{Insightful Sunday} 2015 - The Year of Moving On

If 2014 was the year of letting go, then 2015 has got to be all about moving the hell on.

It's true what they say, a lot can happen in a year.  In fact, last Tuesday, I met up with my Sicilian friends, who happened to be in town for the New Year celebrations.  I hadn't seen them since I last left Sicily, which feels like only months ago, but when we worked it out, it has actually been over a year!  Sometimes I honestly can't believe how much time just seems to fly right by!

Looking back, it's safe to say that 2014 was certainly a nomadic year; in January, I was back in Kent with mère and Mr Pig, after taking a break for the holidays.  With the festivities over, I traveled up to Reading for the month, in order to help out a friend, who was packing up to move to Mexico.  Come February, I finally returned to my travels, heading back out to Italy, visiting Pisa, Florence, Venice, Verona and Milan and happily making friends and experiencing a fair few disastrous love affairs along the way, before I ultimately left again to return to France.  I spent a few days playing chess down in Nice, took a short trip to Monaco with a Chilean friend I'd made and then eventually headed back over to Chabanais for a fortnight, to debrief with friends.

By March I found myself living in the idyllic Dordogne, volunteering at a horse sanctuary, but alas, after two months, the country calm just wasn't enough to satisfy my wandering heart and after getting the call of the wild, I once again flitted back off to Paris for a few nights at the end of April, where I heavily indulged my romanticism, before flying through Stockholm and ending up in Berlin.  After one gloriously sunny month of cycling and cake eating, I returned to Rome again in June, this time for work and after four scorchingly hot weeks there, flew back to Berlin, determined to finally lay down some permanent roots.

It certainly wasn't easy and there were some really intense highs and lows along the way.  In actuality, it was one of those exact low points that made me pack up again, to return to England for a few weeks, at the beginning of October.  I spent fourteen days back in Kent, soaking up the company of my favourite people, but when it came time to go home, I just knew I wasn't ready to yet and so, I headed back to France instead, to stay with my friends over in Chabanais.  With a book to finish writing at the time, I stowed myself away in the country for a full month, before I finally made the journey back to Berlin.  Finally, after twelve months of flights, trains, car journeys, bag packing and bed hopping, I thankfully managed to end the year in Berlin, in my own space, bag fully unpacked.

In all honesty though, over the course of 2014, I spent a lot of time reminiscing about my home by the English coast and all the things I'd had to let go of, both materially and emotionally.  The freedom, fluidity and sometimes the brutality of the year, had forced me to truly rediscover my sense of self, overcome a lot of my fears and find my voice but now that journey is over and it's the beginning of a new one.  Having dealt with all that 2014 had to offer, I think it's time to make a fresh start and create something altogether new.

I left England eighteen months ago and in my mind, I thought I would go backpacking for a year and eventually end up living in Paris, married, with child, running my vegan eatery and writing books.  Never for one moment, would I have imagined that I would be sat here, living in Berlin, leading the kind of life I lead.  Which I think just goes to show, that ultimately, you can have a plan, but life might just take you on a detour to get there, or occasionally it might just reroute you to somewhere better.  So whilst my heart still occasionally beats for that Parisian dream, for now, I'm just gonna give myself over to whatever this year brings.  Embrace it, enjoy it and move the hell on.

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{Lately on Instagram}

December, the season of goodwill to all men and all those other seemingly poetic notions.  Admittedly, in the past, I have been somewhat dedicated to the insertion of Christmas cheer, but, in truth, these last few years have slowly but surely seen me lose all connection to the holidays and now, it appears I am the epitome of the Grinch.

I think, in part, it's mostly to do with my annoyance that a large part of society don't seem to take this loving feeling and implement it into their daily lives, all year round.  I mean, why do we need an excuse to be kind and generous?  Surely that should be our daily mantra!  Equally, I don't want to have to feel socially pressured to do anything, especially things such as gift giving or card sending and I particularly hate the idea of forcing myself to be 'merry' and spend time with or speak to 'family', whom for the most part, act like complete strangers for the other 364 fucking days of the year.

