Now that I have given a brief explanation on where I have come from, the natural order of the story would be… Where am I going? As I am approaching the end of my current school studies, my friends and family ask me on a daily basis, “So… now what’s your plan?” 30 years on this earth, and what feels like an endless stream of planning. I can’t remember the last time, if any, that one of my plans unfolded accordingly, and yet, with each detour life presents me, I make yet, another new plan. I believe it’s was Albert Einstein who defined insanity as repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Ok Al, I get what your saying…. so where does that leave me now?
I got a one-way to ticket to Australia and thereafter, absolutely no plan!
Everyone who knows me, knows that this goes against everything that is me. I have always wanted to try an adventure like this, but never let myself. Mainly, because I believed doing something like this was so outside my personality. In my past, there have been times where simply the thought of living my life as casually as a gypsy, was enough to send the cells of my body into an overwhelming state of anxiety. Question’s like–what if’s…? and how will I’s…? and then what’s…? and can I really’s…?–have always had a tendency to take up the lion’s share of thoughts in my mind. What’s worse is, not once have I acted in the manner I predicted I would when placed in a new environment anyway. So that makes countless hours wasted on scenario’s, coupled with perfectly orchestrated solutions to problems, that for the most part, I will never even have to experience. I have come to wonder if I really need to hoard all these hypothetical method’s and action-plans, that just get stored somewhere in my brain’s purgatory. So, I am taking Einstein’s advice and I’m going try something a little different this time.
I have no idea my source of income, if any, when I get there. No estimate as to how long I’d like to stay–could be a month, could be a year. No inkling if I plan to stay in one city; travel around the country; or that entire region of the world. I do know there are a few things I’d like to do…like take lots of photos; and perhaps learn the guitar; spend lots of time with the few friends I know in Sydney; and I’d absolutely loved to continue to learn and to write.
I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t born with a manual, so I know there’s a chance I may look back and think that, this is by far, the stupid idea I ever tried (I can add it to the list)…but at least I would have a better idea what works for me. I realize I will never gain the ability to read the future, so the perpetual pre-planing for a million different story-lines that rarely come to fruition, is beginning to feel like a royal waste of time. As foreign of a concept this is to my regularly overzealous brain, I will actively attempt to drown out all the little voices and silence the question’s in my head. For my stay in Australia–just like every new day–I am going to look at each obstacle given to me in that moment, I will collect the data presented to me, and use the resources around me to survive! For now, my only plan for the next chapter is…to make my best effort to try and trust life.
Wish me luck.
In January of 2006, I had a great job working in film, I made good money, I had a lot of friends and I was happy (for the most part) and yet something was missing. Like you, I was/am a perpetual planner, always making sure I was prepared for the ‘what if’s’ that never came. In February of 2006, I packed up my life, put it in a storage locker and moved to Colorado tho attend school. I believe i was halfway into that twenty-four hour car ride when it hit me……”What the hell have I done?!?” Things didn’t work out in Colorado, the way I had ‘planned’, but they led me to California which led me to Virginia, which inevitable led me back to Vancouver, but not to work in film and not to practice what I had been studying in the states.
Instead, I found a new adventure; one that would test my limits, challenge my beliefs and make me question everything that I thought defined me as a person. I have experienced perhaps the worst four years of my life recently and I am still slogging through the mud, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I still have no idea what I will end up doing or if the last four years of education will determine what I choose to do. Some days I look back at the life I had with regret because it was easy and I believed I was happy (even though I know that deep down I was not). Life should not be easy, it should always be a little bit complicated because it is only in our uncertainty that we challenge ourselves to seek out new paths that lead us on new adventures.
I try to live each day without regret. I try to embrace each challenge and obstacle with grace and dignity. I have burned a few bridges (okay many bridges), but I have also inspired the heck out of a great many people and it is in doing so that I am reminded why I do what I do. I would rather look back and regret leaving something good to try something new than to regret not taking any chances. I want to be the that fearless person who embraces life, the one that people look up to and secretly wish they could be more like. I don’t want to be the person sitting there secretly wishing I was somebody else. And so, it is with each failed plan, every detour in the road that I have learned invaluable lessons and gotten a little bit closer to figuring out who I am without the world telling me who Is should be.
Maria, I am inspired by you and your journey and I find strength through the risks you take and the challenges you face because it makes me believe that I too have the strength to continue on this journey with its ever changing terrain. Go forth to Australia, embrace all that it is and fear not the unknown, because it is the unknown that will eventually become the familiar and it is in that transition that we will find our way. xox
“Embrace the unexpected. The things we never saw coming often take us
to the places we never imagined we could go.”