Is your Journey Right for You?

I felt hit by a thunderbolt while listening to the No Meat Athlete podcast with Nicole Antoinette yesterday; what she said wasn't new, however the WAY she said it drove home a point I needed to hear.

So, what was it all about? To paraphrase, her point is to enjoy the journey, not just the destination, however what opened my eyes was the way she described your happiness on the journey being KEY to whether the destination is even right for you.

Working towards any goal requires effort, and you may attribute a feeling to an achievement, such as, when I get a new job I'll be happy. Or, when I meet my soul mate I'll be happy. But what Nicole points out is, unless the journey to your goal makes you happy, then the destination definitely won't! At best you'll feel happy for a while before discontent creeps in again and at worst you'll have wasted all that effort for a goal that was never really 'you'.

Personally, it makes me question whether MY big goal is right for me. Mike and I have bought the property in Woodanilling, with the plan of building a permaculture site and tourist accommodation. We had originally based this on a 10 year plan but initial contact with the Council and other government departments helped us realise there was a LOT more bureaucracy involved and it would more likely be a 15-20 year plan in practise.

This is because we had planned to owner-build all the accommodations however it is not legal to owner-build tourist accommodation in Western Australia (only your own accommodation). To start out cheaply we had also looked into buying a shipping container and making this into our first accommodation, then renting this out in the future and building our own home, however the Council does not even want shipping containers placed on properties in the area, let alone have them fitted out and rented as accommodation.

Basically we have realised our plans entail about 15-20 years of fighting with the Council and getting the local population on side. Yes, the result may be amazing however that process does NOT make me happy.

I am currently completing Nicole's Worksheets in her free ebook "Stop Making Excuses and Start Running" which is applicable to any procrastinator out there (not just runners); I expect answering her cut-to-the-point questions will help me figure out what journey is for me.

Is your journey right for you? 

Lightening the mental load

This morning I started getting stressed; I was mentally listing all the things I wanted to accomplish this weekend: meditate, practice pre-race meals, go for a long run, catchup with friends, go to The Paddock, go food shopping, go clothes shopping, make calls, visit Dad, watch football, clean the house, do laundry etc. etc. 

When I tried to go out at lunch time to get two types of shopping done (as well as eat) I knew I was pushing the boundaries of manicness and decided to stop. I looked at my long to-do list for the weekend and decided to focus on a couple of priorities:

1. Go to The Paddock - it's been three weeks and I need to know if any of the plants are still alive.
2. Catchup with friends - a couple of friends have just moved back to Perth after a couple of years in England. I don't want to cut short our catchup to go shopping or running or anything else.

Everything else can wait. I won't starve to death without more groceries, I don't NEED that new shirt this weekend and if I don't manage to meditate or go running for one week it's not the end of the world.

I'm sure I'll manage to fit in a few more things but by focusing on my priorities I can relax and enjoy the things I do have to do, without worrying about all the things I don't.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Booking time to make a decision

Things have been very busy lately; between long days at work, the upholstery course at weekends, trips down to The Paddock, socialising and family I haven't had time to stop and smell the roses (hence my Yoko Ono inspired Day-In-Bed on Sunday).

And now I've come to realise that I have a nagging feeling inside that is letting me know it's time to make some decisions and figure out if I'm still travelling on the right path. I try to do this kind of check-in regularly and it's only when things have been this hectic that I forget.

I don't formally meditate everyday (that is, I don't take time out of my day to sit and meditate) but I do try to meditate in the moment at least once during each day. That gets tricky the more you have going on in your mind, the less likely it is to stop the jibber-jabber and relax. 

So I've determined to book out some time to practise contemplation meditation; one hour will be a long time to sit for the first time in a while, so I might book in incremental sittings of 30, 40, 50 then 60 minutes so I can work up to an hour of seated meditation.

When it's been a while since my last long meditation, bringing in habitual ceremony also helps the mind 'remember' the practice. So making a quiet place to sit, lighting incense, ringing a bell all help to clear the mind in preparation for the contemplation.

