Ireland - the end: soon...

Today I almost went to help the guys at the little organic farm who deliver organic vegetables and fruit to me every week. I had arranged with them that I would help them from time to time, as I feel I would really enjoy working in nature, planting, seeding, weeding and doing what else needs to be done, while helping a business I like and want to support in every way I can.
But when I finally dragged myself out of bed this morning (it was only 8:15am, the earliest it has been in a looooong time!!), I could already hear the rain beating against the windows, and the wind whooshing in the chimney... I looked outside, switched on the TV set quickly to get the confirmation that the weather would be stormy all day, and sent them a text to ask if it was worth me coming, upon which we agreed to delay my day of help one week, so I will go there next Tuesday.
I am looking forward to it, but maybe it wasn't bad for me to have the day to relax, as all my muscles are still aching from the running and walking of the last two days...
I have felt since about two days a desire emerging in me: I would like to go to county Kerry for the weekend. I would like to spend about 4 days driving, walking, writing, staying in B&Bs and making pick-nicks for myself. So I am thinking of leaving on Thursday afternoon or so, and coming back on Monday evening, so I am back to go to the farm on Tuesday.
I went at least 3 or 4 times to Kerry already, to visit Dingle, Killarney and the ring of Kerry, and always enjoyed it immensely. It felt as if I could connect to the place in a very deep and special way. But I always went there with people, once or twice with a partner, another few times with visiting relatives. So now I would like to go there again on my own, before I leave Ireland.
Oh by the way, I don't think I mentioned it yet, but that's it, the ferry is booked, and my last official day in Ireland is the 30th of April 2007!! I will probably come back after that for holidays, to visit friends or so, but right now I don't think I will settle down here again. Everything can change, it's true, but right now it feels like my time in Ireland is getting to an end.
And I want to embrace that end so it feels like fireworks!
Yes, I think I will go to Kerry...

Firmly on the way... to where again?

This morning I woke up earlier than I had in at least 2 weeks!
Still found it hard to get up, as if my brain was awake, but my eyes wouldn't quite open, and if I forced them to open, they stung and tingled until I had to shut them again. I dragged myself out of bed after a while anyway, and decided to go for a 6km walk after breakfast. It was about 12:20pm by the time I left, and I did the 6km in 1h10, which was pretty good, I found.
It feels like the very beginning of my training for the 780km walk to Santiago that I'd like to undertake in May.
While I was walking, the first 30 min were joyful, I could feel my heart singing, there were very young lambs in the fields, young calves as well, and normal old sheep and cows also. The sky was gray and quite threatening, but it wasn't raining and the temperature was mild. I realised I could have walked in T-shirt really.
And then I started to feel good that I was moving again, my blood was beating fast in my arteries, and I felt all warm, even a bit too warm. Which is quite a relief after months of feeling cold, no matter how much I heated the cottage.
I felt good that I wasn't slumped on my couch watching day time TV, or drinking yet another mocha in yet another café in town. I was walking, I was moving again!
But then a new feeling gripped my insides and made me stop for a second. What about the direction? Toward what was I walking? What was my goal?
So I realised motion is good, but not quite enough. I can fill my days with walking, running, meeting people and doing things, but that will not bring me one inch closer to my dream if I don't know which direction my dream is!
And maybe I need another few late nights and late mornings, and days slumped on the couch to let the direction brew in me. Or maybe not.
I will see what comes in the next few days, and will listen to my inner voice that is getting louder every day.
Oh yes, and I will count my blessings every day, look at everything I am grateful for. That always helps so much.

In motion again!

