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After just under 30 hours or so of travelling by plane, bus, train and finally car, I'm not currently "home", but a lot closer than I was at my parents house in the Isle of Wight for the next couple of days. A lot has gone on over the last few weeks, although to be fair it's more like the last 6 weeks plus some. It's resulted in me not staying in Australia for as long as some people thought I was planning to and requires some form of explanation, so here goes.
I have been planning to travel around Australia for the last couple of years, mainly because I've never felt truly content back home. There's been plenty of tough times as there always is, and when I first considered travelling, it was to escape and take a breath. I had no form of consistency and wasn't enjoying the place I was in. That was two years ago, and it doesn't take a genius to say that a heck of a lot can happen over the space of two years.
About ten months ago I moved out and started living on my own as my parents moved down to the Isle of Wight. It wasn't as big a change as I (and most other) people thought it would be, I adapted well and have loved every second of it. Consequently, any idependence that I felt I would attain by going travelling by myself for any period of time, I suddenly had. Reason number one why my heart started to change.
Other things were starting to fall into place as well with my personal life. I worked my ass off at work and some people would say I spent far too much time in there on days off. However the important thing for me to say is that after over five years, I finally felt that I had found a balance between my work and my personal life. Along with the work I was doing and all that I was achieving on a bigger scale rather than just achievments in branch, I was feeling really happy in the work place and more importantly, I was enjoying the job that has had so many ups, but mostly downs.
A combination of other things as well as new goals that I was looking to achieve had long changed my heart about travelling. I had managed to find the consistency that I craved so badly, and as a result had never felt happier and finally started to feel that I had a place to call 'home'. A place where I felt happy and content.
As a result, I had no desire or need to travel and anything that I was looking to achieve from doing so, I had already done. I'm sure there would have been plenty of good experiences to be found from travelling Australia and it is an amazing country, but my heart was not there to do it. As a result I wanted to take it as a holiday and just spend 2-3 weeks there, however there was an overwhelming amount of people telling me that I should just go there and travel and how good it would be for me. My heart was telling me one thing, yet it felt that everyone else was forcing something completly different on me. This resulted in me trying to convince myself that I should be doing this, so I bottled up my hearts voice and went along with what everyone else was saying and agreed with it, in the hope that I'd feel like I had the desire to do this.
As soon as I went through airport security at Heathrow, my heart started to warn me that what I was doing was a mistake, that I should have listened to myself all along. Everything that I wanted, I was walking away from and turning my back on all the hard work that I had done to get myself into such a great place.
One thing I've learnt from this experience is that everyone else can think they know what's right and think that they know what's best. But at the end of the day, I need to listen to myself and what I need if I want to be happy. It sounds like a simple thing to follow through on, but when there's a magnitude of people who are insisting they know otherwise, it's easy to have your own judement clouded.
I've made the right decision for myself and what I consider to be best for me. I don't regret going, I had an amazing time, but I do regret letting myself be pulled along by everyone else. I've taken steps back and I've got a lot of work to do to get back to where I was before I left.
The majority of people won't understand why I'm doing this and think that's it's a crazy decision that I'm throwing away. But here's the honest truth. I want to be and feel happy, and that shouldn't be denied to me. Everyone's different and what everyone needs to feel happy is different. It's incredible how many people over look this when the world is so big and there's so much to explore. Landing in Heathrow a couple of days ago feels like one of the best things I've ever done and it lifted a massive weight. That's not to take away from the experience I've had, it's just not the right place for me to be at this current time to enable me to be who I want to be.
- comments
rachel Lewis No need to explain! As long as YOU are happy that is the only thing that's important.