw how to do it, the need to remake it more personal, with emotion, not just like a travel diary.  Monday, two sessions on Delhi; I ended up with a 4,000 word draft which although needs polishing and editing was ready enough to show to my husband.  I was very pleased with myself as I had been scared of that chapter.  Scared of some notes I have written myself, for a book that I am writing for no other reason than my own pleasure?  Crazy but true.  Tuesday, day off.  Wednesday, I tackled Chapter One (how we got here, the background).  I had been even more scared of that chapter than of Delhi, but I sat down and approached it with a (new) calm confidence.

Maybe because I had done Delhi, maybe because of my general confidence and self belief improving?  I took my own advice and reordered it chronologically, breaking it into three sections:  Nothing to Lose But Our Dignity (the original ‘sell up and go travelling’ idea, and some background); No Half Measures (about decluttering and its effects); and The Matrix Fights Back (about all the obstacles we had to deal with in our quest to escape).  It is currently 9,000 words, so I am being kind to myself and acknowledging that no wonder it was difficult to sort out.  But I know what to do, I can see where it is flabby, where it goes off track, where it needs work.  I know what to do, and that makes me very happy indeed.  Thursday, two sessions on this blog post.  Friday, one session on Chapter One, one to finish this post.

*Only a few of the places we’ve stayed have had towels.  Standing on the train, feeling the sweat trickling down my legs, I said to myself, please let there be towels.  I was dreaming of a shower, clean white towels.  Any colour for that matter.  We sat on the veranda while the man made up our bed. When he had finished, he brought…  towels!

**Most places don’t give a top sheet as standard.  Although it’s hot it feels weird to lie with nothing at all, and sometimes in the middle of the night it can feel almost chilly.  We were so excited about the towels that we forgot to ask for one, and when we returned after dinner there was no one around.  Later, at 9.15 at night there was a knock at the door…  it was the man, bringing us a crisp white sheet!  And we hadn’t even asked him!

**Sometimes it’s nice to have something plain and also beans are lacking elsewhere, so I often have beans on toast.  It was lunchtime and they are only on the breakfast menu, but I really wanted them.  ‘I’m going to beg, watch me get them,’ I said to my husband.  And I did (I didn’t need to beg though, just ask nicely).

Thank you for reading

See you next week

Not just a travel blog

Tags

escape the matrix, India, Minimalism, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

My new ‘About’ page/introduction for new readers:

Not just a travel blog.  Can get quite personal.  You have been warned!

Hello, my name is Rachel, welcome to my blog.

This is where I reveal my true thoughts and feelings.  This is a kind of coming out, to borrow words from a friend.

With my husband we have got rid of most of our possessions, sold the house and are travelling in South East Asia.

I do write about places I visit and put pictures up.  But I also just write about everything.

I’m more art than science; for me it’s about the experience rather than the thing itself.  It’s not about the travelling per se, rather the effect it has on me.

Thank you very much for reading

Books and stories by me

How to Find Heaven on Earth: love, spirituality and everyday life   The story of my ‘spiritual awakening’ available as paperback or ebook on amazon

Call off the Search: how I stopped seeking and found peace My second ‘spiritual journey’ book, published chapter by chapter on this blog beginning on 8th July 2017

So simple, so amazing: a journey into awareness My third book, published chapter by chapter on this blog, beginning on 17th July 2017

Short stories in women’s erotica anthologies available on Amazon

Make it Happy a short book about long term relationships available on Amazon

Self help for the suicidal, a workbook for people struggling with suicidal thoughts available on Amazon

Recognising myself

Tags

Art, creativity, family, India, Travel, writing

Like coming off a motorway and finding yourself suddenly in a 30mph zone, leaving the demands, mental stimulation, pressures and deadlines of my job was bound to be an adjustment.  But it’s also forced me to face up to myself, unshielded from the work role, my thoughts and feelings no longer subsumed beneath the something else that is career.

Also, I like to get things done, or rather, I like things to be done so I write lists and worry about doing things, even if I don’t always get around to getting that much done.  I feel an urge to have things done as soon as possible, even if I don’t usually have the wherewithal or motivation to actually do them.  Plus, in the heat, you are lucky if you get one thing done a day.

