In our first full week of early retirement we embrace the challenges of going with the flow in our adventures, spend time finding the hidden places, find the benefits of just slowing life down and witness a creative process that has a lesson for us all.
Going with the flow- our week away
So after the emotions and general rushing around of last week, this week we had the opportunity to slow down significantly, which was at times was easier said than done. We have always struggled to slow down at the end of an academic year, and this year was no exception. The main difference this year was that we purposely made the decision to have no travel plans and just go with the flow to see how we coped with the unknown. We have just slowly pootled around the south Wales coast seeing what we can find and generally just reacting to the weather. We have had a great week finding the hidden places and readjusting to the slower pace of vanlife. We have written up our summer travels in a separate blog here if you are interested.
Finding the wild places
One of the great pleasures of travel is not always visiting the popular places, but the joy of getting off the beaten track and discovering the hidden and wild places that only the locals are often aware of. This week we have found hidden smuggler caves, walked barefoot on deserted beaches, sought out-and failed to reach some isolated coves, been turned back numerous times by sheer cliff faces and dead ends and been blasted to bits by the destructive forces of battle tanks on the MOD range.
Mental switch off
One of the significant side effects of this week has been the ability to mentally slow down from the chaos that is normal working life. We always sleep well in the van, but this week has been particularly good on the sleep front. No alarms, settling into a more natural sleep pattern of going to bed earlier and waking with the sun and generally avoiding the distractions of technology that always have a negative effect on our sleep. In addition, I have also found the love for little afternoon naps (Jackie has always loved a good nap!) in re-energising myself during the day. The joy at taking time to do very little I am sure will eventually wear off, but at the moment is really refreshing and in sharp contrast to our working lives.
Similarly, we have both enjoyed time falling back in love with reading, Jackie with her usual trashy novels and me on my self-help shit books. The ability to take time, switch off and immerse ourselves in a good book has been so refreshing and good for the soul.
The lack of phone signal in the wild places has been a little frustrating, but not for the reasons that you may suspect. What it has done for me is highlight how dependant we are on links to the web for our everyday entertainment. We should not be feeling frustrated when we don’t have phone signal, we should be grateful for the opportunity that brings- time to read, connect with each others in person and be present in the moment. For me, these feelings of frustration happened all too often this week and I was annoyed with myself for that. This awareness is probably linked to my latest read- Stollen Focus by Johann Hari- why we can no longer pay attention to the important things in life. It’s a great read and very enlightening on the negative effects that social media is having on our lives.
Beach art
In sharp contrast to the negative effects of social media on our ability to pay attention, we were lucky enough to witness a local artist producing a piece of art on Freshwater West beach.
He arrived about the same time as us in the morning and spent the whole day producing the most amazing and beautiful piece of art on the beach. Our attention was drawn to this by a large entourage of social media crewe who were documenting his work. The contrast could not have been sharper- he was completely engrossed in the creative process for hours on end, oblivious to the camera work and frenzy that was going on around him. He was putting so much creativity and effort into a piece of work that would naturally be engulfed by the tide in only a few hours time. His simple joy in the process and not the lasting outcome was a privilege to share. Of course, when the process was complete, he then documented his work for himself using modern technology of cameras and drone, before his creation would be lost forever.
Witnessing this whole moment of creativity made us both think about the importance of enjoying the process, the moment, the presence rather than looking too far ahead into the future. Definite food for thought!
So that’s it for another week. We are currently back home calming ourselves before the potentially crazy period ahead of our house move. Hopefully our house sale will complete on 9 August- just over a week to go. At this moment we have nothing in place in terms of packing, removal or storage…so we are going to have a busy few days ahead!
Have a great week,
Richard & Jackie
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