I'm not expecting to resolve any decision from my first practise, so booking in a few or several meditations will help me relax as it takes the pressure off finding an answer in a set period of time. In my experience, any expectation (of a result) will make the contemplation more difficult.

Now I just need to check the calendar, book in my sessions and commit to them! I'll let you know how I go.

Prayin' for Rain

I feel like a real farmer now - I've spent half my week talking or thinking about rain. Luckily it's not because our livelihood depends on it raining (yet), but because if it rains, we don't have to go down to The Paddock to water the plants this weekend.

It has been an exhausting few weeks since we planted the 200 trees and shrubs, which is something I hadn't mentally prepared myself for. I had realised it would be exhausting actually putting in the 200 plants, so I took a week off and made sure all preparations that could be done ahead of time were done.

What I didn't consider was how the exhaustion of that one activity would carry forward for the next few months while we try to keep our baby trees alive. So I went ahead and made my 60 kays in 30 days commitment (I'm nearly finished!) without thinking I wouldn't be around at weekends to put in the kilometres.

I also jumped at the chance to move my upholstery course forward to June (from October) when someone else pulled out of the class - once again, without considering how this would affect our time at weekends for watering (answer = badly).

So after our disastrous after-upholstery 3 hour drive to The Paddock last weekend (just to find the neighbours cows had trampled our precious babies) we have been PRAYING for rain this week (and this is from a buddhist and an atheist).

Tomorrow night is our work Christmas-in-July party so I will be doing my rain-dance ALL night long in the hope that it rains in Woodanilling and we don't have to do the late drive again this Saturday night.

I'll keep you posted!

In the mood for mood boards

I love mood boards. I love flicking through pages of inspiring images and picking out ones with colour schemes or fab pieces of furniture that I covet. Since Mike and I are planning to build our own house in a decade or so I’m already compiling images on Pinterest and Houzz.com that inspire me, but I’m wondering how to make these images useful.

Is anyone a mood board guru? How do you take the hundreds of pictures you collect and turn them into something practical: a piece of furniture or a colour scheme? Perhaps there is a better way to organise the pictures than I'm aware of?

Of course I started with one board and as the number of images has grown I’m slowly splitting these down into indoors/outdoors etc. but how far should this go? And then do you cross-post if you like an armchair AND the wallpaper in one pic? Argh?!

I feel like I could spend hours each week compiling mood boards for the next decade and NEVER get anything useful out of them. In which case, it may be fun for now but it’s not a very good investment of my time!

So, CALLING ALL MOOD BOARD GURUS. Help?

Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches

For those of you too young to remember Peaches by The Presidents of the United States of America, that's a musical reference from way back (1996) and is related to a conversation with my lovely man Mike that I had over the weekend.

We went back to The Paddock to water the 200 plants we put in 3 weeks ago (for details you can read my permaculture blog here), which was good and bad. Bad because it's a three-hour drive each way so we spent half of our weekend driving there and back just for it to rain all Saturday night and Sunday (i.e. wasted trip - we only went there to water!), but it was equally good and definitely worth the trip because
a) it's always good to get out of the city, it's way more relaxing in the country
b) it gave Mike and I a chance to chat properly without the distraction of TV, phones or other noise.

I'd been needing to have a proper talk with Mike for quite a while but just wasn't making it happen. He's been stressed at work, and I've been feeling down so we were just in a place where we were snapping at each other and not communicating well. The quiet (and cold!) at The Paddock gave us the peace we needed and we talked openly about a variety of topics in front of the fire.

I explained I've felt a rising melancholy that he has a job he loves and fulfills him (which I don't) and that although I signed up to work full time until we could live at The Paddock in comfort, I just don't feel like I'm being true to myself to do something a don't love for a decade, just to pay the bills so I can do something I love later.

Unfortunately I'm not one of those people who figured out what they want to do with their lives at a young age (or at any age - I'm 37 and I still have no idea what job would make me happy). I came very close when I worked at the kennels, because I love dogs with a passion, but the kennel also housed a pound and there was an immense amount of sadness attached to that little place. But I digress. 

