A good theme

From time to time I get emails from people who are thinking about making a big life change of some kind or other: moving countries or careers or taking some big leap to follow a dream. They write because something about my story resonated with them - and their emails leave me often surprised and always humbled.

There are themes that we come back to: about taking risks, and believing in yourself enough to give yourself the opportunity to go and do something about it. And when we've gone through those, I'm usually the one that gets all practical, because there's a difference between taking a risk and flinging yourself into the unknown.

You can offset so much trauma by preparing for a big change - and I don't mean planning everything out in advance, because there'll always be a zillion things that are entirely beyond your control. I mean getting the overarching theme right: knowing why you're choosing to do something, and how you expect life to be different or better for that change. A good guiding theme provides stability within the tremendous change. With the move to Madeira it was a line from a Patrick Kavanagh poem: "For this soul needs to be clothed with a new dress woven / From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven". And the move did exactly that for me.

Understanding your own quirks - your strengths and weaknesses and fears and hopes - will go a long way to smoothing out how you move into the next phase; knowing what freaks you out is as important as knowing what makes you feel emotionally snuggled. I still treasure the lesson of the Incident Pit.

Apart from the elusive council form (to be tackled in some official offices in the morning), I think everything's settled. Today I got through the last bits on my To Do list, went out for a final pizza and sunshiney beer.



The day was peppered with people calling in to say goodbye (I was inevitably on a break when they called - watching Boston Legal and drinking Coral - so no-one got a sense of industriousness and organisation). The movers will be here first thing in the morning - broadband isn't cut off until Tuesday, so I'll do a final post tomorrow before I leave.

As I was packing this evening, I smiled at my loopy prioritisation: green & red crepe paper for christmassy crafty sessions with my nephew & niece; an Absolut disco ball for my sister (my own one will be shipped); arty stuff that's small enough to take; and my super hot air popcorn maker, which will never leave my side again - they're all in there. Know what makes you feel snuggled - that's important.

Oh, and never attempt an inverted yoga pose after more than two glasses of wine. That's important too.



Here endeth the lesson :)