twofunkyhearts

In November I was living in my home in the jungles of the Sierra Nevada with my Arhuaco family. December I started work in Belgium with a med tech company. January I waited in a sad Brussels flat for the day I’d leave. February I moved to Australia. Three weeks ago I left for San Francisco, then Orlando, then Asheville, North Carolina, then Los Angeles. Five days ago I boarded a plane to head home. Four days ago I slept in Hawaii. Three days ago I arrived in Sydney.

Four months, four continents, 10 countries. Four weeks, two countries, 6 time zones, 4 red eyes, 8 states, 14 hotels, 103 hours in a plane, one carry-on.

This has gotten out of hand.

When I was younger this was exactly the kind of life I wanted. To see different places, meet interesting people, and do work I thought was important. I realise now the naivety in that outlook. Returning to work with new eyes, I find myself both laughing and despairing at this glamor and mundane routine I’ve returned to.

The last 10 years of constant moving has been an incredible journey, but it’s taught me something contrary to what I’d expected. The experience is amazing, but has a cost of net energy flow away from creativity and community. Normalcy is a superpower.

The difficulty in moving with your job as a single person is in compartmentalising. When something happens, it affects all facets of life. So when a work visa doesn’t come through, or your temp apartment floods, it isn’t just a delay at your job – it is an unsolicited, uncomfortable pause in life. It changes where you live, what you do each day, who you see, if you make money, where/if you can travel.

My challenge lately has been just this, as turmoil in my professional world spills over to the hours I spend in this little Woluwe flat. It has been 2.5 months since I arrived in Europe, and I’m still sharing the space with boxes waiting to ship to Australia. Despite my enthusiasm to ship them off tomorrow (Monday), I received word on Friday that maybe those plans will be changing, and to wait for Monday to find out if I will still board a plane in 4 days. And now, when all I want to do is be angry and annoyed and frustrated, I am reminded of my last blog post about things I thought I learned. The universe is so funny-not-funny.

When I was a kid my dad had a brass polisher and he used to shine the rocks I’d bring home. An image of it comes to mind when I think about WTF I’m doing here, back in Belgium, maybe/maybe not moving to Australia, missing  natural light and spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about actual vs chargeable freight weight. It’s an odd reminder that this is the time where I actually have to practice my list, and in the process of getting tossed around, I’ll become smooth, polished, shiny. If I dig a bit deeper, I can actually find quite a bit of gratitude for this limbo that is squeezing me into something new, keeping in mind most people suffer these moments without option, and endure situations without the freedom of knowing if they can get by without that job, person, paycheque, etc. They don’t have the choice of being the Brad Pitt version of Tyler Durden, but have to settle for the Ikea-loving Edward Norton.

It’s also a huge opportunity to reframe what’s happening. I’ve been frustrated by constant interruptions and not feeling heard as three very different cultures and world views take each other on. It hit me like a truck when I realised that these situations will only make me a better communicator. They will only push me to become more articulate, more succinct, more patient. Those are good things. It’s also a time to borrow the shoulders of friends as my mentors step forward (Karl, Edwin, Jim), and tell me all the things I don’t want to hear, then bring me around with smelling salts or a quick slap, and send me on my way. That #15, about having more than you need even when you think you don’t, is super true.

I’ve been meaning to publish this for ages, but first wanted to clean it up, make it sound less cheesy. However I realize now that I am back working in industry that many of my practices – especially writing – have suffered. So, if I don’t just post this as-is, it may never get done. So, here goes. This is a partial list of ideas (ideals?) I felt crystallised or clarified in my mind and heart while roaming over the last 2 years. 

1. The only important thing is the ability to generate goodwill towards people, places and circumstances, regardless of whether they seem worthy of amity or compassion.
2. Feeling badly of another person, place or circumstance reflects on who you are, not who/what they are.
3. The reason why something happens to us never matters. We think it does, but it doesn’t. There are no exceptions.
4. Acceptance is the easiest most difficult thing and the only choice.
5. Everything changes and nothing stops moving, no matter how slowly.
6. The poorest person who truly shares their presence gives more than the fattest cheque from the richest man. Those with nothing are often the most generous, and those with everything can be the greatest misers.
7. The power of a smile transcends every language and culture.
8. Home is where you are. But it’s nice to share it with people, so never stop looking for and growing your tribe.
9. Your oldest friends carry pieces of you that you’ve forgotten. Be grateful they carry this load and cherish them immensely.
10. Nothing is ever out of reach, just out of sight. Get a stool, turn on the flashlight, look under the carpet.
11. Being loving is the easiest thing to do and possible with anyone. It has absolutely nothing to do with age, social standing, nationality, income, family situation, education, experience or ethnicity. These are factors relating to a contract and should be acknowledged in addition to – or inspite of – the feeling of love.
12. It takes courage to risk staying too long instead of leaving too soon.
13. If everyone only lived with the focus of making their own life and environment beautiful, we would live in a utopia.
14. Joy, wonderment and curiosity are some of the best qualities to strive for.
15. Even when you think you have nothing, you have more than you need.

