Today, it's been 6 months since I've left, and already 3 weeks since I've put my travels on hold. Maybe it's time for a little reflexion on what has changed for me. I apologize in advance if it gets too personal for the Internet, where everything must be entertaining.
Honestly, apart from the fact that I live on my savings and not on a daily routine of a job in front of a computer, I don't see much difference. My problems are still with me, and I don't see any change in my character. Okay, maybe I'm a bit less temperamental, but basically, I'm still the same person that left, or at least I feel like it. Hell, even in the middle of nowhere, if there are sales, I'm turning back into the fashionista I was... As there is no one to see the change, I will probably have to wait and meet my friends again to know if I have really changed.
By the way, I am aware of the difference between life and lifetime, I just prefer the title that way.
Honestly, apart from the fact that I live on my savings and not on a daily routine of a job in front of a computer, I don't see much difference. My problems are still with me, and I don't see any change in my character. Okay, maybe I'm a bit less temperamental, but basically, I'm still the same person that left, or at least I feel like it. Hell, even in the middle of nowhere, if there are sales, I'm turning back into the fashionista I was... As there is no one to see the change, I will probably have to wait and meet my friends again to know if I have really changed.
One of the important things for me is that when I go back to the "real" world, all the qualities that made me employable are now proven through this trip: Time management, planning and scheduling, being adaptable, becoming customer-oriented, being a quick learner, not being afraid to take important decisions on the go, and so on... The biggest improvement is definitely to be able to stand calm facing people undermining me.
Coming from a backpacker, this may sound uncommon to talk about the After-Travel and how to use it in the workplace, that seems like defeating the whole purpose of freeing yourself from it for a year! Nevertheless, it is still important to me, whatever place I may end up in the future workworld.
And as an engineer turned barmaid in the middle of farmers, you get that sometimes...
not as much as you would elsewhere, though, because Aussies are good people...
Coming from a backpacker, this may sound uncommon to talk about the After-Travel and how to use it in the workplace, that seems like defeating the whole purpose of freeing yourself from it for a year! Nevertheless, it is still important to me, whatever place I may end up in the future workworld.
My best friend recently told me that I reminded her of Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love. The compliment went obviously straight to my heart, but I still didn't want to read the book, as I didn't want to be influenced by others' experience, and I had the feeling that the search for spirituality in the book was completely different from my own search.
I actually still don't know why I left.
Because I was turning thirty and it was my last chance to go on a working holiday visa could be reason enough.
Because I was turning thirty and I was in search of myself? or running away from my problems? or too scared to enter a new decade without a big plan?
I really can't say.
Anyway, when I told my friend that Australia wasn't for me as spiritual a country as India could be, she told me that a country shouldn't be spiritual, you make it spiritual. And that is very true.
She should probably write this blog instead of me...
I have yet to see Uluru, said to be the most spiritual place in Australia, but you can find spirituality in the beautiful western coast.
You can find spirituality in so open an horizon in Victoria.
It's actually in the Top 5 things I'm going to miss in Australia
1. TimTam
2. Ginger Beer
3. Garlic Bread
4. The warm sun
5. The open horizon
You can find spirituality by talking to people who live so differently from you.
Well, anyway, after that, I finally read Eat Pray Love. Or more precisely, I devoured in a day 2/3rd of it. I want to keep the Bali part for after I've myself done Bali. I'm very happy to have read it, and I'm also very happy I waited to read it. If I've read it when it came out, I might have been inspired by the author's own personal experience, and it would have ended in a not-so-genuine wanderlust. And I'm so glad I read it, because, like all good writers, she talks to me. I was both right and wrong, her search for spirituality took a completely different path than the one I'm in, but basically, it is the genuine search of self which we have in common.
I think everybody can enjoy reading that book, but I don't think everybody can relate. For instance, my friends that are happily married, having or expecting babies probably wouldn't connect with all she's been through. And that's good for them. As for me, she's had me hooked as soon as her 109th bead, that is to say her introduction. I've laughed and cried with her, envied her sometimes and basically had a good - and unfortunately too short - reading time.
In the middle of that reading, a bittersweet moment happened: I had a Skype call with friends, and I realized how little had changed. Of course, babies are on the way, and I will have to adapt to that, but it was sweet and reassuring to see and hear them still being my friends, and not just parents or parents to be. It was bitter, though, to realize that I haven't changed a bit. I am still affected by their love and the way they look at me, and basically, what I dread at the beginning of the article, I didn't have a big epiphany on who I am and where I'm going.
It is indeed dreadful for an impatient control freak of a girl like me, who wants everything now or at least in a precise agenda. And it is made all the more excruciating by the fact that right now, my life is on hold. I am in the middle of nowhere, and since I have learned - one thing at least I've learned - to make the most of every moment and opportunity, I try to see the benefits of those two months away from my year of wandering.
At the same time, I'm fighting really hard to avoid becoming an apathic brooder that stays in bed 12 hours a day. Maybe I'm trying too hard; maybe, all I need is let the flow of time pass me by, but I must say that this Nowhere I am right now doesn't give me many opportunities to make it pass faster, and it's really tiring.
The only element that glues things together is knowing that so much more opportunities will arise in the not so distant future in September. And for sure, learning patience will make me change for the better.
I think everybody can enjoy reading that book, but I don't think everybody can relate. For instance, my friends that are happily married, having or expecting babies probably wouldn't connect with all she's been through. And that's good for them. As for me, she's had me hooked as soon as her 109th bead, that is to say her introduction. I've laughed and cried with her, envied her sometimes and basically had a good - and unfortunately too short - reading time.
In the middle of that reading, a bittersweet moment happened: I had a Skype call with friends, and I realized how little had changed. Of course, babies are on the way, and I will have to adapt to that, but it was sweet and reassuring to see and hear them still being my friends, and not just parents or parents to be. It was bitter, though, to realize that I haven't changed a bit. I am still affected by their love and the way they look at me, and basically, what I dread at the beginning of the article, I didn't have a big epiphany on who I am and where I'm going.
Of course, it's only my vision of myself, and I still need my friends when I go back to tell me if I'm right or wrong.
It is indeed dreadful for an impatient control freak of a girl like me, who wants everything now or at least in a precise agenda. And it is made all the more excruciating by the fact that right now, my life is on hold. I am in the middle of nowhere, and since I have learned - one thing at least I've learned - to make the most of every moment and opportunity, I try to see the benefits of those two months away from my year of wandering.
Hence my search for spirituality several lines ago...
At the same time, I'm fighting really hard to avoid becoming an apathic brooder that stays in bed 12 hours a day. Maybe I'm trying too hard; maybe, all I need is let the flow of time pass me by, but I must say that this Nowhere I am right now doesn't give me many opportunities to make it pass faster, and it's really tiring.
The only element that glues things together is knowing that so much more opportunities will arise in the not so distant future in September. And for sure, learning patience will make me change for the better.