So here I am, in paradise, worrying about getting things done.  The most important thing is the writing, so I’ll talk about that.  Obviously I have this blog, and that kind of takes care of itself.  I write when I have something to say, and post when it is finished.  In between I try, and mostly succeed, to not worry about it too much.  On top of that, I am writing a book with my husband about how we got here (decluttering, shedding attachments, mental leaps and matrix obstacles) and about what happens and what we learn about ourselves during our year in South East Asia.  So far so good, right?

We get up early, have a walk on the beach before it gets too hot, then retreat to the veranda/indoors until the evening, with the exception of possibly going out for lunch (which I managed yesterday, my first eaten-in-India masala dosa!) or to get snacks.  So plenty of time for writing, except that the heat slows everything down, plus I have only just got better from being ill.  But the biggest obstacle to it all, as usual, is my own mind.

I’ve been putting myself under pressure, thinking I have to write this book, try and get it published, finish chapter one as soon as I can so we can get onto chapter two about being in India before we’ve been here too long and forgotten things…  Thinking I have to make it a success, to fulfill the destiny of this adventure, to justify it, and to secure us financially.  So no pressure there then.  No wonder writing chapter one began to feel like a chore.  This demonstrates what a brain can do:  cause anxiety about nothing, when one is ensconced in paradise with nothing at all to worry about.

So after a grounding chat with my husband over breakfast this morning, this is where I am at now:  We have a boat to come back to in the UK, overheads are low so we both only need to work maybe three days a week each, I can sign up to agencies and just do whatever, a variety, so as not to get sucked back into the workplace matrix/politics.  That plan is fine.  As for this year, this is budgeted for, so I do not need to earn any money or worry about earning any money this year.  I can just…  wait for it…  relax and enjoy myself.  And write.  Write for fun, write when I want to, write how and what I want.  Write the book, write the blog.  Write without expectation or pressure.  Write nothing at all some days.

But mostly I will write, of course.  As Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love, my long time personal bible) says, having a creative mind is like having a border collie for a pet.  If you don’t give it something to do, it will find itself something, and you may not like what it finds.  (This is probably why I have OCD, anxiety, etc etc etc.  There’s no easy answer though, because even when I do keep my mind occupied with writing, I am still capable of getting anxious about that.)

And of course I am still processing what it all means:  Selling the house, packing in my career, abandoning everything and just going off…  It’s not about going travelling, not really.  Or rather, the travelling is a tool.  It gets me away, breaks me away from my old life, from family, and when I return I will be living in a new area quite far away, far enough that no family will ever come and visit probably.

It’s not as if my family was bad.   It’s not as if my life was bad.  In fact it was good by any standard, and way, way better than I would have envisioned as a suicidal teenager or a freakish, teased child.  But, and here’s the but:  It wasn’t really me, or it wasn’t me any more, and the only way I could be me was to get right away from my family; to do something so big and so different that I would become unrecognisable, to them and even to myself.

 

My husband took two Tuk Tuk rides to find a pharmacy for me, and came back with strong antibiotics, gut flora and my thyroid meds, all over the counter, for around £5 altogether.  I started feeling better from the first tablet.  Antibiotics are good and strong here, I think.  My doctor in the UK could only give me three months’ worth of thyroid medication, so I have to buy it while I am out here.  I have a laminated copy of my prescription to keep with my UK issued meds (which are labelled with my name), to show when entering countries, especially Thailand.  I will keep my UK prescription meds for customs and buy and use local meds when I am inside a country for any length of time.

After drinking ginger, lemon and honey tea, and toast and honey whilst I was ill, now I am better, I am on ginger and hot water, mint tea, normal black tea, no honey or sugar in tea, no honey on toast, back to being a proper vegan and to taking care of my teeth.

My capabilities are returning:  I have gone from unable to even think about moving and the journey to Hampi, to talking about Vietnam, Japan, the whole trip.  I am inconsistent, emotional.  Yesterday evening we went out to dinner at a local, simpler place and had a good talk and reconnected.  Talking about capabilities, fears, managing my boom and bust cycle.