PS – If you haven’t read The Velveteen Rabbit for a while, it’s my recommended reading of the day. 

I had a very interesting conversation with my friend Jim the other day. We were talking about an old boyfriend and I said I never understood his callous attitude, and how he could say one thing and act in a totally contradictory way. In general this kind of behaviour doesn’t usually surprise me – let’s be honest, people are flakes – but this guy had been super successful then left to live as a monk, and later came to be described as a “zen master”. I had always assumed zen masters were nicer and less flakey.

Just as I was starting to decide it was a matter of don’t-believe-everything-you-read-on-the-internet and don’t-trust-everything-charming-Italians-say, a new theory emerged:

Maybe he’s a sociopath.

Okay, before you judge me as bitter, hear me out. Sociopaths are thought to make up somewhere around 5% of the population, and their behaviours are characterised by charisma, intelligence, unreliability, insincerity, lack of remorse, extreme rational thinking, and disregard for consequences. They’re also social climbers and adept at manipulation. (Shit, maybe I’ve had more than one sociopath boyfriend…)

But then I got to thinking about how this type of person is the perfect ‘zen master’, and how so many of these tendencies to be a less-than-nice-person are very conveniently and ironically made acceptable under the guise of the quest for enlightenment. Claiming that all that matters is the present moment, so much so that previous engagements and opinions are null after the moment has passed. It’s an interesting thought. Really, the searching for oneness is the perfect place to hide out in the open and be lauded for your disengagement, to be ‘in the world, but not of the world’. It seems like any type of externally validated spiritualism or religiousness would be a great haven for anyone with these leanings. In a book I’ve never fully read called Confessions of a Sociopath, the author (a diagnosed sociopath), says she keeps herself on track through the strict practices of Mormonism. Not even joking. Really. I’m not. (But I am laughing).

But then I stopped laughing. Because I realised that probably a dozen people would point out my own sociopathic tendencies.

Ugh.

PS. Rasputin & Tooms – eerily similar, don’t you think?

Today I’m giving away almost everything I left in Belgium 2 years ago. At first I was a bit angry at myself for having left stuff in storage, only to get rid of it now, but it’s been such a great day that it is all worth it. I’ve had people from India, Russia, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Uganda – even a Belgian! – come by, share their story, and leave with full arms. My heart is doing a reformed-Grinch – some serious emotional hypertrophy – meeting all these awesome people and seeing the universe give us all what we need in the guise of pots & pans and inflatable mattresses.

I’ve been struggling a bit with the months of moving and transitioning, but today was amazing and I got way more out of this than anyone who just left with stuff. It was such a profound reminder of how looked after I am to have so much I can so easily give. The last woman, an immigrant unable to find work, told me how she’s been struggling with depression and finds Brussels really difficult in the winter without speaking French (you and me both, sister!). She came only to find the things she was searching for already gone. But then she saw some mindfulness books in a box that I planned to keep, and said she knew there was a reason she came all the way to my apartment. I gave her the four books I intended to take to Australia, we talked about the value of making things by hand (she inspected my latest mochilla), and I gave her the last of my palo santo as she was leaving. So often energy is spent in making our lives appear happy, beautiful, perfect, but often the most imptorant connections are those where you just admit that sometimes things are hard and everything is going to shit.

Even at the most mundane of times, I have a tendency to reflect on events and circumstances quite a bit. With the end of the year and my extended sabbatical coming to a close, it’s possible I’m doing this even more than usual. What’s most on my mind (perhaps because I’ve been sharing a cabin with 4 highly-educated, self-directed women who grew out of very conservative, borderline-oppressive societies/families), is how incredible the women I’ve met over the last couple years are.

When younger, I often felt that female relationships had a lot of drama, and being ‘busy’ with work most of my friends were in the form of activity partners – other climbers, skiers, runners, etc, 99% men. In the last couple years, however, I’ve met so many remarkable women who totally inspire me, and have helped me to define what’s different about them.