Today I feel that I am getting fed up with my getting-to-sleep-late-waking-up-late lifestyle. I have to admit my new 2-coffees-a-day habit doesn't help...
I couldn't fall asleep until at least 2 or 3 am last night, and I woke up just after 8am, thinking great, I will get up now, and then I will be tired tonight so I will be able to go to bed early. And then I thought right, just another 5 min with my eyes closed in the warmth of the bed. Next thing I opened my eyes, and it was just before 11 am.
And today I felt nervous and impatient. I felt like moving. So I went for a 45 min run, followed by a bit of stretching and a long bath.
And now I feel tired! And it is before 11 pm! Great!
So I feel like my sleepy slow transitioning era is reaching its own natural end, and I am getting ready for better, bigger, and above all faster things!
Can't wait to see what life brings me, now that I am not sleeping all the time anymore... :-)

New times, new things

I noticed that every time I start a new chapter of my life, I feel like having new things, like a new car, new clothes, a new phone, or a new place to live.
It is as if my expansion needed to express itself in its surroundings, and if anything feels too old, too small or limiting, it has to go and give way to something bigger, newer and better altogether.
I remember when I moved from my tiny flat in the west side of Galway to the big 4-bedroom house (on my own!!) in the east side (April last year)... After about a week in the new house I felt like I needed to change my car and my mobile phone as well. My little 3-door Renault Clio in particular felt way too small to host my new expanded me, and I shuddered every time I left the house and saw it parked on the street. So I bought a much nicer, newer, and bigger Mazda 3 that felt like I had enough space in it to share it, bring people around, and breathe with ease.
Same thing with my mobile phone. I liked my Nokia but felt like I had it too long and needed something newer, so I bought a brand new Motorola that had plenty of amazing features I ended up never using.
I found myself yesterday longing yet again for a new phone. So I dug out my old Nokia from my drawer, slid my SIM card into it and switched it on.
It was very strange to find old text messages from a year ago. After allowing waves of memories to wash over me for... well a few minutes (after all it was the phone I had during my last relationship), I deleted all the old stuff and changed the ring tones, and now it feels almost like a new phone! And the sound is really much better than the Motorola. However the screen definition is much worse, and it is a very small screen after the Motorola. I think I will probably end up buying a new phone altogether, as I don't like the feeling of going backwards, but for now the Nokia will do.
I used to find it hard to get rid of things, and tended to just keep the whole lot (even bus and metro tickets), so I needed more and more space to hoard it all, but now I feel ready to let go of things. Books I won't read again, CDs I never listen to, and phones I won't use anymore can go. As a matter of fact, I will try and sell the Motorola now, and as soon as I get a new phone, I'll sell the Nokia as well. I can feel, when I get rid of these things, the free space that welcomes new things, experiences and people.
And that is what transition is about isn't it? Letting go of the old, to welcome the new...

Slow day, so what?

OK so I just added a webcam picture of my new look to the blog.
It is not a great quality picture, and I look pretty tired on it, but it will give you an idea of the cut...
Apart from that, today is quite slow so far.
I am sitting in the little hotel I go to all the time for coffee and because they have free wireless broadband access, but I feel that maybe I came here too many times this week, and the waitress is starting to look at me with a weird look on her face, no matter how generous the tip I leave. Maybe I am just imagining things, but I found that I have a good feel for these things usually.
So I might give the hotel a miss next week, and keep myself to my dial-up 2 hours a day evening connection. And that's ok.
That means more time in the day to read, write and do other things. Like experimenting yet a bit more with my oil paintings, reading some of the 10 books I just received from Amazon, do some of the exercises that should help me to find out what I really want to do, and maybe also relax and meet friends.
Yes, today feels very slow as I am observing my feelings change, and try to reach for the best emotional state that is within my reach right now. But that's fine. I can just honour the slowness of the day, and use the opportunity to read yet a bit more, or maybe watch a movie and relax.
Yes I will probably just do that tonight.
But right now I will get away from the hotel, to escape the smothering feeling of guilt of having been here maybe one time too many this week. Have a good weekend everyone!!

