Is the grass always greener on the other side?

Distance makes the heart grow fonder... that's what they say. But I actually think that what distance does is make you realise how much you took for granted. I think moving away from home makes you realise this more than anything else. In our lives we have to make decisions and often these decisions will be selfish, but if we don't be selfish and make choices to benefit ourselves then we will never move and never grow. Moving abroad for me was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make because family and friends mean everything to me, but sometimes you have to look over the fence and see that maybe the grass can be greener on the other side. Maybe stepping over the fence alone and stepping towards a completely new adventure is all about what flying away from the nest is about. That that, is the only way we will really grow into ourselves. We need to find out if it's worth it don't we? We need to test ourselves and sometimes to do that, we need to sacrifice everything familiar and take a step into the unknown.

So... Is the grass greener on the other side? The truth is no, the other side might not always be as green and smooth cut as we thought it would be, because life isn't a simple clean cut fresh lawn, no matter where you are in the world. It takes careful planning and hard work to keep it maintained and healthy. You see... by moving away from home, you realise how precious family and friends are. You realise that happiness isn't always guaranteed, that it's not something you get handed on a plate just by making a big decision. The decision is only the first step of a long hard climb. I think moving away from family is hard, missing out on monumental birthdays or anniversaries but it just takes getting used to. At the end of the day they're family and the smiles every time you go home just get bigger each time because you appreciate every moment with them all the more. The goodbyes are still so hard but with Skype, texts and calls it is much easier to cope with. Home will always be home after all. Yes you still have days where you would do anything to be at home with them, and that's okay, carrying on on your own in those moments just makes you even stronger.

But friends? That's the tough one. Because, I'm sure like you, my whole life I grew up with friends around me. Whether I was playing out in my street with neighbors, or being at school and college I was seeing friends nearly every day of my life. Then when uni comes along, not seeing them as often begins to filter out your best friends from the people you will probably never speak to again. And that's okay, some people will just be like passing ships in the night. But best friends? You can go days, weeks, even months without talking to those best friends but you still know you can text or call them for coffee and just head for a catch up and it's always so nice to see them. And then when you move away from home, those friends become even further away, and that distance means no quick coffee dates, or bumping into them in the street. It requires fleeting meetups if you both happen to be free and in the same city. It means these messages become less frequent, and although you know they'll always still be there, its hard to be a good friend to them when you're not there.

The thing about this is I expected it to be balanced out, that I would meet so many new people and make so many new friends that I would have this great social life and then still be safe in the knowledge that I have my closest best friends at home. But when you move away, and I have spoken to others about their experiences of moving away, it seems it's a general thing that it's actually extremely hard to make friends. The fact is this... at home you have your social circle and go about your day without actively looking for more friends; because your comfortable. Home is the anchor; with everyone and everything being so familiar. You lose that by moving abroad, you have to be proactive to find others wanting to find friends and then you have the issue of trying to find someone you have a true connection with, which is much harder than I thought it would be. If you do meet people you can't leave it weeks or months to message and meet them, it requires a more persistent effort and it's hard to keep up when you're busy with other things; like the common "Life gets in the way". It requires a great deal of motivation and patience to find and make your own social circle when you move to a new place and I guess I never really expected that. I am lucky to have met some great people here, but when you look at the bigger scale of things and compare that to the expectations I had, its really quite different. It's not impossible it's just a bigger challenge, a bigger obstacle to overcome and it's just a slow process.  

And there are a lot of other obstacles to overcome, such as the language barrier; like the scary experience of emergency medical care where they don't speak your language, or when you can't understand the menu or the humiliation when you don't understand when a stranger asks you a question. And then there's adapting to new foods, new transport and place names. It's all a bit like being thrown in the deep end and it's really darn scary. But at the same time it's incredible because you get to know yourself so well. Every moment is worth it... it's one incredible adventure, and it makes you feel so alive. It's unpredictable, like going through a maze where you're trying to find your way through, but you don't know what is around the next corner. 

I think my point is, that when you move abroad you have such high expectations that this glamorous, exciting new life will bring you all the happiness in the world, and it will. It's eye opening and thrilling and every new place you discover makes it feel that little bit more like home. It's just that so much change can also bring in loneliness, homesickness, fear, weakness.. and I've learnt that that's okay. It's all part of the experience because if things aren't challenging, then we're not growing. Moving abroad has been the biggest and most rewarding challenge of my life, I wouldn't change it for the world and I still wont. Any negativity I have just encourages me to make changes and make my life away from home so good that giving it up is not an option. I think in your weakest times you see your true vulnerable self and I am not going to let her down by being defeated by obstacles I know i can overcome. There is always an answer, it's just working out what that is and not forgetting to keep looking at the bigger picture to remember how far you have come. We all know we all deserve to be happy, you just need to remember sometimes you have to hike the long walk to the top of the mountain to appreciate the view. 