So it’s good, we are staying here until Saturday night, almost another week (so two weeks in Goa altogether- twelve nights in Agonda, eleven at this particular high up hut), so I can fully recuperate, get my strength back, and write chapter one (but in a joyful, no pressure kind of way, obviously!).

What I have been reading:

Only one thing, Kim Gordon’s (from Sonic Youth) autobiography.  My favourite bits, paraphrased:  I wanted to be an artist since I was five.  If you track back/observe you can see what it is you are meant to be doing.  (Visual) artists bemoaning that they can’t produce a piece of art that has the impact of a Kinks song.  A lot of artists wish they could produce work that had as much impact as a good song.  I don’t have the answer to that.

What I have been watching:

Only one thing, “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise” on Netflix

 

Thank you very much for reading

Lots of love

Rachel

Instagram followingthebrownrabbit

 

Nothing to lose but our dignity

Tags

India, Minimalism, Stewart Lee

The dear little brown rabbit is to accompany me on my travels and be photographed for Instagram followingthebrownrabbit.  Well that’s the intention, maybe they will just be cuddled a lot and see me through my anxiety.  Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety interspersed with feeling very excited.

The Lovely Bones (a book about a girl who gets murdered and the aftermath for her family), apparently the title has nothing to do with ‘bones’ but about the support structures that spring up around people after a loss.

On Friday night we went out for leaving drinks with my husband’s sister, her daughter and her new boyfriend, and my son.  Seeing everyone was really lovely.  Especially lovely was seeing my sister-in-law getting on really well with my son, taking the time to chat to him one to one and being genuinely interested in and praising his art and his talent.  Nicest of all, she initiated them exchanging phone numbers and talking about meeting up to go round art galleries together.

Today, she said she’d be there for him while we were away.  My husband thanked her for me and she said, I just looked at him and I thought I need to get your phone number, you are Rachel’s son.  I cried then I was so touched.  Another friend of mine, an artist, has called him about collaborating/advice.

So I have learned this week:
1. There’s no such thing as a free lunch (see previous post)
2. There really is light in the darkest of places, as long as one remembers to turn on the light (from Harry Potter)
3. The Lovely Bones, one of my favourite books, is named after a concept that has come true for me this week
4. Don’t leave it until the window goes from green to red to empty the boat toilet (very heavy).  It might not be one of the best jobs of boat life, but little and often is the key.

On our way!  Me and my husband at the bus stop this morning!  We are staying  tonight with a friend in London and flying to Delhi on Monday evening.

This is my empty clothes drawer and the pile in the photo above is all of my clothes that I am leaving.  I realised today that I haven’t worn hardly any of them since being on the boat, but also that I have lots that I love, plenty of warm things as well as summer and going out clothes; a very small amount- that drawer wasn’t even half full- but that I really love.  I have so few clothes compared to a year or two ago, yet I am infinitely more satisfied with my wardrobe (drawer).

I am excited, I am happy and I absolutely can’t wait to get to beautiful, beautiful India!

Lots of love to everyone, and special greetings to readers in India!
xxx

PS on the way home from Norfolk on Friday (while I was in the loo unfortunately) my husband saw Stewart Lee in the garage and was able to shake his hand and tell him how much he loves his stuff.  Then for our party night last night (for our last night on the boat) we spent most of the evening watching Stuart Lee on YouTube.  There is zero chance of him reading this, but if he is, we love you!

 

The Price of Freedom

Tags

family, India, stress

To paraphrase The Rolling Stones, you can ask for what you want, but you can’t control exactly how what you have asked for will be given to you.

So here I am, at last, finally, an independent adult.  Not beholden to my mother.

My mother gave me quite a bit of financial help with buying my house.  She also bought a woodburner for the house.  So I felt bad about wanting to give up my stressful career, sell up, downsize, go travelling, and return to live somewhere smaller, cheaper, simpler and with lower overheads so I could do a less stressful job.  It didn’t feel like it was solely up to me in the way that it would have been had I always been totally financially independent.

