Bridget McNulty is a passionate writer fascinated by why people act the way they do. So fascinated, in fact, that she’s written a book about it.
// September 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Life (and the living of it), travelling
For reals.
We leave this afternoon.
Our bags are packed, our tickets are confirmed, we’re outta here!
I can’t quite believe it…
For regular updates, check out our Sweet Life blog, and to find out exactly what we’re up to, you can watch this little video we made:
I’ll still be popping back here, though, so come and visit!
Byeeee….
// August 18th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Cape Town, Decisions, Life (and the living of it), travelling
At least, that’s what they say.
But I must admit, the last couple of weeks (possibly months) have been a difficult test of that… My man and I have been working full-time on getting this Round-the-World trip off the ground. We’ve written, designed and sent out hundreds of proposals (well, maybe not hundreds, but at least 30 or 40 which in real life is a lot of work). We’ve knocked on door after door after door, waiting for the magical one to open. We’ve thought as much out of the box as our brains would allow us, to come up with fresh solutions. It’s been hard work! Wonderful hard work, because we knew it was taking us to our dream of travelling around the world together, but on a day-to-day level it’s been pretty exhausting.
All this exhaustion reached a peak two weeks ago (today). It was the day before we were set to leave on our Joburg-Durban-Blue Train trip, and we had just found out that yet another company couldn’t help us out with sponsoring our flights. Up till then, each time someone had said no I hadn’t let it bother me – I just forged ahead and sent out the next proposal. But this time, it hit me. Hard. Because I had pretty much reached the end of my tether. I couldn’t think of anyone else who could help us out, and I couldn’t understand why people weren’t forthcoming when what we want to do – spread positive awareness about diabetes around the world – is such a great cause. I felt like we were offering delicious cupcakes to passers-by, and none of them wanted any.
I was feeling really awful about it, I must admit, but I remembered that whole thing about needing to let go and choose the downstream thought (remember I wrote about going downstream here?)
Now, those of you who have been reading for a while will know that letting go is not exactly my forte. In fact, I’m something of a control freak, so letting go is pretty painful for me to do. Still, I’d tried absolutely everything, and now it was time to hand it over to the Universe and say: Please help. I couldn’t have made it more clear what we needed to make the trip happen, so I had to let go and trust that it would come.
Did I mention that I find letting go of control extremely painful??
Anyhoo, a few hours after I made this decision, an email popped up in my inbox from a company I’d approached two weeks before and hadn’t heard back from, who now wanted to chat about our project. So exciting! Except we were leaving first thing the next morning and couldn’t meet with them till we returned… Nearly two weeks later.
The last two weeks have been full of uncertainty. While telling everyone that we were leaving on the 1st of September, we didn’t actually have any tickets (troublesome, that) and didn’t know if we’d be able to afford the whole trip unless the company in question (I’ll be writing about them later in the week, they deserve their own post!) sponsored at least a portion of our travels.
Back to real life yesterday, and within the first few hours of the day we heard that this magical company is happy to sponsor half our tickets, slicing our air ticket prices not only in half, but in a third. I cannot tell you how relieved I am! I actually felt shivery yesterday I was so relieved and happy!!
And, of course, it proves what all these books on Law of Attraction and the Art of Letting Go have been saying all along – there’s only so far you can go with action, then you have to let go and trust that what you have asked for will come to you. It might only come at the last minute (2 weeks before you leave, when you’ve already sold up and have nowhere to live after that date!) but it will come.
Phew.
Have you ever had an experience like this?
// July 27th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Decisions, Inspiration, Life (and the living of it)
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately: What can I live without?
Last night I finished clearing and sorting through all my ’stuff’, and I have to say it’s an incredible feeling. I went through my clothes / shoes / jewellery / books / papers / kitchen things and put aside everything I don’t love. I kept asking myself, ‘Can you live without this?’ and most of the time the answer was a resounding yes! I haven’t been foolish, I’m not tossing away things that we’ll need when we get back, but I have done a thorough pruning of the items I own, and I’m left with far less than when I began.
I was saying to my man that I find it such an exhilarating feeling – that I love being less tied down to the world – and he asked me why. The answer I came up with was simple, but it rings so true for me: I want to know that there is less I can’t live without. If for some reason I lost everything, I want to know that I would be more okay (than a few weeks ago, when I had a whole heap more ’stuff’).
I remember when I was a little girl I used to have this fear that an earthquake would split our house in two. Don’t ask me why – Durban has never had an earthquake (ever!) and there was pretty much 100% certainty that our house would never split in two. But I was a worrier as a child, and this was one of my chief worries. It would always reassure me to know that even if our house split in two and my parents, younger brother and older brother were on the other side (because of where their bedrooms were), my middle brother and I would be together. And that meant I’d be okay.
Now I live in a much smaller apartment, and if it split in two odds are my man and I would both be on the same side! But it still reassures me to know that no matter what else I don’t have (as we travel around the world with only one suitcase each), I’ll always have him. He’s the one thing I would like very much not to have to live without.