THE END OF A FAIRYTALE

I think sometimes you can be scared to be happy, for fear that it will only be temporary. Good things come and go and when you get so many good things in concession with each other, surely your time of fortune is set to be up soon. That's how I feel about this summer. This summer has literally been the most incredible three months of my life. I have never ever felt so free; from responsibility, from obligations, from everything. My only obligation at the moment is to be happy. But it has to end and I have to leave. Okay, happiness can be a choice but when everything that makes you happy is soon not going to be in reach, what can you do? Because I've been given this life to live for three months, this dream and now I have to wake up and leave.
So I moved to Prague for the summer as you may or may not know. And in all of that time I have become the person I was always meant to be; my happiest self. The thing is, happiness and freedom come hand in hand together, and the key to both of those things is letting go. Sure we all have baggage, we wouldn't be who we are now without a few suitcases of troubles dragging behind us but its learning to brush off the dust, open them up and free them from you, rather than carrying them and letting the weight of them drag you down. But I learnt this summer that perspective is everything too. Looking back on things that happened in the past is all part of growing, but how you are viewing them is all that matters. To be blunt... Shit happens. The sooner you accept that the sooner you can learn to let go of it. Everything happens for a reason and if you open your mind enough, life will reward you with new hellos and new experiences that will become the life you know now.
So I am leaving Prague in only a week and a half and it's going to be one of the hardest things I will ever have to do in my life. I am settled here, I'm happy and I'm at home. The people I've met have become part of my everyday life, the freedom of having my own apartment with my best friends; the ability to travel where and whenever I can, and of course best of all... the ridiculously cheap price of beer! All of these things I am giving up to leave when it's the last thing I want to do. Why don't I just stay then some would ask? But sometimes life doesn't work in our favour and no matter how much we want something we cant always just get it. We have to work for it. So my temporary plan at the moment... come home and sort my life out. To be exact, I have the goal of living abroad again by the start of the year. I hope that by the end of January, I will be settled in either Prague or Berlin au pairing, because they are my favourite cities in the world and why not?! My family and friends mean the absolute world to me, but England doesn't. My heart belongs elsewhere now and I learnt once I started traveling that I could never feel truly at home again, because I have an adventurous heart that belongs to new experiences, and the people I have met along the way. Besides, when it comes to family and friends, distance is irrelevant when people are that important.
Okay so I might just be talking myself into believing this, but I need to see this big step of leaving as a positive thing. Not see it as everything that I love I am leaving, but rather that I just have something to work my way back to getting again. Use this as my motivation. It's going to be so hard, and it's hard to put into words. I need to appreciate what I've been lucky enough to experience, because right now I'm at my happiest. Nothing lasts forever but I am so so grateful for this opportunity that came my way. I have changed, because my mind-set has changed. I've learnt to live in the moment and it's the greatest and most freeing feeling I've ever felt. That's why I love traveling, and living in an unfamiliar place; you are completely free and you get to meet the most incredible people. It would take so long to list the amount of people I've been lucky enough to meet, like passing ships in the night who I may or may not ever speak to again. That's the price you pay for traveling. Accepting that every hello will either end in a goodbye or a see you soon. And it all just depends on which you choose. I choose not to say goodbye to Prague... But rather see you soon.  
 
 
 

Opportunity Knocks

Sometimes motivation is one of life's biggest struggles. Occasionally we'll only be able to be proactive when life slaps us around the face with something that makes us realise the capacity of the importance of change. We can become so comfortable in our little habits and routines and get so used to talking about what we need to do, yet never get around to it. We think that time is fundamentally infinite and yet time is the most fragile thing that controls our lives. Everything can change in a minuscule of a second and our biggest regrets are not always the things we've done, but the things we never did. Sometimes we need a colossal event to come around to shake us up and make us realise how short life is and that if we don't change things right now while we have the opportunity, we may never be able to do it at all. We always say we'll do it tomorrow, and then tomorrow turns into another day and another day, and eventually its weeks, months even years passed by and we're still sitting here saying we'll get around to it. But every once in a while an opportunity will come around that puts everything else on hold...

I was lucky enough to have one of these opportunities put on a plate and slid across the table to me. A close friend of mine was offering me the opportunity to move to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, for three months of traveling, fun and freedom. And at first I actually laughed it off and said to myself come on I couldn't do that! I guess everyone is scared of change and that's a pretty big change to consider. It was only as the next week or two played out that the seed of the idea had begun to sprout out and the thoughts I had began to surprise me. I've travelled on my own before sure, but I've never actually lived away from home before and my family are everything to me. I wouldn't see my family or my friends and I'd lose all sense of familiarity. It was that realisation that actually inspired me to start thinking yes in my mind. Sometimes we trap ourselves in our own circumstances; become a little too comfortable. I think life is a lot about stepping outside of your comfort zone to gain as many experiences as possible, which I think is why I love to travel so much. Stepping outside of normality and throwing yourself into whatever life will throw at you. And though I may not always share my travel stories and experiences they are all part of the foundations of the person I am today.

