Failure

It's a heavy word isn't it. Failure weighs on us all. It weighs so hard on me that it creeps into every new thing before it has begun. I'm afraid that fear of failure might be a more powerful motivator than hope of success. I'm not scared of failing, I have already failed, failure is already branded across my interests, my education, ocupation, my body and mind. I am already trapped in a cage of failure and the shame of it, and when I try, I try because I need to escape it somehow. But taking risks, trying things, these are the surest way to more failure. I don't believe that if you don't try then you've already failed, but I do believe that trying is important, despite the risk of failure, I believe it is the better option. When I started writing I was doing so for myself, I made books for myself and I was happy doing it but I wanted to share them, I wanted to prove that I was worth something. Now I have been encouraged and bolstered, I have been told I could use what I have made, I have been told that it could become a career, an occupation, a small hoped that I might use it to drag myself out of this pit of failure I feel I am living in. People were kind, I am still glad of that. Then I went away, I don't know if it made a difference or whether the weight of all that hope and expectation put a spanner in the works but now I have been home weeks and I cannot draw, I have a traditional art block, it is like someone has frozen my hand and only words flow from it, never pictures. All those words waiting for their pictures, you know I would have to write a thousand of them just to break even. I am back to square one and the anxiety of not achieving what I had hoped I would, and the weight of the failure yet again has made me too heavy to drag myself in to school, yet more failure. I have become a ball of self loathing and pity, a tangled, knotted mess of contempt, a mocking, sneering bully. "Thought you'd amount to something eh? You're hopeless and you will always be broken, stay down, don't get back up, you're defective, you failed again". 

Each day goes by and I wish that what I've already got was enough for me to be one of those fuctional, worthy members of society, but we live in a Jeremy Kyle culture and I cannot unhear the things that define me, the way society sees my sort, the truths about who I am. 

So, these are my ponderings on failure, this is where I am post-travel, I don't want placation, I am venting, pouring out the reality I am living due to my perception, it cannot be changed but with time and perhaps validation. I'm sorry it's so negative, not for you, for me, I wish I was happer for me, not so I could write cheery blogs about birdsong and gardening and lemonade. 

The most useful thing anyone can do is hand me some knowledge that I might find my way out. 

Homeward bound

I woke up this morning and burst into tears. I am worn, I am frayed, I feel full of relief and hope and fear, I am on my way home. Yesterday left me an emotional wreck, I'm tired, I'm ready to go back to my routines, to be back with my people, to stop pushing myself to do all the time and just be for a while. If someone offered me more time in Wellington, I wouldn't have to think twice, I know I would take it, but with the choices I have, I want to be home. I'm not looking forward to the flights and I know when I return I'm going to feel so very strange, returning home is always difficult, especially when you have difficulties with object constancy, I have to prepare myself for the onslaught of mixed emotions I'll go through, as I know I will. 

I think that's all there is to say, this has been a real experience, but I think I'll have to let you know how I feel about it later. 

Ps. I saw a huntsman spider.

Homeward bound

I woke up this morning and burst into tears. I am worn, I am frayed, I feel full of relief and hope and fear, I am on my way home. Yesterday left me an emotional wreck, I'm tired, I'm ready to go back to my routines, to be back with my people, to stop pushing myself to do all the time and just be for a while. If someone offered me more time in Wellington, I wouldn't have to think twice, I know I would take it, but with the choices I have, I want to be home. I'm not looking forward to the flights and I know when I return I'm going to feel so very strange, returning home is always difficult, especially when you have difficulties with object constancy, I have to prepare myself for the onslaught of mixed emotions I'll go through, as I know I will. 

I think that's all there is to say, this has been a real experience, but I think I'll have to let you know how I feel about it later. 

Ps. I saw a huntsman spider.

My time in Sydney.