New hair cut

I went to the hairdresser's yesterday, and got a drastic cut.
No long hair anymore.
It took two hours and forty-five minutes to get my hair cut, but then again, I went to a hairdressing college, and it was a student who cut it, hence the time.
It was fun to watch the transformation, mesh after mesh falling on the floor and on my lap, as I started to look more and more like a bear... I could feel the weight becoming less and less, and I felt like shouting woohoo! every so often, as I could feel more lightness and freedom on my head and shoulders, and was already looking forward to the piece of cake it was going to be to wash it with my crappy shower head (old cottage, no water pressure, no fun to wash long thick hair...).
At the end the teacher had to help to give me a cut I could live with, and now I quite like it, and I feel it is really growing on me. I will change the picture in my profile as soon as I have a picture of how I look now.
My hair is now really short, a bit messy on the sides, with still a tiny bit of length in the back, a couple of centimeters or so. I find it looks dynamic, still feminine, and like a fun cut!
So here, it is another bit of the transition.
All the transitions I have gone through somehow affected my hair: I started when I was 19 with blue hair, then flashy red, then really short (6mm was the shortest, you could see the scalp through it), then spiky (it stayed like that for a couple of years), then short but relatively normal, then fiery red with highlights, then natural colour again, then long, and now short again.
I like the energy of my new look.
I love the energy of my new life.
And even though I am still in that slow lazy stage of the transition, I can already feel the amazing life, full of promises and fun that is starting to dawn on me.
So now I can really shout Woohoo!!

Divine Sludge time...

I started reading a book a few days ago, called "This Time I Dance! - Trusting the Journey of Creating the Work You Love" by Tama J. Kieves.
I came across it at my favourite second hand bookshop, and had to buy it, even though I know there is a whole box of books and CDs exactly on that subject coming to me right now.
And I don't regret it! What a book!
I had a beautiful moment today as I was sitting for lunch, just after my weekly Tai Chi lesson, and before my appointment at the hair dresser's, and took out the book while I was waiting for my order. I read a chapter that felt like it had been written for me.
It was called "The Year Of Sleeping Dangerously" and explained that it is quite normal that, just after taking the leap from an established working life, and as I expect to start that beautiful life doing exactly what I want, and exploring all the possibilities that offer themselves to me, I find myself unable to get out of bed, and take about all day to finish my breakfast. She calls this transition zone a "divine sludge".
So I am not alone!
I don't need to feel guilty that I am ruining my life because suddenly I am not able to find the courage to be productive! And prefer sleeping, reading and watching TV all day! It is even OK to embrace it!! It is like a soul-searching period, that is as important as the doing bit!!
Great! Now I feel much better, and I can feel as all my muscles relax and I start loving all of myself, even the bit that can't get out of bed before 11am... I will nurture it, let it go to bed late and sleep late if it wishes to, pig out on nice foods if it feels like it, and just hang in there until the foggy days give way to other, new days where I actually feel like jumping out of bed and doing things.
Now I know that these times will come also, and I am not being just plain lazy because I feel so slow.
And on this nice thought, I go to bed... and will sleep as late as I want tomorrow!

Transformation

Last night I was in my cottage with a very good friend of mine, and as we were talking, I heard a fluttering sound. After I discarded my first thought of angel wings, I looked for the origin of the sound, and discovered a beautiful brown and golden butterfly fluttering around my sitting room.
My friend immediately said: "Do you realise that butterflies are about transformation?"
And that felt right. Why, and how had a butterfly found access to the inside of my thatched cottage, and what was supposed to do with it?
I thought of letting him out, but my friend told me he would die in the cold. He would die inside too, but at least he would be warm. So I let him stay inside with pleasure and gratitude for the beautiful symbol.
Today I heard him again as I was experimenting with my oil paintings on the wooden round table in the conservatory, and I noticed then that it was actually a second one!! The first one was still flying against the window in the sitting room!
Wow! The strength of the symbol was immediately multiplied by two!
So yes I am transforming, and I am now embracing every stage and every moment of the transformation. I can see my point of view changing from the caterpillar to the height of the skies, and I can feel my wings growing in my back. I can feel my mind, my soul (and thankfully not my body) expanding!
I don't really know right now where my path is leading me. But I feel good right where I am now, observing what is going on in my mind, and letting go of the resistance as it comes up as much as I am aware of it anyway. It's fun. So as long as it is fun I know I am on the right path...

Words, words, words...

