Assumptions, Expectations & Real Life

Globe trotting is a wild, crazy and, in my opinion, essential element to understanding life. It might not necessarily bring you all the answers you’re looking for, but it certainly gives you a lot of time to learn about yourself. Nothing teaches you more about yourself than getting out of your comfort zone. Breaking up the monotony of what may have become a stagnant daily routine and really just getting in there and experiencing new things with virgin eyes. New people, new streets and buildings, new food – so much to see and try and taste and do when you’re travelling. And whatever journey you have is the journey you were intended to have and you grow from it – whether or not it was what you anticipated. (The same is said about whatever kind of “burn” you have at Burning Man – it might not be what you thought it would be, but it is exactly the experience you needed it to be.)

I just returned home to the UK after spending several years bouncing around the globe. I spent this past year (2014) in Australia, feeling a strong desire to “find” myself. The entire time I was there I felt as though I should be seeing more of the country, taking weekend trips and running around the outback with kangaroos, sleeping beneath the stars under the endless Australian sky. But I didn’t really do that at all. In fact, I had very few crazy outback experiences and rarely left the cities I lived in while I was there.

One of the crazier experiences I did have in Australia was in my first few weeks there – and which probably heightened my expectations for what life in Australia must be like and the kind of year I should have there. Some friends and I went wine tasting in the beautiful Yarra Valley, and while we were supping champagne in the Chandon vineyards, we were (quite ecstatically) fortunate enough to have been the lucky audience to a family of kangaroos hopping right through the vineyards. This completely blew my mind at the time. In my first few weeks of having arrived into the country, to see kangaroos just hopping around the vineyards while in the middle of wine tasting! Sadly though, that was one of the very few kangaroo sightings I ended up having in my entire year there.

For most of my year down under I lived in Melbourne and then in Sydney, splitting my year there between the two cities (with a jaunt to the US in the middle to go to some weddings and Burning Man). I landed on my feet in Australia, managing to get good jobs I learned a lot from. I worked incredibly hard while I was there, determined to prove to myself I could make it on my own. I built up a great network of friends and colleagues and in addition to learning a lot about myself in the work environment, I also learned a lot about myself personally and experienced what I consider to be a lot of personal growth.

The point being, while I successfully accomplished a year of living in Australia, going to Burning Man in the middle, making new friends, seeing countless new places and trying, tasting and experiencing new things – it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I didn’t find my new home or my happily ever after in Australia, like I thought I would, but my time there was what I needed it to be. I had originally thought that in Australia I would find answers to to why I feel so lost and that I would want to stay forever. I realise this is a lot of pressure to put on a country. It’s so funny now to have walked away from that year feeling like, although I love love love Australia, it actually isn’t my “home”. I could quite easily have passed another decade there, enjoying a very high quality of life with some truly wonderful people, yet life seems to have led me in another direction. As my visa came to an end, despite having a possible option to stay on in Australia, I felt ready to leave.

I realised towards the end of my year in Australia that I wasn’t really that bothered about all of the sites I didn’t get to see while I was there – I was actually incredibly satisfied with what I did manage to accomplish in 12 months. One of my friends there pointed out to me before I left that I managed to do lot of things in a year and I should be proud of myself. And in addition to my accomplishments, on a more personal level, I also started to realise I was feeling less “lost” than I was at the start of the year, despite ironically, still not having found my “home”. I feel more and more like what I’m looking for isn’t so much a place or a person, but more probably my own identity.

And now for my next adventure…back to London where it all began!