What about you?
// July 23rd, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Decisions, Life (and the living of it), Time, travelling
I’ve been waiting a lot, lately. Waiting to hear back from sponsors about our journey, waiting to hear about a trip to Durban and Joburg for publicity stuff before we leave, waiting to plan the last six weeks of normal life.
I’m not very good at waiting.
In fact, I’m pretty terrible at it. My impatient nature combined with my control-freak tendencies means I’m always wanting to sink my teeth into things, without waiting for other people to do their part. This is not a very good part of my character, I can accept that. And I’m working on it.
But I am also learning to accept other things. In fact, I’m working on the gentle art of acceptance.
We found out this morning that one of the major sponsors we were hoping would come on board doesn’t have the necessary budget to help us out. A lot of this journey towards the journey has been knocking on doors and understanding that some open and some remain stubbornly shut… But I must admit I was really disappointed when this one didn’t fly open. There’s still a chance that they’ll be able to help us out on a smaller level (sponsoring our air tickets and an iPhone so we can record our daily video snippets), but it looks like we’ll now be choosing Plan B.
Plan B is still extremely exciting, just in a different way. Instead of 16 countries for 2 to 3 weeks each, we’ll do 9 countries for a month each – and stick to South-East Asia and South America (the countries where our savings will last us longer!) We’ll be roughing it more, but more open to adventure and new experiences (as there won’t be any time constraints). We’ll get to fully experience two beautiful parts of the world. And if a major sponsor decides to climb on board while we’re away, we can always add in some of the other countries we’re going to be missing. Or that can be Journey 2. Or Journey 3. The plan is to keep doing this as long as we can!
The overriding feeling I have from this, though, is that it’s time for me to walk the talk. I keep saying that life always gives you exactly what you need, and that in retrospect everything always turns out for the best, and sometimes we just can’t see what is best for us from our limited present outlook. Now it’s time to trust in that, to trust in the flow of life. I need to learn to stop micro-managing everything, to trust that if you have the best intentions (and I really do, this cause is something I deeply believe in) that life will give you just what you need.
Only sometimes what that is will look a little different to what you expected it to be.
I’m excited about this journey! Literally and figuratively. I’m excited to challenge myself, to discover new things about life, and love, to explore this crazy world of ours. I’m excited for whatever lies ahead, down the river, around the bend, whatever it is I can’t quite see from here…
PS – Should anyone have any contacts with airlines or big companies who like diabetics or iPhone people, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
// July 16th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Decisions, Inspiration, Life (and the living of it), travelling
It’s an interesting question, isn’t it?
I was thinking about it last night, oddly enough, when I saw a picture of a hand-drawn robin. You know, the bird? And it reminded me of a fairy tale that my parents read to me when I was a little girl, which made me realise that for one of the first times in my life, I’m not nostalgic for childhood… I’ve been nostalgic for childhood for most of my life – I remember it as a pretty wonderful time, and that feeling of being looked-after is pretty hard to beat (clearly, I’m one of the few people in the world who had a happy childhood!)
So when I realised that the red-breasted robin wasn’t making me want the past, I thought about what I wanted from the future.
My own child? Lordy no, not for a few years yet.
My own home? Surprisingly, no. I’ve loved loved loved being here in my beautiful flat for the last year, but I’m itchy to get moving (unusual for someone so in love with nesting).
A straight career path? Umm… no thanks.
A wedding? Not right now, thanks for asking.
So if I don’t want any of the above (the ordinary answers for a 27-year-old, I think) what do I want?
I want to travel. I want the uncertainty, the excitement, the thrill of discovering new things every day. I want to explore and discover and not know exactly where I’m going next. I want to be nomadic for a while.
Which is pretty good timing, I suppose, seeing as I’m about the embark on a Round-the-World trip, but I’ve never felt like this before, so it’s all quite unusual. Or maybe I have felt like this, I just never took the time to ask myself if I was looking for something out of the straight and narrow.
So that’s the question I’m asking you:
What do YOU want from life-right-now?
PS: If you, like me, are insatiably curious and like knowing a little bit more about what’s around the bend, check out the interview I did on Sweet Life (our Round-the-World blog) with a woman who’s travelled all over the world… with her diabetic husband!
// June 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Cape Town, Interviews, book launch, travelling
It seems that today is Radio Day.
I’m on my way to an interview on Good Hope FM (in Cape Town) at 10.20am this morning, to chat about our Round-the-World trip – a great place to listen in if you’re confused about all the random world travel snippets I keep throwing at you! Check out http://www.goodhopefm.co.za/ to listen live…
And if you miss that, you can always listen to my pre-recorded interview on WUWM Lake Effect in Milwaukee, where I chat about all things Strange Nervous Laughter… Here’s the link for that:
http://www.wuwm.com/media/lake_effect/le062909_d.mp3
Enjoy!