Sometimes as well you'll go through some challenges that will change your perspectives of things in your life. Sometimes realising how easy it is to lose something can make you appreciate the things you do have all the more. You can become stronger than ever when you can gain appreciation; realise that family is family, they will always be there. I am also safe in the knowledge that I have some incredible friends in my life and a test of time is simply a test on how real that friendship is. Friends and family were not the reason stopping me and when I realised that I was far nearer to saying yes than before. Then there was the matter of work, I was in a job I was very unhappy in recently and leaving couldn't have come at a better time. It was beginning to drain me of my passion for my life so this opportunity was absolutely ideal.

The thought of it scared and enthralled me. Which is why I said yes and am here writing this very post in a lil' café in Prague near our apartment. Because I think fear is the counterpart to excitement and if you don't take a risk you will never get anywhere. My life had become a mundane routine with only a splash of excitement here and there and I needed more. The people close to me knew I needed more. This opportunity is three months of excitement and I know that I need it. I plan to take these three months to explore, travel and get back to being the true wanderer that I am again. I've been here nearly a week already but I had already settled in by the time my first day had hit sunset. It amazes me now how I don't get that anxiety of being in a new and foreign place anymore when I first arrive. I'm simply comfortable but in an entirely different way than the comfort at home. Because these three months are an opportunity to challenge myself. To write, to get to know myself even more but most of all just make the most of it. Because if there's going to be one summer in my life where I'm as free and excited as this, it is going to be this one. And one of my number one rules this summer which started when I agreed to come here, was to just keep on saying yes.

 

 

2014.. The Year I Started Living

Put quite simply, 2014 was simply the best year of my life... So far.
What makes it even more amazing is that I proactively ensured that it was going to be. Through both my actions and a particular helping hand from fate, I'm in a position in my life now where if you would have told me a year ago how it would be, I would never have believed it. But that's the thing about life, you can't plan it out no matter how much you'd like to because you never know what might happen. Whether it be something catastrophic or something incredible, its the unexpected things that make life the surprise that it is. Can you imagine knowing what the next 50 years of your life will entail..? No because that wouldn't be living. I think to really live life, you have to embrace the fact that things are out of your control. Just like you can't control the weather; you can't control the actions of others or control time which has such a significance in our lives. Once you come to this realisation, life gets easier somehow, because you accept that what is meant to be will be.
I'll be honest, I've never been a particularly laid back person. Whether I put that down to the previous pressures of Education, or my family who aren't the calmest people in the world, I don't know. I used to overthink everything, for no apparent reason and then I went traveling in April and my entire life changed. Because I didn't care. I didn't pre plan how to get to my hotels from the train stations, I didn't pre plan what I wanted to do in each place I visited, nor did I do much research into anywhere I went either and you know what... I've never enjoyed life so damn much. I let my legs walk where they wanted to, I ate whatever I fancied without any consequences, I spoke to every person I had the opportunity to speak to,and as a result, met some of the most life changing people, even for simply the briefest of conversations. Because when you travel you're expanding your mind to so much more. Varied cultures, religions, tastes, people, languages, the list is endless. But the one thing you become most knowledgeable about.. is yourself.
The person writing this now is a complete transformation from the shy, lost girl I was a year ago. Because back then I didn't know myself. I didn't know who I was, and yet now I feel so comfortable to be me. I walk around with a freedom and never feel ashamed to be alone. I've said many times on my blog posts I'm solitudes' number one fan, and I'm just so used to it now. I spend a lot of time by myself, and some people probably feel sorry for me for that but I never see it as a bad thing. I actually love it for many reasons, mainly however, it helps me to appreciate when I do spend time with loved ones. When your younger and at school and college you see friends every day not thinking anything about it, and I realise now how much we take that for granted. I'm in a long distance relationship too, so naturally I  don't see him a huge amount either but I don't take any of it for granted anymore. Every moment I spend with the people close to me now, has a much more monumental meaning and I simply make the most of every opportunity together now.
However back to topic! 2014 was the best. With its incredible, life changing moments maybe even slightly outweighing the negative ones. I read a book recently and one of the main parts I remember from it was this... "Once you learn to love yourself, amazing things will suddenly start to happen to you. such wonderful things, that you will start to describe them as magic".
That's what happened to me. I went traveling, found myself, began to love myself and then fate stepped in and started a domino effect of positive things happening all in concession of each other. As soon as I got home, I was offered a job. Okay so it didn't turn out great in the long run but it was another experience to add to the list and was pretty ideal when I first started, and a mixture of other things happened too. I know now I just need to have fun. Be less serious, don't over think things and let things happen as they're meant to. I can't predict where I'll be in my life in 6 weeks time, let alone 6 months or 6 years so why worry about it?!

