Imagine, somehow, that you’ve avoided looking in the mirror for 4 years. Then one day you look.
Beforehand you would probably have a good idea of what you’d see. Everybody knows their own face, how they look. But after 4 years there would be some differences. A few more lines, a receding hairline, more facial hair, a bit more grey here and there. You may have even forgot a few things. Like the small scar on your chin or the freckle under your nose. [Read more…]
After almost 4 years of travel, last week I returned to England, possibly for good.
The feeling is bittersweet. In many ways, it’s the end of an era.
We’ve all been there. Graduating from high school, or university. Leaving a job we’ve worked for years. Times in our life where we have to transition from one way of living to another. [Read more…]
It has just struck me all of a sudden that we’ve been in Australia for 4 months now, which you probably wouldn’t know based on our blog. We’ve barely written a thing about it. A couple of posts at most.
Part of me wants to make excuses. It’s winter in Melbourne at the moment so things are cold and unappealing. We barely have any money and don’t want to waste it on going out. But I think the truth is that we’re not happy in Australia and have no compulsion to explore it.
We never really wanted to come here. It was an act of necessity rather than anything else. We had no choice.
Jamie is American. I am English. What this creates is a situation where we can only visit places where we can both get the same or similar visas. At the same time, we need to make money somehow as life doesn’t come for free. All of our travels are supported with hard work. We get nothing for free.
So wherever we go, we need to be able to work. This means options are limited. Before arriving in Australia, we had a number of options available to us:
Going back to one of our home countries wasn’t an option due to visa restrictions in the UK and USA. So we had to keep travelling. The choice was pretty much made for us. Australia it was!
The problem though is we both want to go home. Or create a home. Settle down. After travelling for almost 4 years I’m pretty sick of working menial jobs. I’m starting to feel like I’m wasting my life and need to do something with it. I’m almost thirty and although I’ve had some great experiences, I have very little to show for that time. I want to do something meaningful, be part of a community.
I need some roots. When travelling these roots just keep getting pulled up. Over and over. A tree can never grow if you keep pulling it out of the ground.
So we live in Australia, but our minds are elsewhere. Trying to make the best of a bad situation. Jamie works casually for a cafe for cash in hand and at the moment I’m unemployed, although I spent a few months in a call center. Our time here is spent mostly in misery, doing things we don’t like. Trying to save up money to put towards an unknown future.
If this sounds depressing, it’s because it is. Arriving in Melbourne, trying to find a job I didn’t even want, to live in a place that didn’t interest me. I started wondering why we were bothering. The only reason we’re here is to stay together, but that’s not enough when the rest of our lives are miserable. Without a light at the end of the tunnel, it seems like we’re just treading water.
This is a problem I never thought I’d experience in my life. Trying to find a place where I can live and work happily with my partner. There seems to be no easy solution.
I’ve been searching my mind since we arrived in Melbourne. The result is nothing but despair. There is no easy solution and being confronted with that knowledge has meant confronting myself. Not long after starting my call center job, I started seeing a counsellor. I could feel my mental health dipping. Not wanting to get out of bed, sometimes not wanting to live.
We spent our time discussing how I felt about myself. Mostly how I didn’t feel good enough. All these problems thrown at me simply bring back a common feeling I’ve often felt, which is I’m simply not good enough. That I’m useless. That I can’t do anything. I revealed that I was finding it hard to look for work as I’d just look at the job descriptions and think, “How could I ever do this!?” My opinion of myself was low to say the least. I had no confidence. My counsellor found it to be a bit strange.
“How many people do you think can travel for four years?”
“I don’t know. Not many, I guess.”
“Ok, and do you think a person who isn’t confident could do it?”
“I suppose not, no.”
The counsellor was a bit of a revelation for me as so many of my incorrect views were shattered. I’ve always felt like I wasn’t good enough, like if I wasn’t the best then I was shit. But after some discussion I was brought to the conclusion that this is just some rubbish that’s stuck in my head. Just because you’re not the best, that doesn’t mean you’re not good at something.
