On:

 

Here I am, being back home, living mostly like a hermit – barely leaving the house. For now, I’m being quite okay with that to be honest.

I spend most of my time with being online, listening to music, while doing some remote work and painting. I feel like the days are rushing by incredibly fast, but that is the nature of things when the days are mostly uneventful.

There are things, plans and ideas swirling around as I’m catching up with people and we discuss the potentials of collaborating, living together or just shaping our lives in a way that it overlaps more. Nothing is set in stone, but many things seem to be slowly set in motion.

As many times before in my life, I feel like I’m vaguely presented options and everything comes down to if I’m willing to put energy in it or not – others don’t seem to push these things hard enough to set them in motion, but I know that if I dedicated my energy to it it could be something awesome. Now comes all the measuring of everything. How can I put my life together so that everything I want to fold into it, has it’s space?

The most frequent question I get from people is along the lines of ‘now what?’.

Of course. I’m still not sure.

Truth to be told, I can’t bear the thought of the hassle that finding an apartment would be. Figuring out where do I want to live for the next *insert long term stay duration* feels scarier than going back to a state of living where I constantly had to figure out my daily whereabouts. Having the life I had for most of the year was exhausting, but now those challenges are the familiar ones – growing roots is not something I’m used to doing. Siging rental contracts, moving and trying to build up my life is not something I feel ready for… Being on the road showed me that there is an amazing amount of things “out there” that I could be doing, learning, connecting with and being free to explore those options is amazing. It is extremely hard, especially since this year I’ve been living off my bank account, now it’d be time to earn money on the go as well and ideally not just get by but add to my savings. I can’t imagine it to be easy, but it would probably be worth it.

I feel the longing to have basecamp for myself and my mental image of an ideal home is slowly shaping in the back of my head, but it doesn’t have a weight to it yet, I don’t know if that’s due anytime soon…

There’s a conclusion I arrived to in the past few weeks – while this year was all about the ‘trust fall’ (with heart and mind open, I leaned back and the world caught me), next year I want to take an actual ‘leap of faith’. Not just allowing myself to fall and hoping for the wind, the flow to carry me, but taking action, aiming for something and gathering my strenght to go for it.

There are many things I could go for, many things I’m scared of, but I know they’d work…

Time to take action – Jump!

On:

So here it is… the first Week I started back home.

I got back home on Wednesday (which was Day 245 of the ‘living out of a backpack’ quest)

Many people asked how it is being back and most of the time my answer is, it’s odd.
It truly is… but the really weird thing is how it is completely normal.
Last week I was walking on the seaside in a sunny autumn day in Barcelona and yesterday I was walking around the neighborhood to stroll while it’s snowing, and it feels absolutely natural. Sure the most useful skillset I had during the trip was adjusting to the new scenes of my life very quickly, but still…
There are sooo many things that are different in this daily reality from the one I had on the go for most of the year and switching back to this makes the whole trip feel like a dream already. This is the 5th day since I’m back and it already feel like it was a long time ago… or rather, it wasn’t even true. THAT is weird.

Anyway… here I am now. Tomorrow I’ll be catching up with friends from here and reconnecting with many beloved people – I’m sure that meeting them will make me more grounded and I’ll be in the state of overflowing love just as much as I was on my farewell party. I’m grinning already just from the thought of hugging these folks again.
I’ve been a hermit in the past few days, just breathing, working on things, painting, reading, and reconnecting with people from other places over the web and trying to gather some of my ideas on the ‘now what’. I know that soon enough I’ll have to answer that question for myself. Others have started asking me that already and I’ve been asking myself as well… I have many ideas, many dream-bits, but no plans. There are a few things I’d need to know more about before I can pick a path. I want to talk to people and explore ideas further before I commit to anything.
I love the freedom of choice, but, man, when I have to make that choice I realize how much I struggle with making decisions. Haha 😀  Ohwell…

For now, one of my quests is to make sure that as I go on with my daily life, I identify the habits that are connected to this place, this reality. Habits that I managed to change when I was at other places, surrounded with different people. I catch myself falling back to bad habits and as I realize that I try to make a conscious effort to hold on to new ones or at least making a mental note to bring the new ones to this rhythm as well later on if I can.
There were some precious little rituals in my life that I grew to like a lot and there were things, that I experienced through living with certain people, things that I want to bring into the life I build for myself. For example having a daily routine that includes quiet time, eating better, going outside more even when I don’t have a “reason” to, approaching communication differently, develop a better sense of listening and building relationships in which I also feel heard.

The logistics of life will have to be put together as well of course – income, home and such quests, do I stay at home, do I look for opportunities elsewhere? Do I look for a job or do I try to build myself one? Do I look for an apartment here or in some other country? Do I want to set out travelling again? If so, would I do it the same way?  Many questions that I honestly don’t know the answer to yet…

Let’s just breathe and process things for another week, shall we?