Just to show how completely amazing Mike is, he heard me out then suggested we work towards a much closer timeline. Why don't we work towards getting it comfortable enough for me part-time, instead of both of us full-time. Then I can look at spending a few days in Perth and a few days in the country each week (with a day ferrying to and fro - most likely on the bus).

The fact that Mike was even open-minded enough to consider this sort of setup, let alone clever enough to think of it just astounds me. I'm the luckiest girl in the world. 

So now I'm calm again, with a slightly altered direction. Nothing needs to change in the short term but in two years I'll be looking at installing a toilet/shower block which would make the shed habitable. By then we will have completed the insulation to keep the temperature more comfortable and we will have a generator or similar power source for electronics.

Then I'll just need a part-time job either here or there for an income source and I'll be ready. Mike admits he would only be ready to move to the country once it's as comfortable as our house in the city, because he expects to need to keep working for the long-term. And why not? He loves what he does, why should he give it up to live in a freezing shed and be broke? But there is a middle path; Mike helped me find it and we'll walk it together.

Choosing Childlessness

More people in ‘developed’ countries are choosing not to have children₁ which is apparently called being child-free instead of childless, because being childless implies something is missing. I have never wanted to have children, and I’m lucky enough to have met a wonderful man who feels the same way I do.

When I was younger people always told me “when you’re older you’ll change your mind”, but I’m 37 years old and the maternal urge still hasn’t kicked in, so I really believe it’s not going to. Nearly all my family and friends have two or more children, and those kids are great. I get to play with them and send them home again, and I get to go home to my nice quiet house.

It’s not like I’m a neat-freak. TRUST me. I live in near squalor as I’m lazy and have two dogs who love to shed their hair all over my furniture. What I do love, is quiet. Shhhhh. Here that? Quiet.....

I LOVE quiet, and that doesn’t mean total silence, I like to blast my tunes with the best of them, but in short doses (usually when I’m getting ready to go out or hyping myself up for a major task). The rest of the time I enjoy minimal noise in my life. And children make a LOT of noise.

Obviously there’s the screaming. Usually in short bursts but if your baby gets sick then you can welcome hours and hours of wailing. Then they learn to talk, and although some girls don’t need to be told what an ‘inside voice’ is most kids generally shout at the top of their lungs even if they’re asking for a sandwich. Usually after an hour or so with a loud kid I’m exhausted and need to exit the room for some quiet time.

And we haven’t even gotten to the incessant questions or answering back, or teenage years. Honestly, why do so many people feel the drive to have kids? Before you have a two year old asking you “why?” after everything you say did you ever stop and ask yourself “why?” you want to have kids in the first place? I don’t think many people do.

It’s just part of the plan for our lives we never question. Grow up, go to school, go to college, get a job, a car, a house, get married, have kids, your kids have kids, you retire and eventually die. No questions asked.

Having children is a huge commitment; in order to be good parents you need to essentially put your dreams on hold and put all your energy into parenting. Not only energy but money too. Some figures reported in 2009 showed that each child costs on average $200,000 just to get them through high school, and most people have more than one child.

I have thought about having children, Mike and I have talked about it a lot. I wanted to make sure we felt the same way so every couple of years we’d check in with each other and see if our feelings had changed, but they haven’t. We have a dream for our future; the life we are creating at The Paddock together. If we were to have children we wouldn’t have the time, money or energy to build that dream.

Luckily for us, we don't believe we're missing out. Yes, there are experiences that people have as parents that we won't have. But we are creating a new world of experiences that we wouldn't be able to have with children.

What do you think about having children? 

₁http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childfree

Be the change

Starting tomorrow I have a week off work to go down to The Paddock and plant 200 native trees, shrubs and herbs on our block of land. We own 40 acres of ex-pastureland outside Woodanilling WA, which means we own 40 acres of long grass with a small copse of trees.

About ten years ago when Mike and I were a new couple, both disillusioned with the way the world was going, we wondered what we could do to break out of the cycle of wage slavery and improve a little piece of the world.

Slowly a plan came together to find a piece of land and make a (mostly) self-sufficient community where people could come and stay and learn or share skills. Originally this idea was going to be funded by a café, however once we realised (a) how expensive leasing a café would be and (b) how risky a venture funding one business with another would be, we decided to slog it out the slow way and work full-time while funding our plans.