2014 was the best year of my life for meeting people. So many incredible people came into my life, and I'm lucky enough that a large amount of them have stuck around. I started a new job 4 months ago now, and I love it. Okay so it's another coffee shop job but it's so different from any place I've worked before. I have some amazing friends from there already and my social life and my confidence are only on the up at the moment. And when it comes to traveling, and seeing the world, I already have plans for the next 2 months. Going away for a few days to Portugal in only 2 weeks time, and then a surprise trip away where I won't find out where we're going till the day. I hate wishing time away but there really is so much to be excited for. And if I'm not excited about living life, well, it would be pretty darn boring to say the least.
So maybe 2015 won't top 2014, or maybe it will. But I'm going to try my hardest to make it a good one...

 
 
 
 

The best things in life happen when we least expect them

It's funny how quite often the best things in life happen when we least expect them. Spontaneous plans that turn out to be the best nights of your life, coincidental meetings with people who change your life a way you would never even imagine. When you lose something in your bedroom for example, you look everywhere to find it but you simply cannot see it for the life of you. Only when you stop looking do you come across it and wonder how you never found it before. There are so many moments like this in life particularly when talking about love. So many people search for love, but it rarely works that way because how can you find something when you don't even know what it is you're looking for. When you stop searching and let life do it's own thing it'll find you, however cliché that may sound. When you lose grip of the idea of this perfect guy or girl, and the idea of how romance and love should be, you'll discover your own love story unravelling around you. We're always looking forward, waiting for the next big event or next colossal moment to happen in our lives, and we forget to live in the present. If you take the step to sit back and enjoy life in the now, everything else fits in to place just how it should.


It's hit me lately just how much I believe that everything happens for a reason and that everything will always work out how its meant to. Not that I strongly believe that everything is predetermined but I think there's a fine line between fate and things happening as a result of proactivity. its the tiniest detail that is the reason we're even here today. Every little thing in the past no matter how small has led up to this very moment and when you look back at things that happened you can nearly always understand why. Why things didn't work out in that past relationship or why you didn't get that job you once wanted so badly. That's why I'm safe in the knowledge that from now on everything will happen as it should. I'm not going to sit back and do nothing letting life do it's own thing but if I don't get a job that I want or something goes wrong, I know that's just meant to be and soon enough one day ill be able to look back one day and know the reason why it never worked.

I've said before that deciding to go traveling in Europe on my own back in Easter was life changing, but it's only hit me recently how colossal the changes in my life really were. I made friends for life and got to know myself on a much deeper and more appreciated level. I also just got back from Canada last Sunday! It's all go at the minute but I never would have gone if I hadn't gone traveling because I was visiting one of my best friends I met while in Italy. The Canadian version of me you could call her, and I had such an incredible time over there and it was such a good experience. Quite often when I go away I really struggle with the thought of leaving and coming home back to the little ol' town I live in. Yet this time after my time away alone I knew that I would be fine. That it didn't matter where I was because life is about the unexpected and I didn't need that special someone to come home to. I'm not one of these people who depend solely on their relationship for happiness, I'm simply just too independent for that. Happiness, or rather fulfillment stems from the inside. Gained through self respect and love and having a high appreciation of yourself, which in my opinion you can only truly gain through solitude.

So I stopped looking for this idea of love, up and left to go traveling on my own and got to know myself and what I want so much better. I let go of that searching that was weighing me down, and when I stopped looking, life found a way to bring it to me.  I also know that if someone had told me 6 months ago how my life would be now I certainly wouldn't have believed them. So much has changed and in such a short period of time. You never know what's right around the corner, but I think that's part of the excitement in life. Can you imagine if we knew everything that was going to happen in our lives for the next few years... would be pretty boring really wouldn't it?

In love with the idea of love

We are surrounded by the idea of love. We watch films, read books, see plays, poetry and greeting cards that all put this four letter word on a pedestal. But what does it actually mean? What does it mean to be in love and how do you know when you are, or whether you are simply in love with the idea of love? It's sad but true that we create an idea of the people around us and when they defy it, it questions whether they're right for us in the first place.

