The secret to success.
I can´t begin to explain even if I tried. I have written this story so many times in my head on a run, I am starting to wish I had a tape recorder so I could actually have already written it. Now I´ll just botch it up. I just got done reading Ultramarathon Man where on his 50 mile plus runs he started recording thoughts and clips for his book and I think its brilliant. My most creative moments are when I am running. There is little that gives me the same pleasure that running does. Now I run somewhere between 3 to 6 days a week, depending on good or bad weeks, anywhere from say 2 to 15 miles (just Google the kilometers :) but there is nothing I enjoy more than setting off on a run with my phone in my pocket, earphones in my hand and not a care in the world. I want to know how far I´ll go and don´t give a sh** when I´ll return. So moving forward, every time I have a good long run I write this story or something like it, I try to capture in words what life has become, what its shaped into, why I´m in Australia, why I left NY, why I left Santiago, who I am, who I´ve met, and maybe, just maybe who I´ve become.
I still haven´t gotten there, but this is really how it went.
Now if you read any of my old blogs you know my whole life anyway, I was sitting in Albany, NY working family services and dreaming of speaking Spanish and climbing mountains, so I decided to volunteer abroad and ¨get it out of my system.¨ This feeling and urge, this tickle to travel, to see the world, to live an exotic life style, to walk on the beach everyday, learn new languages, challenge my mind. So I did, it was definitely the hardest move of my life and literally, not joking, I wanted to stay there two days after I arrived.
Now we have to fast forward in order to rewind. I laid side by side recently with my best friend and love of my life and was telling him I finally had a revelation. Years ago (2008) I went to a psychic with one of my best friends and she told me(the crazy bird lady)....that Australia was in my future, she didn't know if I would marry an Australian or move there forever, but all she could see in me was that I was really from a land that wasn´t here. It was filled of beautiful birds, seas, mountains and amazing colors...and after a pause she said it must be Australia. ¨The day you land you will feel as you were meant to be there, you will never want to leave.¨ She said. So I thought my fate was tied here....then I got here.
So here we are lying in bed falling asleep when I gasped out loud and said ¨she´s wrong.¨
Nico turns and is like, what....who? The lady, she was wrong...she said...birds, mountains, seas, the day you arrive, you think you were meant to be there and you never want to leave. ¨It´s Chile,¨ I said, ¨she was talking about Chile. ¨
I lay there motionless for a while absorbing the impact of what I have just said. I am now living in my fourth country, learning a new culture, job, trying to find a place to live, seeking friendships, pieces of home, when like a giant wave crashes over me. This time I was searching for the answer to the crazy bird lady in the cold cottage in upstate NY had been there all along. We drifted into peaceful sleep that night but my days to follow became restless.
How could I be here? I kept asking myself, all I wanted since the moment I knew what an airplane was, was to go far away, I wrote poems in fourth grade about seeing the world, made my 7th grade essay about volunteering in Kenyaand eventually living in New Zealand. I took my junior (11th grade) class trip to Europe when I saved every penny from my ice cream job and my grandma funded the rest to see London, Paris and Rome. And to this day this is what I remember the most... That was the happiest I have been in high school walking along the Thames River. There was a classmate with us on the trip with a boyfriend back home and every chance she got she called him from payphones with calling cards and she missed him. (We were there 12 days.) And I remember sitting on the bus driving down the street in London staring out the window completely immersed in my own thoughts, thinking to myself, this is life, this will be who I am, I will discover the world, piece by piece and I will never miss anyone, because it will always be a new adventure. I remember deciding at the age of 16 the real philosophy of life of how there were two different types of dreams, and I couldn´t seem to find anyone at the time who shared mine. I went through University with the same dream, I couldn´t WAIT to get back to England, I couldn´t wait for my chance to live in another country, I signed up first chance for my third year abroad and lived an amazing 8 months in London, backpacked all over Europe. I changed heaps there and still talk to my friends I met there regularly.
