…21? 40? 50? Conception? All of the above?
It’s a journey isn’t it? And – like any journey – it has moments of flying at speed with the wind in your hair and moments of sitting stationary on a motorway in Bank Holiday traffic, with your legs crossed and a simultaneous – somewhat curious given the need to pee – longing for a cup of tea. Start. Stop. This year, two thousand and sixteen, is a year of flying at speed for me, which sounds paradoxical because it’s actually a sabbatical year. According to dictionary.com that’s
any extended period of leave from one’s customary work, especially for rest, to acquire new skills or training.
Yes! ‘Rest’ plus ‘new’ is exactly my purpose here. But if the journey is life, then it’s hard to locate the beginning of the story in order to start at it. With that in mind, I am going to start with today and allow the past to be revealed by the future at the appropriate time.
Today I am writing this on a three and a half year old HP laptop, which my computer-wizard, middle son, Stephen, tells me is (statistically) knocking on the door of a laptop graveyard, but seems to serve me well. The geriatric HP is on the table of my 11 year old Elddis Autoquest 100 motorhome, AKA Wolf 2, tiny (by modern motorhome standards) but beautiful. Wolf is on hard standing – a pitch at a caravan/camping site that has a tarmac/gravel base rather than grass – at Durham Grange caravan site in the North East of England. This is home for three nights out of five at the moment, with the other two spent with Pete, my person, in Newcastle.
“Why live in a motorhome?” is such a long story that it will have to unfold over time, but essentially I am escaping from work that had become 24/7 (quite literally), almost every day of the year. I am also deeply in love with evolving as a human being, so embracing the new goes with the territory. I want to expand who I am.
“Why Durham Grange?” is easy. It is the best (for me) of the North East sites that stay open all year round, and I chose to begin this leg of my journey on Monday, January 4th 2016 (Van Day). It’s easily accessible from Newcastle, where many of my important people live and where my thriving Pet Services business, Custom Canine Care (CCC) is based. It was impossible to believe that putting miles between us would somehow completely relinquish her – are businesses female? I feel she is – grasp on my life, so I do not think of myself as travelling just yet. I am simply finding out how running CCC remotely works out for us both. Durham Grange is also well serviced for the size of the site, and I wanted somewhere with indoor facilities for laundry, dishwashing etc. These things make a huge difference when the weather is awful (as I anticipated it might be from time to time during a north east winter!) and you are running the van without a full water system to avoid any issues with frozen pipes.
Enough for today.
Enjoy finding yourself Alison
Hi Lesley, don’t worry I’m not lost. Rather, I think I want to enjoy myself and grow myself. The finding happened about 13 years ago… though is was a process rather than an epiphany. I hope all is well with you. A x
A bit of high-class name dropping – as King George VI wrote to me in 1952: “I wish you Godspeed through life; may improve for you a joyous adventure”. It has, and I can’t improve on the sentiment in respect of your sabattical year. Knowing you, I’m sure it WILL be a very joyous adventure!
Love, Dad. xxx
Thanks Dad. A joyous adventure sounds ideal. Looking forward to spending some time with you and Mum along the way. Ali xx
I suppose life begins when you choose it to begin, and that in fact you ‘choose’ to live – in a certain way or direction at least – several times over in a life time. Which is not surprising because we change over time; we morph and regenerate many times over, the same but different. Certainly, I am not the same person I was 10 years ago.
I believe life begins whenever you choose to live it for you, or for a purpose, and on our journey through mortal existence we often let ‘life’ – the mundane, responsibilities, commitments – define us, distract us, consume us. Periodically we get in a good enough place that we tame the beast and begin afresh with a new, more harmonious balance.
Life begins when you choose to live it for yourself.
Well put Lloyd. In which case life began for me sometime around 41, when I emerged out of a fog of imposed morality and indoctrination and actually began to think about what I truly thought/felt/wanted for the first time. It’s been onwards and upwards since then, regardless of the inevitable troubles and angst.
I’m in total envy of you, would love my own space to be able to find myself… I would say find myself again but I don’t think I’ve ever known who I am.. Being bullied most my school life because of being shy and a skinny – ribs that seemed to bother the larger louder girls all my school life no end to the point I never had happy memories there. Strict upbringing not even being allowedd a key to the door at 18, escaping to a teenage marriage then sons appearing soon after…at 52 I still have one at home and as my home will always provide a roof for them I’ve only had three weeks of my life without any living with me… Till they get somewhere else!!! I’ve very rarely had time to myself and this I crave to the point I think I need to find my very own space. So will enjoy reading your adventure and in my head escaping with you xx
It was very humbling to read your comment, Caroline, and once again I feel very grateful for the provisions of life. I know that only a couple of years ago I wouldn’t have felt “big” enough to do what I am doing, or to make all the things happen, that needed to happen to make this journey possible. Then I met Pete and embarked on a process of enlargement. He became a catalyst to my growth and the possibilities just snowballed from that point on. We are all capable of much more that we allow ourselves to believe. I essentially made my precious youngest son, Joe, homeless by renting out the house, which was a truly difficult decision. But I was strengthened by my friend, Katie, telling me that the same thing had happened to her when she was Joe’s age and that although it was hard, it was actually a really positive turning point in her own life.
I helped Joe apply for social housing and two weeks ago he moved into a gorgeous little place of his own. He chose it and when I visited for the first time I felt a certainty (after months of wrestling with what I was doing) that this was his “right thing” too.
As mother’s we get used to subjugating of own needs, don’t we? It takes a lot if energy to break free from that pattern of thinking. But as Imogen (my eldest) recently said to me, no adult should be responsible for another fully functional adult to the point of suppressing their own well-being. Each of us has the right to decide our own future and I do hope you find the means over time to create for yourself the future you desire. Bon voyage!
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