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My previous enjoyment of the holidays have really always come down to simply a vibe; watching Christmas movies, cooking up a feast and generally feeling a little warmer inside, but in truth, I feel as though, over the past few years, I've woken up to a lot of life's illusions; the things that are so engrained in our lives, that we stop questioning them and because of that, I really just can't reconnect with my old thinking anymore.  Okay yes, it's true, I'm a complete over-thinker, but honestly, I'd rather that, than be asleep, living out of habit, unconsciously repeating myself.

I mean, you know that come down you feel when you know the holidays are over and you witness the tree coming down?  Yeah, that.  I truly believe, that if you filled your everyday life with merriment, you'd happily remove the tinsel and start getting excited about January and if you did more of what you loved throughout the year, I reckon you'd almost look forward to heading back to work, because you'd probably be making money doing something fulfilling, not just something that paid the bills.

I think the reason why I find the holidays hard and in truth, I do, is because I see how people change, how they come together, how they cling so fiercely to those few weeks of festive fueled happiness and it reminds me of how many people still haven't worked out, that the other eleven months of the year should feel like that.

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{Insightful Sunday} Self-Worth

Do you ever just look back and see how much you gave to someone and then realise how little they gave you in return?  I'm not saying you should give to receive, but ultimately, sometimes, you give and give and give, in this open, loving, unconditional way, only to start to wake up to the fact that you're the only one giving anything at all.  It's like fighting tooth and nail for something, or someone, only to find that you're the only one in the battle, which surely means that in reality, you're ultimately fighting against yourself. 

The annoying thing is, the real issue was never them, nor their behaviour, their lack of appreciation, or care, it was you, for accepting it.  For making excuses.  For going back.  Time and time again.

Lately, I started to feel a little unsteady in my relationship and I projected a lot of that concern onto the other person, but it was only recently that I came to realise what the real crux of the issue was and it turned out, it wasn't them at all, it was in fact me.

I have always stood by the belief, that you attract to you, people who teach you something about yourself and especially when it comes to romantic relationships, it seems that we pull towards us the same types again and again, because there are often hard lessons to be learnt, that simply won't dissipate until they eventually have been learnt.  Now personally, I thought I'd pinned down what my lessons were in this particular relationship - self-expression, loving without restrictions, yada yada, - but it turns out that the real issue was one that harked back longer than I could remember and one that was so engrained, I didn't even realise it was there: self worth.

This lack of self worth, that I wasn't even aware of, was not just affecting my relationships with the opposite sex, but also my relationships with friends and ultimately and perhaps more critically, even my work.  I'm a creative, so naturally, to some degree, I tend to be critical of myself, but how often do I hold myself back, because I'm afraid that I won't be good enough, that what I create isn't good enough?  How many times have I accepted being put last on someone's priority list, because I didn't believe I was important enough to be considered for a position on the top of it?  How many times had I failed to speak up about what I wanted, or what I needed, because I felt that the person I had to say it to would simply walk away, not considering me worth the hassle?

Waking up to the realisation that I was persistently holding myself back in many areas of my life, simply because I wasn't willing to be my own champion, was eye-opening, if not a little tear jerking.  How long had I been unwittingly doing this and most importantly why on earth had I been doing this!?

I think in life, you can be full of good intentions - being kind, caring, considerate, supportive and giving your love freely to others - but if you can't do that for yourself, because you don't believe you deserve to be treated that way, then there simply aren't enough people in the world, with enough love and belief in you, that will be able to prove you wrong.

Perhaps though, it's finally time to recognise that the past is the past, it's created our present sure, but in order to have the future we really want, we need to acknowledge what's been holding us back, what didn't work and learn to let it all go, so that we may finally find the confidence to stand up and be counted.  To say 'this is what we want, this is what we need, this is what we're going to achieve' and be confident in saying it, because we truly believe it's what we deserve and are capable of.

It's soon to be a new year, another chance to make a change and exert some personal authority.  *Deletes messages, erases phone numbers, puts the past behind.*  Now, I'm not really one for making new year's resolutions, but I do think that this seems like an opportune time to maybe recognise what's not working in my life, where I'm clearly going spectacularly wrong and what lessons are obviously still left to be learnt and choose to make an executive decision to attempt to make right some wrongs.  If I'm ever going to achieve great things, I need to first believe that I can!

“Everyone creates realities based on their own personal beliefs. These beliefs are so powerful that they can create [expansive or entrapping] realities over and over.”

— Kuan Yin

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