Crossroads
An introspective contemplation on the delicate marriage of Active Planning and being guided by the Sychronicities of Life.
Finally.
It’s raining.
After months of scorching sun and limit-testing heat we move into the autumn. You can smell it, almost feel it on your skin, that the air has a different quality to it, lighter with a slight cool tinge. And then another surge in mugginess, before the heavens opened. The more time you spend in nature the more our senses reawaken to being able to decipher the world around us with the multitude of receptors we have. It seems like an obvious thing to say but it’s one thing to understand it intellectually, it’s another entirely to experience it and feel it happen. At the end of the day, we are, of course, animals.
Since June of this year, I have been travelling around Southern Europe, living in a campervan.
Rita. The Beast from the East.
This trip came about in what I can only call a synchronistic way back in the spring.
Over the last ten years or so, I would often find myself scrolling through Youtube videos and DIY pages of people who were living and travelling in a campervan. Through a veil of intense curiosity and delight I’d live vicariously through their articles, blogs, vlogs and images. Happy feet on tiny beds with immense backdrops of mountains or some marvel of nature, right there, beyond the tippy toes. Oh how I’d lose myself then in daydreams of packing it all in and doing that myself. At one with nature. Free of ties to any one particular place. Living with little. Just what you need and even less so. Your next stop just around the corner. But there was always something getting in the way - work, relationships, routine, the seemingly arduous task of planning it all, the logistics of making it happen and then of course the financial element. Or so I told myself. We’re brilliant at finding excuses not to make it happen, to opt for the safer known existence of our day-to-day.
Until that decision is made for you.
Almost as if the universe had other plans for me. Vastly different plans.
This spring, in the space of a few weeks I lost my flat and then my job, all of this as I was also in the process of filing for divorce.
I wouldn’t have said this with such glee at the time, but now I can genuinely say how grateful I am for this Holy trinity of rain clouds which befell my sky.
After barely six months of moving into a new home, I was told my landlord was selling. I started the gruelling task of finding, yet again, a new home. Soon my excel spreadsheet was full of failed attempts, be it for elevated prices beyond the scope of what a single person could realistically afford; or be it for the large exodus of Londoners flocking down to Brighton and flooding the market, further exacerbating the rental costs… It seemed like I just couldn’t get a break. I started exploring further afield, thinking maybe I needed to expand my horizon and accept that the gentrification of my home-town was leading to another layer of natives being shed into the surrounding areas. No avail there either.
And then the idea came in a shot, as if shown to me by an angelic guide.
Why not look for the rainbow among the rain clouds?
Turn the stress of looking for yet another new home just as I’d got settled into… an opportunity. A crack was forming in my life and perhaps a slither of light was now able to enter.
Here’s how the next bit went - and it was lightning fast!
I was already planning on going to a retreat in Portugal in June, renting a car and staying for a month. This soon turned into looking at renting a van to have accommodation sorted too.
This then went from being a solo trip to joining forces. And then we were two.
Together we looked for said rentable van. Pretty pricey it seemed…
Ponder.
Meanwhile I was failing miserably at all applications for a new home.
Ponder some more.
Realise with my WFH job I could effectively live anywhere. Even in a van. As I travel chasing the sun. In Southern Europe.
Look tentatively and timidly at van rental costs over four months.
Realise that we would be better off buying a van rather than renting one and essentially throwing our money away…
Ponder some more still. Meditate and allow for the solution and next step to come to me in a collection of Eureka moments.
In conversation one day, friends planted the idea of buying a campervan and selling it after the trip.
Mmmm….
I put the idea to my partner-in-travel.
We start looking.
We found genuine opportunities much more within reach and I started to feel a flutter of joy and excitement, with a sprinkling of trepidation, in my Heart.
Find one van. Old, heavy, no power steering, no AC, no windows (I know, I know… we were trying to spend little). Almost put down a deposit for it, heck, we almost bought it outright. But my intuition was screaming at me not to. Thankfully I listened to my wise Heart and two days later Rita came onto my radar. One day and one zoom chat later, the deposit was placed and an agreement was made. A trip was then made to Great Yarmouth and soon Rita was ours. Wrinkles and all.