Then I came home and sulked and my entire senior year I collected books, flyers and pamphlets about living and working abroad, I wanted to go back to Spain, I wanted to be fluent in Spanish and I wanted to ¨change the world.¨ I remember back then not being able to decide between Madrid or a program in Thailand, the world was at my finger tips. But then everyone was going to grad school, needed to work, get your Masters, so I put the books away for a year, only one year. I applied to all these grad schools that were complete dream schools, and got into 4 out of 5 them, decided on Columbia University. I couldn´t even think it without choking, after struggling and working and growing up in a very working class home, I couldn´t believe they would let me attend there. It was like a palace, but then again, it cost as much as a royal tuition. So Columbia got pushed aside, waitressing began and suddenly a smaller arts school was much more affordable. Somehow 5 years passed, somehow life just happens.
Well I finally made it to Chile for my three months of volunteering, only I made a life there and I realized I was meant to be there the moment I landed, I was only waiting forever (27 years) to get there. I met the love of my life, close friends that I will never part with and took leaps and bounds as a person, a professional, and a friend.
So where does that leave me? We had to fast forward to rewind, so now we are getting closer.
It´s January in Chile, its hot and beautiful and every weekend we spend at the beach and I feel blessed for my life, but pieces of me nag for my dad´s Sunday pancakes, to play with my nephews in the backyard, to see my friends birthdays and nothing days, and every days. Suddenly, all the ¨normalness¨ that was, becomes exotic and far away. Suddenly, the dream that I had fulfilled became life and I wanted more. I wanted what I once had. Nico asked me to move to Australia with him for a ¨bit.¨ ¨Let´s try it and see, it´s common ground,¨ he says. ¨We can both work professionally, make money and travel.¨¨ It is in so many ways, perfect.
But it´s not home. Now we are here, it´s present and it´s a roller coaster. I forget the days of 12, 16, 20, 21, 26, where I wanted nothing but to be anywhere but the U.S.A, I wanted nothing but something different. Now I need to find out how I feel each day I wake up. Some days I am so grateful for my life, so blessed I don´t know up from down, some days I can´t see up cause I feel so homesick everything is sliding down. How do you balance a life that you created?
I think the secret to success is there inside always. It´s balance and common sense and each day that comes is another day of your life to not be wasted. It´s ok to be sad, it´s ok to be happy. Because that´s my everyday. I have more luck in Australia then I have had in any place in my life, it´s an amazing city and we have met nothing but honestly amazing people, and I know that in a bit of time, I won´t remember any of the roller coaster the first two months were. I know it. But it´s also what makes the journey worth taking. Anything that´s easy isn´t worth doing, he says in ultramarathon man, and I completely agree, if it was easy, it wouldn´t be fun. So yea, I miss home, I miss my friends, I miss my pregnant cousin and my best friends and my nephews and my dad´s store, but I am happy to meet so many awesome people, I am happy to hear an ozzy accent everywhere I look. I am happy to meet people from all over the world, and mostly I am happy to share it all with someone I love. I am happy to be challenged each day that I wake, and I am happy to have these days, cause all I think now is one day I will look back at my life, and I won´t remember any of these moments of sadness or homesickness, I will remember living in Melbourne, and Santiago and London and traveling to the far ends of the earth and sailing from North America to South America on a 10 foot boat. I won´t ever forget those. I won´t forget the faces of the ones that stick with you forever, of the girls in the orphanages that ran to kiss me hello for 2 and a half years. I won´t forget them, I will carry them with me everyday in every country. And this is what it means to live abroad. It is not all roses and hearts and exotic beaches and cocktails every night. Its heartache and heart brake, its challenging yourself in ways you didn´t know you had, it´s accepting happy moments in sad times and sad moments in happy times. Its accepting you can be two people in the same body and you can want 5 things at the same time. Its not always knowing the culture, the jokes, the cool places, the language, its putting yourself out there. It´s discovering each day more of not who you are, but who, maybe, someday you will be.
This maybe.....is the secret to success, because in the end, it won´t matter how much money you made or what material your couch was, my memories are the only physical things I can carry with me in the suitcases I bring from place to place.