First, every truly remarkable woman (person, for that matter), who I have met is humble. They’ve all gone through periods of insecurity and feeling like they needed to prove themselves. I’m sure everyone goes through this to some extent, but in my circle, they all seem to have done things that were both amazing and ridiculously difficult in order to show they were  worthy to be in the room and stronger to be equal. There is so much rhetoric lately about millennials and their feelings of entitlement. While there is surely some truth in this, I think the opposite is also very true in my generation and those before and after. None of these awesome women felt entitled to anything. Instead, they worked their asses off to chase and make opportunities. But this isn’t what makes them special – what makes them special is that none of them forgot the process after they got through it. None of them forgot what it took to be where they are now, none forgot the uncomfortable silences, the sideways looks, the awkward situations that they had to learn to navigate that were individual to being a woman in those environments. And now, because they haven’t forgotten, they are humble. They remember what it feels like to be unsure, to question  everything, to be seen as a woman before being seen as a colleague/competitor/human. So now they teach and mentor and share and are genuinely nice people. They don’t intimidate with their success, they don’t lead with their history, and they introduce themselves by name, not title.

Another remarkable thing is they don’t gauge themselves by their accomplishments or their wealth, no matter how hard-earned they may have been. They’ve set a new standard for their life, one that isn’t based on external measures of success, but rather on personal fulfilment and the enjoyment and worthiness of a project. Their motivation for doing everything is different. They’re not afraid to risk or to fall or to look stupid because their value system is now internal. Like my girlfriend Libby, who sold her business and all she owned, and invested time and money to do something of intrinsic value (like living at Tikal alone for 2 months, learning new languages and launching an adventure TV show with her husband). Or Sara, who is so young and so awesomely brave. She’s an artist that does all these far-out things, puts herself in crazy environments where she draws inspiration then explodes it all out on paper, regardless of profit or perception. Or Megan, my oldest BFF, who chooses to be at home and raise her three amazing girls, grow her own food, and live life how she wants to. Or the Muisca Princess who has spent her life working to improve the lives of indigenous women all over Colombia, enduring poverty and hardship because it is worth doing.

Simply put, these women aren’t special because they’re super successful by conventional standards (even though usually they are), but because they are nice, they have guts, and they do what they want. I’m not sure why something so simple is so rare.

It’s so crazy to think that my generation of women are really the first to truly own our ability to exercise our rights and freedoms and do what we want, go where we want, be who we want, and generally not-give-a-fuck (though of course, we’re the lucky ones – selected by our birthplace and family). Not just that, but it’s wild to think about the future and what women like these are putting into motion. We’re truly able to change the world, and for girls growing up now, it’s a cool place to be starting from. My growing-up was amazing and I wouldn’t change it for the world, but I didn’t know an independent single woman until I became one. There are now so many different models of a fulfilled female life, and this place of independence, freedom, and consciousness is rad. What this will look like for the rest of the world as we are able to live this way, is something cool to think about.

 

There are 33 minutes left of Christmas here in Bulgaria. It’s been a nice, lazy, food-filled day spent with friends and strangers (who are now friends).

Christmas is a funny time for me as so often I’m alone, and despite having 363 other days in the year that I’m perfectly content to let happen as they may, my birthday and Christmas (and sometimes New Years) are odd days where I feel a bit anxious about being without close friends or family. It’s a price of being semi-nomadic I think. This year I’m with my dear friends, Jane and Mira, in the small town of Bogdan, close to Plovidv. It’s my first time in Bulgaria, and so far it’s great. I managed to leave my wallet in my car in Belgium and despite being broke, I’m treated like a queen by everyone, including complete strangers who drove me to the centre of Sofia and insisted on buying me a local beer at a dive bar on Friday night.

Village life is sleepy, the buildings and homes are dilapidated, the library-hair salon-kindergarten is in an incredible old building that seems about to fall down at any moment. Today was Christmas and men butchered their own pigs, literally staining the streets red with blood. They prep the skin before peeling it off to eat raw (something Mira jokingly calls “pig sushi”). Being vegetarian is not a popular choice here – I’m afraid if I told them I don’t eat meat or drink alcohol that I’d be on the menu for Christmas dinner myself. People are remarkably kind and welcoming and without a word in English we get along great. Mira’s brother, Pieter, hilariously speaks Italian to me, and I respond in Spanish. I think there’s so much nodding and smiling and rakia-drinking that comprehension is irrelevant.

It’s funny to think that a year ago I was living in Barichara, in eternal summer with a lost love and my machete (wait, that’s kind of a weird way of phrasing that… those two things are not related). This year I’m trying to learn the basics of the Cyrillic alphabet (and failing) with my favourite lesbians and a bunch of carnivores in winter.

