We Within

A year ago, I wrote these words: Every winter I get the same longing for a life closer to nature, and every winter I promise myself it will be my last in the city. But it’s never been easy to make this a reality and this year hasn’t made it any easier. Once more, I set the intention to leave the big city in 2021. Perhaps announcing it publicly will make it more feasible. I was full of hope when I wrote that post  and now, a year later, I'm living in a small town surrounded by nature. I had held this vision for years but I couldn't see a way to make it a reality... until all doors opened. The transition wasn't easy (is change ever easy?) but now green mountains greet me every morning. I can walk to the beach or enjoy pink-orange sunsets in a marshland filled with birdlife. I can help a struggling bumblebee, see a hawk and pet a horse, all within the same hour. I remember the first time I felt this love for rural life. I was visiting family members who lived in a tiny town in...

I often think about our relationship with other species and how we value some animals but not others. The culture we live in and our own personal experience determine how much or how little empathy we feel towards certain species. But of all these arbitrary distinctions, my favourite has to be the value we assign to animals that are endangered or have just become extinct. If you think about it, it's the same kind of behaviour we sometimes exhibit when someone dies or at the end of a relationship. I experienced it myself when my father died: All the bad things were pushed aside and good memories flooded me. And when a relationship ends? Your mind keeps going back to all the good things you've lost. Never mind the bad moments or the fact that you're probably better off without that person.  We value more that which we lose, even if what we've lost is a species we've never personally come across. I find this fascinating. For me, species loss is sad but I value individ...

On September 1st my partner and I packed everything we owned, jumped on a train and left the big city behind. We were moving to a small town I had visited once in my life, into an attic apartment we had only seen on a video call. I’ve been wanting to write about my impressions after such a drastic change. Here are some snippets from my quiet life in northern Spain: Today the sun came out after two weeks of rain. Coming from a place where it’s sunny most of the time, I dreaded the cold, rainy winters of the north. And yet the north is showing me the beauty of change. I no longer take sunny days for granted: I treasure them. And I treasure the rain too because it makes everything look so green and alive. When I lived in the city, I couldn’t really observe seasonal changes. Some trees would lose their leaves in autumn and I enjoyed the crunchy sound these made under my feet. The cold would come abruptly and days would get shorter and shorter. Those were the only tangible changes and, for ...

And so I start again. I left a job, a city, a life behind and exchanged it all for a new place where nothing is familiar yet it feels closer to home. The green trees, the grass, the birds, the sand, the sea waves welcomed me. This place has been coming to me in my dreams and visions and now I’m here, it’s real, it’s pure and beautiful, it’s where I’m supposed to be for now. Moving is scary and unsettling. There is nothing to hold onto. You pack your stuff and take it with you and even your items seem to feel out of place until they forget where they were before and finally settle in, as if they’d always been here, as if this had always been their home. There are comforts from the city I miss. I miss the big libraries full of thousands of books. I miss the shops where you can buy in bulk. I miss the familiar faces. I miss the art and the activism. But that’s all. My place was no longer there. My heart wasn’t there anymore. My heart doesn’t seem to be in this blog either. I have been wor...

  It’s been three months since I last posted here. It wasn’t a case of lack of time, laziness or procrastination. It was the natural consequence of listening to my body. I needed a full reset. Sometimes you need to stop to find your centre. During this time, I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to work on any of my projects. After four years of living with the words “find your purpose” at the forefront of my mind, I needed to halt. I had been constantly searching for that holy grail that was supposed to make me feel happy to be alive because I’m doing what I love. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important to design a life that aligns with our values and desires, but this mentality had me constantly looking forward and, unconsciously, I started to believe my life has no real value until I’m living that purpose . I became goal-oriented instead of being in the present moment. I started to assign more value to doing rather than being . And by “doing” I mean “achieving”. The thought...

We feel emotions every day, sometimes more intensely than others, but at times we over-identify with them to the point they end up controlling us. If the emotions are pleasant, it feels like a wonderful rush. But if they are unpleasant, we do everything we can to avoid feeling them. The problem with this approach is that the more we distract ourselves from the unpleasant emotion, the stronger it gets. When we push it down to hide it, it’s like we’re shoving a million things in a bag until, eventually, the bag breaks. The emotion always comes back in one way or another until we’re forced to work through it. So, what can we do to avoid this impending disaster? Manage our emotions regularly. We need to remember we are not our emotions. Our emotions live in us and not the other way around. The following tools are excellent not just to acknowledge this rationally but also to experience it.   1. Turn the emotion into something tangible. Think of the emotion you want to work with an...

I have been working in tourism for four years. It wasn't by choice but by chance; one of those places life leads you to. I found it fun at first and I absolutely adore my coworkers but three years in I started feeling completely burned out. One year later, my body has forced me to take anxiety leave.  Last year I wrote a piece about my (pre-pandemic) days at work. At a time when so many people are questioning their life choices and trying to be truer to themselves, I want to add my voice through this piece in the hope to reach someone who needs to hear this: What if there's nothing wrong with you? What if your life is simply not in alignment with who you are? I don't have all the answers. I believe each of us is in charge of figuring out our own answers in life. But I hope the following piece will stir something in you and inspire you to find yours. A day in the life of a sensitive introvert working at a tourist attraction: I start my day journaling about how I want my day...