So here we are, two years after finding the right property we are about to embark on the first tangible step toward making The Paddock a dream come true. This initial planting is to form a windbreak that will protect our orchard trees (to be planted next year) from the extreme sun and wind of the area.

Each year we will extend the revegetation zone by however much we can afford; eventually half of the 40 acres will have native bushland, aimed at encouraging the native wildlife to return. This zone will protect the permaculture food forest and orchards which will produce enough food for a family and surplus for sales.

We plan to build a strawbale house for us to live in and at least three tourist accommodations to rent out and for wwoofers/family/friends to stay in. A key part of the design is to include at least one workshop where people can come and share tools and skills; we will run courses including a permaculture design course to teach people how to simply and cheaply feed themselves.

All this comes from an ideal that if the world isn’t perfect, ask “what can I do to help?” I used to get very depressed watching the news and thought it was all too hard; I felt helpless and afraid. The humour of Bill Hicks helped me realise that watching the news is actually a form of media control of the populace: I was MEANT to feel helpless and afraid, that’s what keeps a population compliant. 

 

Then you look out your window… there’s no war, famine, murder. Yes, these things ARE going on in the world, but where is all the good news? The stories about people going out of their way to help each other, the stories of people who give without thought of reciprocation. 

We live in communities where people generally help other. You may not know your neighbour’s name, but if you saw him or her fall, you would rush over to help them up. Studies have been done repeatedly which prove humans are helpful, social and community minded – but you never see that on the news! 

What change would you like to see be in the world?

Living for the Now vs. Living for the Future

My other-half Mike and I have two different systems for managing life goals and immediate gratification. We both have the same dream: to build a largely self-sufficient permaculture site on our block in the country; we just have different methods for getting us there.

Mike believes the best thing for us to do is to work as hard as we can in full time positions, to pay off our house mortgage in the city. Once this is paid off we intend to keep the house for rental income to subsidise our (lack of) income when we move to The Paddock (our block in the country).

This is a good and sensible plan, which is why this is the action we are currently taking. However, I have an issue with this approach which is what I call ‘living for the future’. By committing to working full time in jobs we don’t love for another decade (which is how long it will take to be able to pay off our mortgage), aren’t we selling-out our ‘now’ for a good slice of ‘maybe’ in the future?

Life doesn’t offer guarantees, so perhaps in a decade Mike or I will be too sick to move to the country or build a house. I have used this “what if?” style of thinking, that I call ‘living for the now’ my entire adult life. If I’m not happy somewhere, I leave. If I’m not happy with myself, I try to be a better person. If I don’t like my job, I look for a better one.

I’ve always thought of myself as proactive person, without too many attachments; I can easily sell all my belongings and move country, I find it liberating. What I really have trouble with is staying put. I’ve discussed my inability to 'finish' in a previous post but I what I didn’t say there is, this has been an ongoing issue repeated throughout my life.

Before Mike, my longest relationship with anyone was two years. I’ve never stayed with any company for more than two years; in fact I’ve had three separate career changes over my lifetime! I’m nearly forty and I still haven’t found a job I’d be happy to do for the next ten years of my life.

My plan for moving to the country would be to do a kind of “MoneylessMan” and move into our tin shed, eke out a living with a few hours work at the local pub while we scrape together enough money to attempt to build a house while still paying off a mortgage. You can see why we’re doing it Mike’s way…. his is the only plan that makes sense.

Maybe that’s why we’ve lasted as a couple for over 11 years; not only do I love him but I think he makes sense. If it had been up to me I would have quite my job, sold my house and moved to the country years ago (of course, I would still be in an unpowered, unwatered and uninsulated tin shed years later). 

Luckily, I have Mike to remind me that sometimes it’s OK to work towards something in the future. That there are no guarantees for your planned future coming to pass, so you make today as good and as happy as possible, WITHOUT throwing away the plans for the future.

 

"Two friends building a house together"

What is your method for balancing future goals and happiness today?