Have you ever been confused by words?
Have you ever looked at a word, and thought about it and listened to it so much that it ended up not making sense anymore, and that you wondered for a second if you had not actually made it up?
I used to do that a lot when I was little. I would say a word to myself as part of a thought, and it would sound strange to me for some reason, so I would start to play with it, listen to its sounds, remove any meaning behind it, and sometimes even invent a new meaning for it, that would match its sounds. It did not have to be a strange word, it could be the most usual of words, one that I used many many times every day, but still once I started to dissect it, it became fascinatingly meaningless.
I find words, and language in general, fascinating. Having lived in three different countries, with three different languages, I realised that some things are easier to say in one language than in another, and that has nothing to do with which one is my native language. Some concepts are expressed in one word in German, and would need a whole sentence to explain in French. And then to complicate things, everyone uses words in a different way, even within the same language. People can use the same words to mean something completely different, or sometimes only slightly different, which can be misleading. It is particularly obvious with the "I love you" kind of words...
Some people use language in a very symbolic way, and a lot of what they say is metaphors for what they mean. These people are poets, and speak in images. If we listen to the words only, we will get a very different understanding (if any) of what they say. To truly hear them, we need to let the words split open, and reveal their deepest substance; we need to leave our minds open to reading between the words, between the lines, for what is not said is as important, or more, than what is said.
It can get confusing.
But the most beautiful thing is that once we open up to what they say, what they show, and how they say/show it, we are ready to truly look at the depth of our soul.
I am deeply thankful for all the poets around me who help me to look in the mirror.

Embrace life, all of it

I realised last night that there is something more to going with the flow.
It is not quite enough to stop resisting the flow. We need to actually embrace it. And then it all makes sense.
You see I was kinda raving about how I got myself all stressed out last week, and actually by refusing to stress out anymore, and forcing myself to relax, I realised that only pushed the stress deeper into myself, but it stayed there. Saying: "no, I won't feel stressed, that's it, I've had enough of it" only meant refusing, denying what was there. So yes, I relaxed, but I didn't get rid of the stress. Far from it. When I looked at it last night, I discovered it had actually grown, hidden somewhere deep in my stomach, not unlike an alien ready to burst out with its hungry double jaw...
So I tried a different approach and I embraced the stress. I welcomed it, all of it, everything that was coming my way. And guess what! The more I embraced it, the less I could find it. It was as if it just withered away before my eyes. Wow!!
That felt like it was the missing link for me.
I had spent many years trying to surrender, to let go, and feel at peace, but really last night I realised that stressing out and relaxing are just the two sides of the same coin. And embracing all of it, no matter what it is, and how it feels, is very different.
It reminded me of an instance two weeks ago, when I could feel I was coming down with some kind of flu. So I kept telling myself for two days "my health is perfect, my health is perfect, my health is perfect". The third day, when my throat was still sore and hoarse, and I still felt feverish, I gave up and embraced the illness. Wow. That felt beautiful. I allowed myself to be sick, and only then I realised how much I had tensed up trying not to be sick.
Last night, I realised I had tensed up as much trying not to be stressed out. Amazing, huh?