We are surrounded by fairy tales and romantic comedies which share no similarities with reality; they are fiction. We know this and yet for some unbeknown reason we convince ourselves that this is what we are looking for and we won't settle for less in the hope one day that moment will come. That brief eye contact in a movie where the characters know there and then that that is the person they will spend the rest of their lives with. How? How is that even slightly possible? I think attraction and lust can be at first sight, but love means a fundamental understanding and appreciation of another person. Loving everything about them, from appearance, to their faults and imperfections that altogether make their personality. Being in love is being in awe of their every detail and accepting that for the rest of your life you will be falling in love with a different person every day because we are always changing. 'Love at first sight', is falling in love with an appearance; with the idea of someone and not the person for who they are because you haven't got to know them yet. They could turn out to be the most horrible person you've ever known and would you still be in love with them? No. I understand you can have a connection with someone straight from meeting them, but that's not love.

This may be a morbid opinion to have but it's reality. The word love is thrown around so easily nowadays and it's the one word that hurts people more than imaginable. It's not just a word it's a promise of acceptance for whatever is to come but it falls apart so easily nowadays that it has simply lost it's meaning. It's funny that when you're single you're opinion on love changes dramatically to when you're with someone. When someone is making you feel happy and free the love songs start to make sense. Sappy love poems and films have a new dimension of meaning. You surround yourself with things to do with love so much so that you build the situation up to so much more than it really is. You lose sense of reality because you encase yourself in your own fictional scenario. You become in love with the idea of love and the idea of the person you're with so much, that when life and reality get in the way and things don't work out it makes the fall down so much harder. You convince yourself that now you're in love you will never be lonely again and it's far from the truth. You've been living on such a high, watching your own life as if you're watching a film expecting the happily ever after because that's just what happens in fiction. But reality is not fiction, it never will be. You have the reality of bills to pay, arguments, cheating. You are exposed to the good side of love and never expect the bad, therefore it's much more heart breaking when the bad happens. When you build your expectations so high, reality will never compete and it will lead to an ultimate unhappiness. The worst part is you can't understand this at the time either. You blame yourself, the timing, then the person who supposedly broke your heart... but did they? Or ultimately do we simply break our own hearts by building our expectations unreasonably high that we can't handle it when the truth is revealed. Due to being exposed to this idea of perfect love we're always expecting more intentionally or not. It's drilled into our subconscious what love should be, therefore it's never as glamorous and it ultimately leads to disappointment.

Not always though. I'm more than aware that some people meet and just know and if that happens then so be it. You're one of the lucky ones because there are so many people with bitterness towards love because of the past. Who find it so difficult to trust again because of one time or many times where it's been broken. We live our lives in search of love because we think it is the answer to true happiness. Maybe for some people it is, but for me I know it isn't. I'm a believer that happiness comes from loving and accepting yourself. Only then can you appreciate the love you receive. Quite often people feel they don't deserve the love they receive and that's because they haven't yet accepted themselves for how great they really are. Most of us are in love with the idea of love. It's just understanding that there is a big difference between the idea and reality.  

The clock is always ticking

Time is the strangest concept. Who decided that as soon as it becomes dark the world has to go to sleep. Just to think the other side of the world is waking up as your head hits the pillow goodnight. It often strikes me how much importance time has in our lives. A split second can change someone's life forever. That tiny moment of the second hand of the clock moving that fraction of an inch and everything can change. To think that every second that passes we will never ever get back. We can't turn back the clock no matter how many times it's done within fiction. Every tiny action we take or word we speak in that second, has the potential to change not only our lives, but the lives of the people around us. I guess that links to the idea of fate. I can't say I definitively believe everything is predetermined, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason; even if we never find out what that reason is. It's the tiniest details that always get me when you look back on the past. You hear the stories of how couples met, and it was only by that small slither of a chance that they are together today. My parents met on an organised trip to a concert and ended up sitting next to each other on the bus. If they hadn't have sat next to each other I wouldn't be here today. It's astonishing how tiny the details of the past can be that can bring you to the point of reading this very post today. Such as near death experiences... we've all heard of cases where people have been seconds from death and manage to escape, right place right time and maybe without even knowing. No, I'm not talking about final destination, but you get my drift.

It's negative things too though. You know those pivotal moments of feeling like absolute crap because you have been dumped by your partner for example. Yet in months, maybe years, you look back with a different perspective and see why things didn't work, knowing it was for the best. And why is that? Because time is fundamentally a portal of change. We look back on things that happened in the past with a different perspective because we ourselves are different. Every day we change. Noticeably or not. One day we'll suddenly be 70 years old and wonder where the hell our life has gone because time is the most powerful and manipulative thing in our lives. It's the foundations of how we live without us even realising. We convince ourselves we have all the time in the world. We feel as though it's something that we control yet in reality it controls us. Think about it... we get up at a certain time, we should have lunch at a certain time, eat our tea and then go to sleep before it gets too late. We live by the hours that pass us because were always looking to the next event, the next thing we should be doing. We live in a world where everyone likes the idea of living in the moment, yet very few actually take that step and grasp every opportunity. We live day by day rather than second by second, counting down the days until Christmas or a birthday and gradually years turn into the equivalent of minutes. I've always thought time goes quickly but with technology and our ever growing awareness of it; it flies by even quicker. I can't count the number of times I'll come onto the computer and when I look at the time 2 or 3 hours have passed without me even realising, and it's scary. That's how I imagine to see my life one day when I'm older, I'm scared that one day I'll ask myself where the hell did it go?!

