Not the norm…
2020 what a disaster, or was it??
So we made it home in time for Christmas 2020 and then in July 2021, nearly 8 months later we’re finally on our travels again…..
2020 was meant to be the year we said let us do something for ourselves. Step away from the pre-programmed route that’s drilled into every one of us from a very early age for us all to follow….you know…study hard, go to university (I didn’t and have no regrets BTW), find a partner, get married, settle down and have kids, work until you’re 67 and then retire and if you’re really lucky, still have your health to enjoy the fruits of your hard earned labour.
Well I’ve never been one to comply and have always struggled with authority or people telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing, particularly from those that clearly have no experience whatsoever. Some people seem to be quite comfortable with complying but not me. Never have been and never will, a rebel at heart, I’ll always challenge the norm! Anyway, who says you can’t retire early!? Or in our case just sell up and give up work for a change in lifestyle. If we are lucky and never have to have another ‘proper’ job again, then so be it. Who says you can’t buy another house, maybe we can’t or maybe we won’t, or maybe we’ll rent, depending on where our path takes us. But isn’t this part of life’s adventure, the bit that makes it exciting? Everyone has the ability to choose their lifestyle, and decide on how they want to live their days out. I’ve seen enough people suffer through life changing disease, physical constraints or mentally, to come to the conclusion that there’s no point working to have all the money in the bank but not be able to enjoy it or being stuck in a job or doing something that is just killing you inside. Why do it people, why???
I will be quite open and will happily talk to anyone about it today. Unfortunately, I was suffering with depression, not insignificant either. Work related, working in an unsupportive environment, chaotic with no direction and a constant battle of wills with an imported senior management team and an undercurrent of distrust across that team. There was no collaboration, just people watching their backs and some individuals who’d been there so long, just waiting for their golden ticket out or waiting to climb into dead men’s shoes.
Unfortunately, once the old guard had left and the new guard came in from Paris, their lack of experience and a desire to achieve at all costs to try and look good in front of Paris HQ, started to create more challenges for the business as the chaos ensued. What’s worse, is that when I told my last CEO that I had been diagnosed with depression and had been put on medication, his eyes glazed over and his next words were ‘you have a job to do and you are expected to be there to get it done’, zero support and had no interest to talk about it. It clearly wasn’t important to him, think about that for a moment.
The problem is, you don’t see it until it’s too late. You’re tired, run down, always trying to maintain a happy face, family life is taking its toll, you’ve lost interest in those things that you were once passionate about. Work is all consuming and it’s like walking through treacle, nothing you do makes sense.
But you know what, this was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because if it hadn’t, neither of us would have come to the decision we came to which was let’s go and have some fun. Do something different. Trust me when I say, I was shitting myself at the prospect of selling up, only because that wasn’t the norm! I wasn’t quite on the mend yet. I was getting there and in a far better place but still a way to go. In fact, I can probably say it wasn’t until the earlier part of this year that I finally started to feel my old self again.
Although we only managed to get away for about 7 weeks late in 2020, it was a great trip. Tracy-Anne and I used the time to adjust to living in the van and putting it through its paces. I am loathed to use the words ‘van life’ because it conjures up all sorts of images, most of which are rose tinted. Trust me it’s not easy. Don't get me wrong, there’s still lots of good stuff but what you see on Instagram or other social media channels, isn’t necessarily the case, you know the popular one, the rear van doors wide open looking out onto a beach or lake vista, nobody around and the sun setting, day after day, pic after pic of idyllic scenes. They don’t happen with that frequency or intensity. Hey you still need to do laundry and empty the karzi right? Those are the real pictures for Instagram, watch this space!!! Seriously though, what it does give you is freedom! Now that ‘freedom’ takes some time to adjust to. Still adjusting to it now! But that is an amazing feeling. You dance to your own tune, not someone else’s. Think about that for a moment……
Back in the island in late 2020 we were camped out at my mother and father in law’s home, in the van on the drive. They’ve only ever been supportive of our plans and have allowed us a place to stay until we could go away again. They have a lovely home and have always made us feel very welcome, and living next door gave me an opportunity to get to know them so much better. I love them for who they are, very family oriented with a progressive outlook on life and times, qualities that aren’t always shared by that generation. Unfortunately, my father passed away a few years ago, but I have no doubt he would have been supportive of what we were doing, having spent the majority of his life working overseas. My mother, although I love her dearly, has her own views about what we’re doing, and it was fairly easy to spot very early on, in the way she talked about our plans that they didn’t sit right with her. I’m still not sure whether she’s onboard or not today!