The last few days I have done the following: 

- Taronga zoo

- Cinema to see Zootopia 

- Got very wet

- Walked quite a lot

- World's worst cat cafe

- N2 (liquid nitrogen) ice cream

- Met up with my friend Luke

- Bough my teaware (expect photos) 

I think that's it, I've not done everything I'd planned to, but it rained quite a lot and I sort of kept running out of time. 

I'm not happy, I'm surviving, that is my goal, just to get through it all. Sometimes something is nice, like the sun today, but I'm quite focused on getting home now and that's my right, to feel that way. I don't have to like everything, I can hate the whole holiday if I want and not learn a single lesson from it to boot. But that's not the case, I am growing a lot as this is a challenge and it takes a lot of skills to negotiate it emotionally, so it has great value, but I don't know if I'll return to Sydney, at least not for simple enjoyment.

I do have a day and a half left though and I'm certainly still open minded about enjoying myself.  

The nature of travel

I believe:

Travel is a careful balance of three really important elements; nourishment, survival and growth. 

Nourishment is the good stuff, walking in the sunshine, seeing things that make you laugh or smile, unexpectedly connecting with strangers, climbing really big hills and seeing the vastness of the cook strait etc, they're not hard times, though sometimes they're more nourishing than others, but like a really good salad with beetroot and goats cheese and quinoa, they just feel... Good. 

Survival is day to day living. Eating, sleeping, washing, keeping warm (and dry), attending to medical issues, attending to emotional issues. It's the things that keep you going, it's the auto pilot, it's integral because without it you wouldn't survive, it's life maintainance. 

Then there's growth. Think muscles, think trees, it's often trauma that leads to growth and strengthening, sometimes it's nourishment, but without trauma I don't believe we grow. So a healthy dose of challenge is required for travelling, and the ability to see the value in each experience so that we can turn them into growth and in turn do more, seek more nourishment, seek further growth. 

I believe that without these three elements, travel would be at best unfulfilling, at worse life threatening. (You need food and rest! Survival!)

There's one more thing that I think is really important, I'm going to call it Authenticity. 

I think when you travel, and yes it's cliche, you have to be true to your inner nature, it has to be for you, your own authentic self. I know people who I believe are outgoing, I believe they make many friends when they travel, I know people who are adventurous, I believe they see more, I have wanted to be those people, I don't particularly relish the thought of travelling 11,000 to sit alone in my room, and I don't believe it's nourishing, however, it's MY experience, it's what happens to me, and I can tell you one thing, when I can't leave the house, I'm certainly not trying to be someone else. (Usually there's some growth, I use the time to reflect, to some degree.) Anyway, I digress, it's really important that whatever you do, you do it as you. 

Travelling is an ongoing process, after you return, you reflect on what happened, you begin to shape your memories from the experiences you had and those memories replace what it was really like, they are an amalgamation of your experiences, and how you feel looking back, and they last a lot longer than the experiences themselves. Sometimes, people and places we didn't like get a rose tinted makeover when we make our lasting memories, and equally the things we might have liked get tainted by something that happened afterwards and our memories will tell us it was a negative experience, that's how life works. The processing part, when we return home is as important as the experiences themselves, because it's so far reaching, it stays with you a lifetime. 

And that, my friends, ends this evening's reflection. 

Welcome to Sydney

I miss Wellington, I miss New Zealand, but I really miss Wellington. I wrote an emotional outpouring earlier on that very subject but it went a bit rogue and now I don't know if I will publish it.

I am in Sydney and all I can think of is spiders. Spiders on walls, in shoes, in my tea, climbing out of the air con and creeping into bed with me at night. I'd forgotten this feeling from last time. I am on high alert. 