That's the motivation that keeps me from making a decision about life. Figuring out an answer to the famous... "What would you like to do with your life?". They mean career wise but I can never find an answer for that question other than just enjoy it. I don't want to look back one day and regret not doing more with my life, which you hear happening so often. So I decided when I arranged my travels that I am going to live. From that moment and from every moment since I've been home, I have the motivation to just make the most of life. My travels changed me and, as you may agree it's hard coming home after being away anyway, so 5 weeks away definitely had an effect on me. On my travels I didn't become a new person. I just became the person I was meant to be, who was hiding under who I was being, but not living. I have become really deep, as you may be able to tell, and changing so much then returning to somewhere that hasn't changed a bit has been difficult. I can only compare it to trying to fit a jigsaw puzzle piece into the empty space that looks right but it just won't fit. And coming back to reality is hard when you've had the best 5 weeks of your life but I'm staying positive. I've already planned a trip to Canada to visit the most amazing best friend I met while traveling, and I find that keeping my mind on my plans of future trips is keeping me from the dreaded future of trying to figure out a career path. When I say to people I'm planning to get a temporary job, save up to go traveling, then return and do the same again, they say it's ridiculous and you can't do that for the rest of your life. It's not my life long plan but its for sure a momentary one for the here and now, and all I want to know is who says I can't?! Just because I'm not taking the conventional path and going to university then finding a dead end job I'll be stuck in for life, its a big thing trying to do something individually while everyone around me is doing the same thing but I'm doing what makes me happy. Happiness is of fundamental importance when it comes to enjoying life. If doing this, even temporarily is making me happy, I'm not planning to sacrifice that for the expectations of society and other people, anytime soon.

My Life Changing Adventure

Wow.. where to start! Firstly I've simply had the best 5 weeks of my life. If you don't know why, I've been travelling around Europe for 5 weeks. More precisely Germany, Austria and Italy. The first 3 weeks was just little old me on my own and I've never embraced solitude so much before. I was admittedly worried about being by myself for so long, but that was one of the reasons I did it. I really feel like I had to get to know myself better and I think the only way to truly do that was by being by myself, and doing the one thing I love to do; Travel. And I'm home now and I already feel so much better in myself. My whole life I've always been constricted, to school then college then work and there was never a chance to just step outside on my own, take a deep breath and press pause on everything while you catch up with yourself. When you're so confined by these things that people say are what make life, you become what everyone wants you to become. Okay you are yourself to a degree but you can't say no I don't want this, or this is what I want because you never get the time to actually think about it, let alone voice it to anyone. Everyone needs freedom, it just so happens that I find freedom through travelling. So it was just amazing taking these last 5 weeks just to sit back and say, you know what... I deserve this. It was the most rewarding experience. I think travelling is the only thing you buy that can make you richer, and the fact I saved up every penny by myself made it all the more rewarding as well.


So I started my trip in Berlin, where I stayed for a week. I fell in love with this city. It's such a contrasting place; oozing history and remembrance, yet feeling so modern at the same time. I gained an appreciation of Architecture I never knew I had, I developed my German speaking skills to the extent that when I finally got to Italy I was still speaking German back when they spoke to me in English... oops! On my whole trip I've met the most incredible people. Even when travelling on my own before the tour I joined, I had so many moments you only hear happens in world travellers blogs. Those moments where complete strangers ask you to join them and you do, and you have an almost life changing conversation with people who are genuinely interested in your life. The kind of moments that only really happen while traveling because if you were somewhere in your hometown and someone asked you to join them you would more often than not swiftly walk away. So Germany was incredible, and I just love it... and the beer of course! Austria was equally amazing, the mountains and lakes are just stunning. There's something about mountains that I find extremely difficult to describe, but they provoke such a sense of awe and wonder in me. They're just so powerfully majestic, sitting there in such quiet serenity.