I can´t begin to explain even if I tried. I have written this story so many times in my head on a run, I am starting to wish I had a tape recorder so I could actually have already written it. Now I´ll just botch it up. I just got done reading Ultramarathon Man where on his 50 mile plus runs he started recording thoughts and clips for his book and I think its brilliant. My most creative moments are when I am running. There is little that gives me the same pleasure that running does. Now I run somewhere between 3 to 6 days a week, depending on good or bad weeks, anywhere from say 2 to 15 miles (just Google the kilometers :) but there is nothing I enjoy more than setting off on a run with my phone in my pocket, earphones in my hand and not a care in the world. I want to know how far I´ll go and don´t give a sh** when I´ll return. So moving forward, every time I have a good long run I write this story or something like it, I try to capture in words what life has become, what its shaped into, why I´m in Australia, why I left NY, why I left Santiago, who I am, who I´ve met, and maybe, just maybe who I´ve become.
I still haven´t gotten there, but this is really how it went.
Now if you read any of my old blogs you know my whole life anyway, I was sitting in Albany, NY working family services and dreaming of speaking Spanish and climbing mountains, so I decided to volunteer abroad and ¨get it out of my system.¨ This feeling and urge, this tickle to travel, to see the world, to live an exotic life style, to walk on the beach everyday, learn new languages, challenge my mind. So I did, it was definitely the hardest move of my life and literally, not joking, I wanted to stay there two days after I arrived.
Now we have to fast forward in order to rewind. I laid side by side recently with my best friend and love of my life and was telling him I finally had a revelation. Years ago (2008) I went to a psychic with one of my best friends and she told me(the crazy bird lady)....that Australia was in my future, she didn't know if I would marry an Australian or move there forever, but all she could see in me was that I was really from a land that wasn´t here. It was filled of beautiful birds, seas, mountains and amazing colors...and after a pause she said it must be Australia. ¨The day you land you will feel as you were meant to be there, you will never want to leave.¨ She said. So I thought my fate was tied here....then I got here.
So here we are lying in bed falling asleep when I gasped out loud and said ¨she´s wrong.¨
Nico turns and is like, what....who? The lady, she was wrong...she said...birds, mountains, seas, the day you arrive, you think you were meant to be there and you never want to leave. ¨It´s Chile,¨ I said, ¨she was talking about Chile. ¨
I lay there motionless for a while absorbing the impact of what I have just said. I am now living in my fourth country, learning a new culture, job, trying to find a place to live, seeking friendships, pieces of home, when like a giant wave crashes over me. This time I was searching for the answer to the crazy bird lady in the cold cottage in upstate NY had been there all along. We drifted into peaceful sleep that night but my days to follow became restless.
How could I be here? I kept asking myself, all I wanted since the moment I knew what an airplane was, was to go far away, I wrote poems in fourth grade about seeing the world, made my 7th grade essay about volunteering in Kenyaand eventually living in New Zealand. I took my junior (11th grade) class trip to Europe when I saved every penny from my ice cream job and my grandma funded the rest to see London, Paris and Rome. And to this day this is what I remember the most... That was the happiest I have been in high school walking along the Thames River. There was a classmate with us on the trip with a boyfriend back home and every chance she got she called him from payphones with calling cards and she missed him. (We were there 12 days.) And I remember sitting on the bus driving down the street in London staring out the window completely immersed in my own thoughts, thinking to myself, this is life, this will be who I am, I will discover the world, piece by piece and I will never miss anyone, because it will always be a new adventure. I remember deciding at the age of 16 the real philosophy of life of how there were two different types of dreams, and I couldn´t seem to find anyone at the time who shared mine. I went through University with the same dream, I couldn´t WAIT to get back to England, I couldn´t wait for my chance to live in another country, I signed up first chance for my third year abroad and lived an amazing 8 months in London, backpacked all over Europe. I changed heaps there and still talk to my friends I met there regularly.