And then a week later I was given notice at work.
Ok, deep breath. Just another aspect of my life I was needing to let go of as it no longer served me. More searching for the silver lining then…
In the anticipation of our departure date ideas, projects, creative pursuits flooded me. Oooh… four months… all that time!
I’ll write music, write an EP, record it in Rita, turn her into a mobile recording studio.
I can get back into my daily practice of Yoga.
I’ll do Vlogs, Walk-and-Talks and Blogs.
I can redesign my website.
I can organise concerts galore as I travel around.
I can have stalls in arts & crafts markets, selling my music, merchandise and coaching services.
I’ll go on epic bike rides.
And make pilgrimages on walking routes, stick at the ready.
…
You get the picture.
We’re nearing the end of our adventure and there is no doubt we’ve done a lot, but the perception of time has truly presented itself as elastic and fickle to say the least, stretching and morphing along the way. Some weeks we’d marvel at how many places we’d seen, how many kilometres we’d traversed, the number of people whose paths we’d crossed and all the food (and ofttimes wine) we’d delighted our tastebuds with. But ultimately, there is a limit to everything at a certain point. Especially when you give yourself the small task of driving to the tippy toe of Italy and back.
So, the EP still needs recording, though the songs have been played, developed and shared along the way.
The yoga mat has been dusted off and the sun is saluted from time to time, but it still gets rolled up and put away, for days on end sometimes, especially when the flattest terrain around is rocky beaches or when downward dog in a car park is not quite motivation enough.
The website is more of a construction site, an impatient and exciting work-in-progress, but meanwhile more clarity and planning is being done on imminent work projects (more on this in future posts), thus helping with the redesign.
The concerts didn’t happen, but life truly became a musical as I sing my way along a journey I am now sharing with a beautiful soul, my muse, inspiring me to sing from my Heart, with joy and a multitude of silly cartoon-esque voices, sharing it with him on a daily basis. The concerts will come.
The selling of my wares only happened at the retreat centre in Portugal at the very start of our adventure, where I even left my merch behind by accident as we journeyed on into Spain and Italy. But as the custodian of the centre wisely said:
“Perhaps there is a reason why you were meant to leave it behind. God always knows best.”
Time, dear wise one. It wasn’t the right time and my time was better used in other ways, so my merch wasn’t needed. It will be, all in due course.
The walking and biking happened, yes, all over Europe, so much beauty! Though not all as planned and what discoveries were to be had!
And what of the Vlogs and Blogs?
Well, herein lies the realisation on this theme of crossroads.
When faced with decisions and choices, we have to learn the delicate marriage of planning and letting go. Of work and play. Some things are up to us to create and bring forth in our lives. Other things we have little say upon. It will be as the universe has intended for us, whether we like it or not.
My life was falling apart in 2021 but I didn’t step aside enough to allow for the change that needed to happen to come into fruition. I also wasn’t ready to deal with it in the right way.
So it had to inevitably fall apart again in 2022. And this time, I did step aside. And I was more than ready. In meditative contemplation every morning I’d pray for guidance and trust. I’d tap into my Heart and feel my way forward - in the words of the great 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, Rumi says:
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
And so, with the date of our ferry home to the UK fast approaching, today’s meditative contemplation, with the expanse of Barragem de Santa Clara-a-Velha in front of me, led me to thinking of my first Substack Blog. And here it is. My first step. Of many to come. I look forward to sharing and exploring, reminiscing back to this incredible adventure, writing with the new perspective on life this experience has given me and with the “tools” I have gained. I plan to have different topics - Travel and Van Life is definitely high on the list, as is Heart Leadership, having just graduated as a certified Heart Intelligence Coach from a fantastic, life-changing programme I have just completed with Gabriel Gonsalves. And of course Music and The Voice will also have a thread. But I also look forward to letting go and allowing the creative juices to just flow through me and on some days: Que sera, sera…
I enjoyed reading this. So...you. :)
Beautiful writing Sonia. I look forward to many more! X