Then for Italy. Well I've pretty much seen the whole of Italy in only 2 and a half weeks which is pretty darn incredible. Starting in Bologna, the stereotype of the Italian way of life. The red city oozes Italy from it's people to the buildings. It hit me I was in Italy as I was walking down a small cobbled lane, surrounded by red buildings, I found a tiny Italian delicacy shop. I was standing looking in the window at the range of meats, cheeses, pastas and fruits when four cello players started playing the most beautiful music just on the street beside the shop. It hit me for a moment I was living in a film, I had my own soundtrack because this was my journey and the exact moment that would happen in a film...was a bit surreal! Then I visited the little land locked country of San Marino, the 5th smallest country in the world... and it's basically a mountain. Being the highest point in the Apennines the views were just spectacular. Also probably the friendliest place I went to too, it was just a beautiful place to visit. Then I hit Rimini, the beach part of my solo trip, where I really didn't do a lot but relax... and I am not complaining! I needed a break to catch up a bit plus a needed the rest before the fast pace of my tour, which is going to be my favourite thing to talk about...

So I joined a Contiki tour, which went all around Italy, in this order. Rome, Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, Florence, Verona, Venice, Lake Garda, Milan, La Spezia, Cinque Torre, Pisa and back to Rome. As you can imagine it was extremely fast paced but the amount we got to see made it incredible. The tour was only 12 days and yet everyone became a family to me. I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have met the people that I did. I got about 4 hours sleep every night and have never been so tired but I wouldn't change a thing. No regrets, the only thing that gets me down is knowing how far away my friends are now. I was the only British on the tour! Everyone coming from Canada, America or Australia and now they're a world away from me, but I'm just going to save up and visit. My future plans currently revolve around further travelling. I've been well and truly bitten by the travel bug. But it's amazing how being surrounded by people who share your passion for travel can make you feel. I feel so happy in myself, because I was accepted for who I was and it kind of finalised my acceptance of myself after my solitude. I'm not saying I love myself, not wholly, but the process has started and I have a deeper appreciation for myself that I never had before. I feel fundamentally happier and I hope it lasts without me getting hit by the holiday blues too much. The last 5 weeks have been life changing for me and I wouldn't change a thing. 

Tomorrow is the start of an adventure...

So tomorrow is the big day. The day I leave for my solo European adventure. I literally cannot believe how quickly the times gone! When I began booking my month of travels, it always seemed so far away. Now, 7 months later here I am, all packed up and ready to go.


 When I tell people about the fact I'm going traveling I get the general reaction of wow, that sounds amazing, I'm jealous etc. Then comes the big question.. who are you traveling with? When I answer that I'm going by myself I have grown to simply laugh at the reaction. "You're crazy" "You're mad" "Why?" and my favourite... "but what will you do... you'll be on your own?!" People seem to wonder why an earth I would do such a thing on my own and seem to think it's truly outrageous. It's as if traveling is something that is seen as a shared experience, but in my opinion to truly immerse yourself into a different country and a different culture I think sometimes you be have to be alone to fully appreciate it. Cut yourself off from everything you know and just adapt because you can. These questions people ask, to me, just shows how much people are scared by the thought of their own company. I embrace solitude, as I have written about in a previous blog post, but I still feel like people are afraid of it. To be free from the restrictions of other people, of other peoples judgements; brings a freedom that is indescribable. While I'm away I can do what I want, when I want and how I want and there's going to be no one to stop me. I think that's quite a liberating experience and I'm surprised not many other people do the same.

So I'm going traveling, yep on my own and I'm going to be a traveller. Not a tourist. Because there's a big difference between a traveller and a tourist. A traveller is seeking something deeper than just photos and anecdotes. They are seeking an adventure. Seeking the freedom that comes with immersing yourself into unknown places, hidden getaways and uncovering places and sights you'd never imagine coming across. Being a tourist is conventional, but being a traveller is courageous. I'll admit I'm not fearless. Its a scary thing to do, but if it wasn't scary it wouldn't be worth doing. Anticipation adds to the excitement and although I'll miss my family and friends I will come back with a million stories to tell. Life's too short to live with regrets. I don't want to be one of these people who look back one day and wish they had of done more with their lives. Wish they had have taken advantage of the opportunities they had right on their doorstep but instead were too afraid to just say yes.
 

 So for 32 days I'll be visiting 5 different countries. A variety of places lay waiting to be revealed, and I'll be seeing them in this order...Berlin, Dresden, Nuremberg, Munich, Klagenfurt, Bologna, San Marino, Rimini, Rome, Sorrento, Florence, Venice, Milan, La Spezia and Vatican City. Words can't express how excited I am for this adventure, but my camera is at the ready and I'll be sure to write up a blog post either while I'm away or bombard it when I return. So, Aufwiedersehen and Arrivederci for now, the world awaits...

 

 

The freedom of reading

Just to put it simply... I love reading. I always have and I will always try and find a bit of time to take out and indulge in a good old book. I admit I always found it difficult to find the time out to do as such. Yet nowadays with my friends all living far away at university and me stuck in my own little world, I like to sit back in my free time and enter a new world of fiction. I think the main reason for that is because it's a good distraction for me, it keeps my mind occupied and creative rather than sitting dwelling on my loneliness and how much I truly miss them.