That’s okay though because these are our travel plans and these are our life choices that we are making. They aren’t meant to make anybody else happy, these are decisions we’ve made for ourselves. Again, not meant in an unkind way, but we are making decisions just like our parents did, just taking a different path, not the normal heavily trodden path. I want our children, both whom I am very proud of, to follow their own path too and not feel constrained by what society thinks is the correct path to a happy and satisfying life. But they also know we are there to support them, as and when we’re needed.
As we started 2021, we needed something else to focus on, although we had our travels to plan this was difficult in uncertain times with more places clamping down on non-essential travels. We were hopeful that the European ski resorts might open, but we know how that turned out! In the meantime, we were both carrying a couple of decent sized Christmas turkeys in body weight, so we decided to focus on getting fit again and dropping ‘a few’ pounds. This in hindsight was such a great thing to do because it took our mind off COVID and something that we had control over, our health. Well in the next 3 months we both lost about 40lbs in total but gained a lot more in our overall wellbeing as a result. Both of us had re-enrolled on Storm Force fitness camps earlier in December and that combined with a change in eating habits was all that was needed. I should also mention that at this point, the 3rd week of January was when Guernsey went into lockdown because of COVID community seeding. That was another reason we needed something else to focus on! The idea of maybe getting to the snow for the end of season was now drifting away at a fair old pace as more European countries extended lockdowns and restrictions on non-essential travel. To be quite honest we hadn’t had our vaccines yet, and we weren’t scheduled to have them for a while. In our hearts, whilst we tried to remain positive, we knew it was unlikely we’d be snowboarding in March or April.
But being at home and not travelling wasn’t the end of the world, it gave us an opportunity to spend time with family and friends. Help out at home and get the van ready for our travels. We certainly weren’t going to make the same mistake we did the first time around and pack everything we could. It was absolutely pointless, you don’t need it ‘just in case’, if it’s that desperate, buy it when you need it! Take the bare minimum, pack for a two week holiday and even that might be way too much! We could see that the global situation was fairly fragile but COVID numbers were moving in the right direction, so we took the plunge and booked our ferry tickets, knowing that things were in a far better place and we’d been vaccinated.
Locally at home the island was locked in fear as to what might happen once borders opened. In hindsight, having had the opportunity to have spent the past 2 months in the UK, I’d say that people in Guernsey need to relax a little. There is no need for the anger and vitriol that’s being spat out by people fearing the pandemic and what it might mean for the island. We have to move on, have the vaccination (or don’t have it), and hopefully you won’t ever catch the disease, maybe you will, maybe you’ll survive, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ve had it already! All ‘ifs and buts’, you can’t live your life based on something that may never happen. However, you can assess the risk that you feel the situation poses towards you and then decide what you want to do about it or how you want to live, but don’t let your own anxieties stop you or somebody else from living.
Well we made it out of Guernsey, but we’re currently sat just outside Weymouth, having had a new water pump fitted to the van. No running water in a van, means no washing up, shower or flushing toilet. Thankfully we stopped at places that had showers etc so wasn’t the end of the world, just a first world problem. So we’ve been in the UK for 2 months now, and travelled through Cornwall, Devon and up to Wales, hiked, surfed, biked, repeat! We’ve had an awesome time, hooking up with friends and family, drifted largely with no set agenda, mainly because of travel restrictions earlier on and the difficulty with planning anything. But now we’re in a position where we can plan, we’re starting to plan our travels through France and Portugal to surf through the autumn. We’ll be at home for Christmas but then hopefully heading to Canada for 6 weeks in early January and then, planning to take the van over in May / June time, so watch this space.
Best of all though, we’re living and we have our freedom! And if you hadn’t noticed, life is good!
Life is about choices and decisions. There will be lot’s of choices….
Tubbs & T-A ✌🏼❤️