So it was with trepidation that I raised it with her and it took me a few conversations before I was able to clearly articulate what it was I wanted to do and stick to it.

The first time I brought up the subject of selling the house, I offered to give her her money back.  She said no, she didn’t want it.  She actually said she didn’t want me selling the house to raise money for travelling, she would give me money instead, as a kind of advance on my inheritance.

I said I didn’t want her to do that, that I had had enough money already, but she was very forceful.  With my mother, large sums of money can be talked about as if they were nothing, and without really talking about it.

So I went off agreeing to consider renting out the house instead, even though that wasn’t what I wanted to do, and she never actually mentioned the idea of giving me travelling money again.

So again I plucked up the courage to say I was selling the house, in order to raise money for travelling, and because I didn’t want to be a landlord for a property in the UK whilst I was in India.

My mother insisted that we could do the trip on the rental income alone, but even if there were no gaps in tenants and no problems like non payment or ruined carpets, I knew we couldn’t.  Plus it was never just about going travelling, it was a whole life re-set that I wanted.

Time went by, the house went on the market in December, and completed early March.  Although I knew she wasn’t happy about me selling the house, I had thought she had accepted it.  I popped in for cups of tea, she asked a few polite questions about our travel plans and gave me a rucksack.

And then at 10:06 on Monday, after I had texted her to let her know we had booked our flights and were leaving for our year long trip to India the following Monday, she called and asked for her money back.

One of the many lessons of all this is to communicate one’s feelings and expectations clearly and openly, especially when it comes to money.  But I am sure I am not the only person who has difficulties in this area, especially when dealing with a very powerful family member.

So here I am, at last, finally, an independent adult.  Not beholden to my mother.  Not living near my mother (India aside, the boat is three hours away). Completely free, even of her influence.

I used to feel boggy, awkward, inauthentic in her company.  Unknown.  Whereas with my husband I feel completely safe and totally accepted. Known.

It shouldn’t be a competition or a choice but my mother has made her disapproval of my husband clear.  He, who has made me so happy, who makes me so happy.  The implication being that he is after my money (when we met I had a small starter home with a mortgage, he had a narrowboat, we both worked full time, both worked really hard, both fulfilled financial responsibilities to our children.  I also very much resent the implication that no one could love me just for myself).

Our friends observe that we make each other very, very happy. We share the same values.  We have supported each other with everything for almost a decade.

In the middle of this bombshell, my friend H, a lovely ray of sunshine, came to stay on the boat for the night.  It was just what we needed, and distracted us through the worst.  After H left, we went into Northampton, found somewhere to eat using the Happy Cow app, over ordered from a delicious range of yummy vegan food and treats, and caught our breath.

In spite of everything, I felt relieved, even happy.  We both began to see it as a potentially positive event in our lives.

Maybe we needed it to be just us, so that we can find out just what we’re capable of.

Sanguine.
I thought it meant unruffled, calm and philosophical.
We looked it up, actually it means optimistic and positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.  Better, more ‘evolved’ than I realised.  I asked us, can we move from calm and philosophical to cheerful and optimistic?

I regard us as being in the middle of the continuum.  If at one end is me coming back from India and being able to say to my mother, Wow, what was all that about, can we talk about it?

Then at the other end is as my husband said, some people would beg and plead, What have I done, why, why.  Or get angry, refuse to give the money back.  Or cry.  Well that’s good, I said, and laughed, because I am definitely not doing any of those things.

So yes, maybe we are currently somewhere in the middle, and if we can move from my definition to the dictionary definition of sanguine, then I shall be very pleased.

Oh yes and by the way, we are flying to India on Monday!

Mera naam Rachel hai

Aapase milakar khushee huee

Follow me on Instagram followingthebrownrabbit.

Thank you for reading.

PS I have had very limited internet access since moving onto the boat and lots of travel related admin to do when I have, so I haven’t been reading many blogs.  I have still been thinking of you all though, and I wish my fellow bloggers and readers well.  Thank you for all your support xxx