I think books are so powerful. I think its incredible that a handful of words can trigger such strong emotions, making you laugh out loud one minute and hysterically crying the next. I never used to cry at books no matter how sad, then once I read a particular series of books that for some reason really got to me and there I was crying bucket loads. Ever since, I find myself shedding a tear at the smallest of tragedies hidden beneath the words on page. The hopeless romantic stuck inside of me is admittedly a big Nicholas Sparks fan; the epitome of tragic romance. So there I'll be, sitting on a train finishing the last couple of chapters, tears spilling from my eyes while undoubtedly a few curious glances are being pointed my way. (And I hate to admit that's happened more than once...)

But it's that amazing moment where you're so gripped in this other world you forget your surroundings and get lost in the emotions just from the words on the page in front of you and your eyes just can't leave the page. And then you come to the end and for a minute you sit there in a slight daze. Heartbroken at the fact the relationships you just formed with the people in the book are over, that you've come to the end and it takes a moment or two to come back to reality. I love that feeling. Not the one where you're at the end of the book but that moment you are forced to put it down and it takes a moment to realise the footsteps you were just walking in and life you were just living really were just fiction; a figure of your imagination due to the stimuli of a few words.

In one of the books I read the other day there was a quote I remember really well, It went... "I love reading. Books give me what I don't have in real life". For some reason this quote has stuck with me and it struck me just how true it is.  Not only do they give you what you don't have they can help you forget what you do. Sometimes we need to escape and by letting ourselves in to the world of fiction, getting so caught up in between the words, you find yourself able to forget what is going on in your head and in your life... The perfect escape.

Fiction is amazing in my opinion. I think it's amazing how you can create relationships with characters, admiring them, hating them, loving them. When it comes to films and television the characters are there before your eyes but by reading, your mind is the one that creates them. You see them how you want to see them and there's such a freedom that comes to being able to use your own imagination to further create a story. I also think reading has the capability to change your perspective on your own life by witnessing another persons point of view. And occasionally I find myself reading things that are so relatable that I find it hard to believe I didn't write it myself.

 
 

The glory of Solitude

Solitude is one of my favourite words. Not for the sound as it's not exactly the most pleasant, but because of its meaning. I am a very independent person and although I cannot imagine a life without my friends and family, and I couldn't ask for better company, I love being by myself. Embracing the glory of solitude to its full capability. There is such a freedom that comes as a side effect to solitude. The freedom to be able to think deeply about life; or the freedom to just lay in the grass and watch the clouds pass overhead with the sun warming the ground around you hearing no sound but your own thoughts. There's a well known saying that being alone is not the same as being lonely and I couldn't agree more. Being by yourself does not make you any less of a person, embracing the company of yourself is one of the strongest things you can do because it means you are accepting yourself for who you are. You aren't trying to change drastically to create better perceptions of yourself but its a gradual process of beginning to love yourself. I think being on your own, truly on your own, can you only then really get to know the real you. You delve into thoughts you never knew existed, figure out skills and a creativity you never knew you had and can gradually become more confident in your own skin, gaining more confidence in your own decisions.


This is one of the main reasons I am going traveling on my own. I feel like it's a necessity for me to begin to get to know myself better and I really feel that I can only do that through solitude while doing one of the things I love to do: travel. I yearn to be in places I've never been, to gaze in awe at the most beautiful sights. I will have the freedom to ride my bike as far as I want to go, eat whatever I want whenever I want, go walking in woodland and look at the wildlife or get up at a ridiculous time in the morning just to watch the sunrise above a mountain top. Most of you are probably thinking but you could do all of that with someone else... and you're right, but to me there's just something about being alone that I can't describe. I just think that it is so wonderful to enjoy your own company.

Of course this doesn't apply all of the time. I love being alone, granted, but I don't like being lonely. Loneliness is the grievance of Solitude, it's evil twin but I do believe that there's a choice. You have the freedom to choose whether to dwell on the negatives of being alone or to embrace it. Sometimes that's a really tough battle and occasionally loneliness will win but it's particularly in these times, when loneliness is overwhelming, that I find friends to be the best medicine.

I'm also not one of these women who need a man in their life to be happy. I personally think that true happiness comes from a fundamental love for yourself. Yep it's that cheesy saying isn't it, you have to love yourself before someone can love you. It's not completely true of course but I think the general message of it is particularly important. You have to have an ounce of self love, respect and appreciation for you to truly believe that you deserve the love you receive. I'm the kind of person who pushes people away because I guess I'm a bit of an all or nothing girl, but lately I've realised it's my insecurities that hold me back. My lack of belief that I deserve true happiness and true love. Because of that I have realised I need to embrace my solitude, figure out who I am. So I'm going travelling with just me, myself and I and I intend to truly make the most of it.