This morning I got up and went out, anxious yes, but just getting on with it, without procrastination, good! Only, less than an hour later the rain was down to my socks, through my bag and my raincoat, down my back, through my trousers, under my arms. I was not as rain proof as I'd imagined and it felt like a low blow. I had to come back and put my clothes in the dryer. It's hard enough to get out of the house, but I managed it and it doesn't feel right that I should be driven back inside by something as elemental as the weather. It's going to be twice as hard to get back out now that half the day has slipped away and my boots are unwearable, what about my 'rain proof' plans? Do I perservere or do I see some sense and change them now I have less time? ...and we're back to the question of 'what do I do? What's most important?'. It rained yesterday, but today was an opening of the heavens, the streets turned into rivers and people huddled everywhere, the fear of it has knotted my shoulders with tension that I haven't yet managed to release, the sky is a huge and white, overcast now but no longer raining and my clothes tumble around, slowly drying. I am shaking from the imagined cold, it is over 20 degrees but my mind has told me it is freezing and so it must be true. 

The spiders only come in when it rains, it might even rain spiders next, I don't know, it's all spiders and rain here in australia. 

I've got my rose tinted, nostalgia glasses on, I really wish I was soaking wet in Wellington instead. 

The blog that went rogue

Below is the post I wrote the other day, I think my second day in Sydney. I wanted to talk about two issues and they kept muddling together and I felt like this emotional ramble (because that's sort of what it is) lacks the economical use of words that I usually make my priority. I don't want my message to get lost in a wall of text, usually I only ever say as much as I believe is needed. 

Well, don't say I didn't warn you...

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Life isn't simple. We all know it can be hard, but it can also be complicated and there's not always a simple answer when we try to work things out or make decisions. Four years ago I went across the world and I fell in love, I know it was love, because the moment I left Wellington that first time, I knew I had to go back, so I abandoned my other travel plans, lost about £200 on accomodation and went back to Wellington. That's a little thing, a very little thing. To me it's a big thing, it's red lights big, it's alarm bells big. I don't just change plans, I don't deviate, I'm brittle with focus, I don't adapt, there is only ever one way. But, love has a funny way of inciting change, forcing us to choose another path when we find something we can't live without. 

If I tried to tell you the horrors that I contain in my mind, every day, you might not be surprised, I suspect a lot of people suffer far more than they let on to others, but if I were to tell you out loud the feelings I go through and the thoughts I have, they might seem alarming. When people know how much I stuggle to travel, how distressing every single day can be, they always seem to come back to the same, near incomprehensible, questions: Why? How? 

How is simple, I've said it before and I'll say it again, when you're scared all the time anyway, you might as well do something worth doing. (That sounds more like the why, but it's not) Put simply, how I manage is the same way I manage every day, and maybe that's a post for another time, but when you go through it all the time, you learn skills, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but you use them and that's how. 

But why? That's not so simple to explain. I suffer most days, I have abracelet that   reads "I am half agony, half hope", it is a quote from persuasion, I'd actually say it's more 70/30 myself. My whole life is one tumultuous internal struggle, and perhaps agony is the word that best describes the feelings. Fear battles excitement, isolation pushes against the need for space, bordom wrestles with a desire for inner calm. I have desperate feelings of loss and grief with no cause, I feel alone, I feel sad, I feel ashamed. 

With that in mind I feel I have two options, resignation; I could just give up, I could live with things as they are, or I could try to look for answers, try to change, learn, grow, discover, solve. 

So when I travel, it's really because all that fear and angst, all those tenuous moments and difficulties are better than the alternative, which is just to live with the agony every day for the rest of my life, and that's not something I can explain easily. 

I miss wellington, I miss it desperately, I feel such loss at leaving and I wonder why ever I thought I should travel anywhere else, why I didn't stay put there. On one hand I know, but on the other I still can't make sense of why I left. I love wellington, it is honestly my favourite place in the world, I have been four times now and I already wish to go back there. When I have spoken to people here, the same question has come up time and time again; why haven't you moved here? 

I honestly don't know, that complexity I was talking about, this is it, I can't work out why I keep visiting but I haven't moved, up until now I didn't even realise that wasn't 'normal', and I keep asking myself but I don't know. I don't care if it's 'normal' but if has brought up some questions. It's something I'm going to have to reflect on, I guess I don't know much about love.