As regular readers of this blog probably know, I recently decamped from Sydney to the Byron Bay hinterland. It was a temporary thing. An experiment. To see how it felt. In the interim I lived out of a suitcase and left my stuff in Sydney.
But this week I’m actually moving my stuff up north.
My health still ain’t great. And up there/here it’s easier for me to be well. I get my food from farmers nearby – unprocessed, chemical-free – , I can sink myself each day in the ocean, it’s quiet, things are simple. I’m pulled less. I push less.
I like myself more. I unfurl.
And then I head to the city each fortnight or so for work and it’s great and it’s busy and I see my wonderful friends (and have sleepovers) and I burn myself out a little because that’s what I do. And then back to the quiet.
I’m not sure why I’m explaining things like this…but I know a few of you have been curious….
So. The move is going to entail:
giving away about 60% of my belongings. Living out of one suitcase has made me realise I don’t need much more. My belongings irk me when I think of them. I need my wetsuit and my passport and perhaps my juicer. But I struggle to think of anything much more than that.
shipping my pared-back stuff up here…and sticking it in storage. I don’t want my stuff around me just yet.
saying goodbye to a part of my life.
And so I’m a little sad. I’m sad to put an era to an end.
I’m sad to say goodbye to my community – my friends, the boys at the Bondi Rescue tower who have greeted me almost every morning for six years, the old ladies in the sauna at Bondi Icebergs, the writers and bloggers I shared an office with…. What happens when I’m not there? Does the light stay on in the fridge when you shut the door?
And…have I changed? I think I have. I think an era is over.
I’m sad to realise the flimsiness of the notion of “home”. Where do I belong if I can so easily up and leave? I love moving on. I thrive on change. But this means I regularly have to confront the idea that I don’t belong anywhere and that I travel alone.
But in this realisation I’m forced to confront and accept my own company.
Wherever you go, there you are.
All this time that we were thinking we could rely on four walls, or other people, or routine, or structure to feel we belong. When we knock these down, we realise we were kidding ourselves. Then we’re free to rely on something sturdier. Something far more transportable. Something, which, for many of us, needs to come out of storage.
I’m not entirely sure where I want to be. Where I want to set down a few roots. But I’m comforting myself by saying it’s for now.
Because everything is just “for now”.
We can always make roots, and then carefully re-pot later…