Soon after arriving in Melbourne, I wrote about passion. At that time, I was starting to feel the expectation of a year in Melbourne on my shoulders. Knowing I’d be spending another year doing things I didn’t want to. To spend a year in purgatory.
To try to build a more balanced life, I decided to pursue some passions in the form of volunteering with some non-profits. The idea being that this can take me one step closer to getting paid to do these things I love when I settle down. When I finally plant those roots.
So far it’s been helpful. My time in Melbourne hasn’t been completely unproductive. It has some meaning.
But still that problem looms over us. Will we ever get to settle down and will it be together?
Our current shaky plan is to head back to England in January. The light at the end of our tunnel. We hope Jamie can find a place to study a Masters degree and get a student visa. It’ll give me enough time to satisfy the requirements for her partner’s visa. Maybe that will take us closer to settling down. Jamie’s not enthusiastic about doing it and it’ll mean more debt. But there aren’t many other choices.
Until then we’ll focus on getting by, try to make enough money to get out of Australia and still be happy enough until then. When we start again, hopefully it’ll be for the last time.
Canoeing in Vancouver
Seven or so years ago, I was at university and severely depressed. I could barely peel myself out of bed in the morning, I didn’t have the energy for anything. Going to the kitchen to make breakfast was like climbing a mountain, so most days I didn’t bother. It was easier to starve. Eventually, the hunger would become too painful and only then would I stumble to make a sandwich. I was completely unmotivated.
I was completely unmotivated. [Read more…]
Around four years ago today, I was sitting in an office, staring out the window, dreaming of travel. I’d finished university a few years earlier and instead of continuing to chase my passions, I had stayed put. I was trapped like a deer in the headlights of life. Paralysed and unable to do anything.
My friends all seemed to have gone on to better things. But me? I still lived with my parents, moving between menial jobs, doing not a lot of anything. Just sitting in an office day-by-day. Staring out that window. Dreaming. [Read more…]
If I had to describe myself with a word, it would be, “Meh.” A word for somebody with passion, “Woohoo!” I think of them running through life. A person full of energy, grabbing the world with both hands and shaking it.
By comparison, I plod along, not wanting to grab anything. When I rush it’s only because I’m afraid of being late. [Read more…]
In a not unsurprising turn of events, research has found that .
Researchers argue that Facebook users only ever post about the good events in their life. This is leading to their friends having unrealistic expectations for their own lives. [Read more…]
Around a week ago now, our plane took off from Christchurch and we watched as New Zealand disappeared beneath our feet.
After our 11 months in New Zealand, it started to feel a lot like home. However, it seemed like we had explored it all and that it had no more secrets. Like an on old lover, we’d gone through the honeymoon phase and were now completely in the comfort phase. We’d stopped trying so hard to explore the country, preferring to spend our days sitting in our pjyamas with it, being lazy.
We learnt to love New Zealand in the end, but as so often happens we found ourselves falling into a dull routine. It was about the right time to head to Australia. I don’t know if we’ll ever go back to New Zealand, does it have any more to offer us? Maybe we’ll miss it in future on lonely nights. Homesick for a place that’s not even our home.
Now we find ourselves in Australia. A new place. A new home?
Despite this blog having the name Anxious Travelers, you’ve probably noticed that recently there has been a lot more said about travel than anxiety. There’s a reason for this. For me, anxiety isn’t an ever present thing. It comes and goes. One day it’s on my shoulders, dragging me down. Then it’s gone for a while, waiting for the next moment to pounce.
When we arrived in New Zealand eight months ago, I was in one of my positive periods. Nothing in life bothered me, I was happy – or happy enough. Things were going great. We’d arrived in this new beautiful place, we had healthy bank accounts and everybody spoke English. Hallelujah!
As time has gone on, things have started to take a downturn.
It seems to be a general rule in life that if everything is going fine it’s only a matter of time until disaster strikes. How we deal with these disasters shows what type of person we truly are. Do we break instantly and fall apart? Or do we battle through? Overcoming these obstacles so we can go back to our happy lives. [Read more…]