Go with the flow

That's what I am trying to do - or rather, let's say that's what I am doing. Let's stay positive.
You see, last week I got myself into a huge feeling of stress, whereas really, if I look at my life right now, there is not much to stress about. But it is quite easy to forget that right now, I have enough money to be OK doing nothing, and that I have time to just explore exactly what it is I want to do.
So instead, I started to think that if I really want to walk the path to Santiago in May, I should start training now, and that if I want to leave Ireland in April, I probably should start thinking about the administration of it all, e.g. selling my car, getting rid of all the stuff I won't bring back with me, etc..., and also I should start going around Ireland, and visiting all the places I have never seen (e.g. the Giants Causeway, Newgrange, Tara, etc...) and that I really want to see before I leave. Not to mention organising the trip for my parents to come over here with the car, as they will help me to bring back the stuff I want to keep to France.
And there I could have screamed. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHH!!
So I have spent this week relaxing, refocusing myself so I can think mostly about things that inspire me, and make me want to continue, and to expand. I kept remembering that life is as beautiful and as easy as I make it, and that if I don't stress myself out, I can create a fabulous time for myself!
On Monday, I made a collage with pictures of all the things/situations I want, and have ended up with an A2 size collage, that I hung beside my bed, so it is the first, and last thing I see every day. That gives me a beautiful, joyful and peaceful feeling, and it really does keep me motivated.
I spent one hour meditating on beautiful music every day, and that also helped to keep me in a space that feels good. Also, I haven't done anything I didn't feel like doing. So I woke up late most days, wrote quite a bit, but enjoyed every time I did, talked to friends and family, and had great laughs with them, and ate out many times. And, guess what! I didn't clean anything in the house this week!! Wow! What a week!
Now I can imagine that next week will be a little bit more structured, but I liked the feeling of freedom this week, of really being nice to myself and listening to what my heart was saying. And I want to continue that.
I also started to listen to my feelings more, and to watch what I was thinking when I realised I was feeling worried, scared, tight, or bad in some way. When I identified the thought that caused the bad feeling, I looked for thoughts that felt more uplifting, and more relaxing, and could feel immediately the change in how I was feeling.
I had a prime example of that today: I was driving into town, to meet up with a friend for lunch, and started feeling worried. I looked at what I was thinking, and realised I was thinking about my computer, and about a software program I bought on the web at the beginning of the week, and that is not working as well as I think it should. I had sent an email to the support team, who promise on their site that they answer emails within 24 hours, but still have received no answer. And I was thinking about the next email I might send to them, choosing the words in my head that might tell them of how annoyed and disappointed I was with my purchase and with their misleading support claims. So there I caught myself, and decided to change my thoughts. I focused on the fact that my laptop is working so well, and that I enjoy working with it so much. I told myself that the program I bought is useful and working well on my PC, and that I will get an answer from them at the perfect time. And immediately I could feel my stomach muscles relaxing, my frown easing into a relaxed smile, and I felt much better!!
So that's what I want to do from now on: always go with the flow, and watch my feelings so I can change my thoughts when I don't feel so good.

What next?

Today, I will write about where I want to go in life. For the next few months/year anyway.
I figured it gives me a much nicer feeling to talk about what I want to do, where I want to live and all that, rather than complaining about the misery of Irish weather (although today is quite good, cold but dry), and everything that is not working.
So what I'd like to do next, is leave Ireland in the nicest and easiest way possible, i.e. without too much administrative hassle.
Then, back in France, I'd like to walk the way to Santiago de Compostella in Spain (from the Pyrenees or so), which should take about one month walk for 780km to walk.
After that, I'd like to spend the summer in France, relaxing with my family, meeting up with the few friends I have left there, most of whom I haven't seen in quite a while.
After that, maybe end of September or October, the big jump: I'd like to move to California...
Why California, you'll say.
Well, I couldn't tell exactly why. I just know that my gut feeling is to just go there and see. Call it inner guidance if you want - and I know I will follow it.
Somehow, when I think of being in California, my heart feels light, joyful and peaceful. More than if I think of anywhere else in the world. So I'll go with that feeling, and see where it leads me!

Introduction

Hi!
Well, this is it! I am starting a blog!
I am just going to introduce myself briefly tonight, and will post more tomorrow, as it is getting late here...
OK so as you can see in my profile, I am originally from France, where I spent 19 years of my life before going to Germany for two years as part of my studies (I studied German literature).
After that I emigrated to Ireland, where I have been for the past seven and something years.
Now I just left my corporate well-paid job and, cushioned by the redundancy payment I got when I left, I am now transitioning into the life I really want.
The first step, of course, is to determine what it is I really want.
One of the first things that became clear after I left my job, and even a few months before, was that I want to write. And as far as I can remember, I have always been telling and writing fairy tales and other stories, so it feels like I just need to connect again with that natural ability I seem to have.
But do I want to be just a writer? I don't think so, and it's the journey towards discovering all it is I really want, and doing it, that I want to share with you, hoping that it might inspire some of you who are thinking of transitioning out of your job as well.

OK well, enough for today, I will continue this tomorrow.
In the meantime, welcome to my blog, and see you soon!