I haven’t written my annual Christmas letter yet, but I hope inspiration for it will come in the next few days. Very sadly I seem to have lost my Christmas sweater and therefore need to do something new and special for my yearly Christmas picture. I have a few ideas, but nothing quite worthy has come to me yet. Wait for it, I hope it will be worth it.

Happy Christmas everybody. Love you all lots and lots. xoxo

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Tomorrow will mark 4 weeks that I’ve been back in the Belge, and finally I am making myself at home. Initially city life hit me in the face and I figured I’d find something out of town, but comfort and complacency have determined that I will make this little bachelor pad my concrete nest until my migration south.

Seeing as my work permit has arrived, driving me out of my morning routine of yoga and working in Lulu pants till noon (who am I kidding… I wear them all day), I figured I needed to make a few changes around here. For starters, there isn’t a mirror in this apartment, so I’ve been using a clever trick: since Brussels is dark ~18/24 hours per day, I wait till the outside of my windows are black, put on whatever I’m thinking to wear, and check myself out in the windows. However I’m not sure my first, second, and third story neighbours of Jacques Hotonstraat are very enthusiastic participants in my fashion shows, so, I decided it’s time for a mirror that works in daylight too. This purchase was a bit sad for me as I love not having a mirror. For the months I lived in the Sierra Nevada I hardly ever saw my reflection. It’s nice. After failing to find something second hand, I reluctantly made the trip to Ikea, then went to my storage locker. Both of these places intimidate me, especially I always seem to go to the locker at night, and have flashbacks to XFiles episodes circa 1997 with Scully alone in an abandoned warehouse and some mutated alien, or worse – the stretchy Tooms character who kills people to eat their liver so he can stay eternally young – silently stalking her.

I hate the concept of a storage locker – to have so much stuff you’re not using that you pay to keep it in another location , which may or may not be haunted by any kind of paranormal beings, genetically cloned twins, satan worshippers, worm-men, etc. Stupid. Dangerous. But when I left Belgium almost 2 years ago, I thought I’d be returning within a year and setting up an apartment again, so I kept the things like dishes, my blender, skis, bike, clothes, etc. But now, I’ve decided to go as minimal as can be… and my apartment is the cutting room floor.

Boxes are in a jumbled heap on the floor between dining table/work desk and couch/bed, and wedged between changing table and car seat (no, neither are mine). 35m^2 living space has been reduced to… 7m^2 (if you include the bathroom) – actually I don’t know what these  metric measurements actually mean, I’m just living in a self-made mess until I organise myself and offload this stuff to some unwitting person on Facebook  (anyone need a pair of size 12 men’s xc boots?!) and various charitable organisations. Despite the untidiness, I feel I’ve been productive: I hung the mirror, which really made me feel handy. Shoutout to my dad, and his very thoughtful “Toolkit for Dummies”, which has been indispensable over the last 8 years.

Alright, signing off on this last night before re-entering Office Space tomorrow. It’s been 706 days, give or take. Wish me luck.

PS, I can’t stop thinking about XFiles now. That was a very, very scary show. Thank goodness the neighbours can keep an eye out for me.

 

 

No lie, this transition sucks. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone other than me that living carefree with plants, animals, children and people who wear white every day is slightly less taxing that the narrow streets of Brussels, with speeding cars, impatient French people and military trucks parked in public squares.

That said, despite me being a grumpy, miserable person myself, I keep getting comments from strangers that I’m smiling (they’re afraid it’s contagious). This shocks me because in reality I feel like I’m walking around under a big grey rain cloud, though I suppose it’s an improvement to the parliamentary vampires who walk between big grey buildings with no direct sunlight (even on rare occasions that the sun is shining). I’ve been annoyed by stupid things – internet doesn’t work, I cut my thumbnail off while chopping carrots, I get lost as soon as I wander 2 blocks from my front door – but even the Irish bartender at O’Reilly’s commented on me being cheerful – poor guy must have lived in Brussels too long.

Thinking about this on my way home on the subway I thought about how much better the city would be if one car on the subway was a party car, with music and dancing, for whoever wanted to walk on. A subway rave! How great would that be?! [Whoever wants to implement this, take the idea please! Everyone would be so much happier – especially if you play Ace of Base during morning rush hour – or any time, for that matter.]

Busy planning my underground subway car party, I became that weirdo you see in public smiling to themselves alone and you look around to make sure no vulnerable people or sharp objects are close by. I caught the eye of another traveler and we had a really fun moment, two strangers looking at each other through the glass, smiling like idiots, waving as we were pulled in opposite directions. Then walking home, there was another sour looking man who almost dropped his guitar when I smiled at him… on double take he crinkled his eyes at me, his lips almost curving upwards. And now I’m home, completely cheered up by all the other closet smilers in this city.