Then I came home and sulked and my entire senior year I collected books, flyers and pamphlets about living and working abroad, I wanted to go back to Spain, I wanted to be fluent in Spanish and I wanted to ¨change the world.¨ I remember back then not being able to decide between Madrid or a program in Thailand, the world was at my finger tips. But then everyone was going to grad school, needed to work, get your Masters, so I put the books away for a year, only one year. I applied to all these grad schools that were complete dream schools, and got into 4 out of 5 them, decided on Columbia University. I couldn´t even think it without choking, after struggling and working and growing up in a very working class home, I couldn´t believe they would let me attend there. It was like a palace, but then again, it cost as much as a royal tuition. So Columbia got pushed aside, waitressing began and suddenly a smaller arts school was much more affordable. Somehow 5 years passed, somehow life just happens.
Well I finally made it to Chile for my three months of volunteering, only I made a life there and I realized I was meant to be there the moment I landed, I was only waiting forever (27 years) to get there. I met the love of my life, close friends that I will never part with and took leaps and bounds as a person, a professional, and a friend.
So where does that leave me? We had to fast forward to rewind, so now we are getting closer.
It´s January in Chile, its hot and beautiful and every weekend we spend at the beach and I feel blessed for my life, but pieces of me nag for my dad´s Sunday pancakes, to play with my nephews in the backyard, to see my friends birthdays and nothing days, and every days. Suddenly, all the ¨normalness¨ that was, becomes exotic and far away. Suddenly, the dream that I had fulfilled became life and I wanted more. I wanted what I once had. Nico asked me to move to Australia with him for a ¨bit.¨ ¨Let´s try it and see, it´s common ground,¨ he says. ¨We can both work professionally, make money and travel.¨¨ It is in so many ways, perfect.
But it´s not home. Now we are here, it´s present and it´s a roller coaster. I forget the days of 12, 16, 20, 21, 26, where I wanted nothing but to be anywhere but the U.S.A, I wanted nothing but something different. Now I need to find out how I feel each day I wake up. Some days I am so grateful for my life, so blessed I don´t know up from down, some days I can´t see up cause I feel so homesick everything is sliding down. How do you balance a life that you created?
I think the secret to success is there inside always. It´s balance and common sense and each day that comes is another day of your life to not be wasted. It´s ok to be sad, it´s ok to be happy. Because that´s my everyday. I have more luck in Australia then I have had in any place in my life, it´s an amazing city and we have met nothing but honestly amazing people, and I know that in a bit of time, I won´t remember any of the roller coaster the first two months were. I know it. But it´s also what makes the journey worth taking. Anything that´s easy isn´t worth doing, he says in ultramarathon man, and I completely agree, if it was easy, it wouldn´t be fun. So yea, I miss home, I miss my friends, I miss my pregnant cousin and my best friends and my nephews and my dad´s store, but I am happy to meet so many awesome people, I am happy to hear an ozzy accent everywhere I look. I am happy to meet people from all over the world, and mostly I am happy to share it all with someone I love. I am happy to be challenged each day that I wake, and I am happy to have these days, cause all I think now is one day I will look back at my life, and I won´t remember any of these moments of sadness or homesickness, I will remember living in Melbourne, and Santiago and London and traveling to the far ends of the earth and sailing from North America to South America on a 10 foot boat. I won´t ever forget those. I won´t forget the faces of the ones that stick with you forever, of the girls in the orphanages that ran to kiss me hello for 2 and a half years. I won´t forget them, I will carry them with me everyday in every country. And this is what it means to live abroad. It is not all roses and hearts and exotic beaches and cocktails every night. Its heartache and heart brake, its challenging yourself in ways you didn´t know you had, it´s accepting happy moments in sad times and sad moments in happy times. Its accepting you can be two people in the same body and you can want 5 things at the same time. Its not always knowing the culture, the jokes, the cool places, the language, its putting yourself out there. It´s discovering each day more of not who you are, but who, maybe, someday you will be.
This maybe.....is the secret to success, because in the end, it won´t matter how much money you made or what material your couch was, my memories are the only physical things I can carry with me in the suitcases I bring from place to place.
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